Play is curated around five topics in a sequence of boxes and short stories representing specific Palestinian conditions. In each of the charged environments, a child’s point of view is adopted, a pre-mediated look that invites exploration which, in turn, makes a multitude of alternative interpretations possible. To think about this in more detail, let us turn to the Stone Box. The first iteration was made as a gathering device for materials and ideas, specifically the extraction of resources and labour, which eventually led to a particular site and situation. The second time, the box takes the form of a toy that embodies the site’s set of relationships. The explored site within this box is a contested landscape; the land itself has a unique value due to the sacred association of its stone materials, commonly known as Jerusalem Stone. There is a tradition of extracting material fragments from the Holy Land, which are carried away by tourists and pilgrims as souvenirs and memory objects. Charged relics, in a reliquary box, embody the stories and values of their original geographies. At the same time they raise questions about the destination and reception of this material commodity under its ‘sacred’ status. Stone can move. After being purified — leaving dust, waste and pollution behind — sacred fragments of the Holy Land are placed in synagogues around the world — sites with an indexical connection to the Holy Land through direct contact with its materiality. With both iterations of the Stone Box, once the lid is closed, the sites of extraction – the quarries surrounding Palestinian communities and from which the stone fragments were gathered, are put in direct contact with places where stone is used as cladding; whether in Jerusalem for the first iteration of the box or in the Israeli settlements in West Bank in the second. A short story linked to the first Stone Box narrates a fictional city built out of giant stone blocks excavated from different and distant locations. The city has a dual nature with one side depicting everyday life on its surface and the other revealing a magical underground realm. Tourists and pilgrims visit and re-enact historical scenes by entering this hidden realm and touching different stone blocks, each possessing unique spiritual effects and periods of time. In the second Stone Box a story is reconceived as playing with the box as a toy, putting the child’s body in direct engagement with a surrounding place. By moving the arrangement of miniature paper fragments and stone crumbs inside the box, a larger effect on site takes place. A child is placed in a loop of emotions oscillating between joy and fear, accompanied by a sense of estrangement while struggling to recognise shifting ground after moving any piece in the toy.
First iteration of Stone Box opened: 3D wood relief of a cluster of Palestinian stone quarries, attached to a plaster cast lid; miniature 3D cast Jesmonite fragments of Illés Relief model of Jerusalem, 2023. 21 x 15 x 5cm
all images Samer Wanan
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on site review 44 : play
Stone Box: opened and spread out.
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