Liminal

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CONFERENCE

Date:

10 - 12 March, 2006

Location:

Qalandiya / Jerusalem / Ramallah

www.liminalspaces.org

www.grenzraeume.org

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Idea

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Liminal Spaces is an eight-month international art project which aims at

refuting the realities of occupation and its dynamics by examining notions

of urban spaces, borders, mental and physical segregation, cultural

territories and the possibilities of art within political frameworks. In light

of the ever-growing hardship endured by Palestinians under Israeli

occupation; persistent loss of land, deprivation of freedom of mobility, as

well as basic political and civil rights, this international cooperative

project takes as its starting point the spatial borders that characterize

Israel’s colonial project. Frontier cities like Jerusalem have become

laboratories of an urbanism of radical ethnic segregation. Since the Second

Intifada and Israel's unilateral construction of the Wall, declared illegal

by the International Court of Justice at the Hague, this situation has

intensified to an alarming degree and the urban fabric has disintegrated

into a spatial and mental archipelago. This radical separation affects

Palestinians in diverse ways; they suffer the loss of basic freedoms,

restrictions on travel and severe surveillance that endanger the future of

their society.

Context

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The Israeli project of territorial and demographic control has been

deeply inscribed into the physical and social fabric of the intersecting

regions of Israel and Palestine. Urban frontier zones like Jerusalem

have become laboratories of an urbanism of colonial expansion and

ethnic segregation that are unique in their extremes: a spatial matrix

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