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| Artists: Arnaud Moinet (FR) and Henna-Riikka Halonen (FIN) curator Yael Schmidt |
For this project in Musrara, Jerusalem, we will playfully question, what is the role of art in cultural exchange. While not directly political, our work 12 Yellow Stars resonates with the contested borders of Jerusalem. Instead of directly commenting on this reality of Israel and Palestine, which we have only mediated ideas of we will act as ambassadors of European ‘ideals’ and will literally bring this baggage with us in a form of a comic book story for young people about a peaceful Europe without frontiers, called The Raspberry Ice Cream War, using it a s structure for discussion during a filmed tour in Jerusalem.
This tour will involve some local participants (6), a local tour guide, us as two artists and the festival curator, and is based in 6 different location stops. Each stop framed as a cartoon vignette (tableaux vivants), represents a point of negotiation between the artists/curator and the participants. The participants will be framed into the vignette by the camera and the actions are based on their conversation with artists and curator, who are always off frame. The story of Raspberry ice Cream War promoting the idea of borderless world is functioning as a subtext, which is simply providing a solid structure through which a cultural exchange can flow. The idea is to approach the concept of border not only in geopolitical terms but also as a point of negotiation between local and European perspectives that allow something else to begin. The participants are not asked to cite specific dialogue from the story,
but instead the action is constructed through discussions on how its significance could be applied to the context of Jerusalem. The work inevitably becomes a representation of the site the artists have been invited to respond to. However, the conversation on the occupied territories will be never shown explicitly but is ever present as frame. This use of hors cadre has a political purpose and finds resonance in wider discussion on politics and art. In other words, telling of the story and the intersubjective relations are not aimed to be an end of themselves but will rather serve to unfold more complex knot of concerns about visibility, borders and social interaction.
The project aims towards potential unexpected turns in these authored situations, seemingly controlled by the ever-invisible artists. It embraces misunderstandings, using them as potential resources for further negotiations. The aim is also to incorporate the different layers of agency through which the contract between the artist and the participants is fulfilled.
In other words, in each 6 locations of the tour the local participants are positioned into the frame of the camera by the artists and are invited to direct artists and the curator who are out of the frame, through an action responding to a particular scene in the comic. The relevance of the act itself and the political and social significance of each location will form a part of the negotiations. However, the referred action is always happening outside of the frame. The particular scene is introduced by the artists, the curator merely becomes a facilitator for these negotiations.
