Public art: Networking on the wall

beatriz

by Cecilia Parsberg, Eurozine
Networking on the wall

Since 2003, graffiti artists worldwide have been leaving their marks on the Palestinian side of the wall being built to demarcate Palestinian and Israeli territory. Swedish artist Cecilia Parsberg visited Palestine and the wall to record the results: "It is an international multitude, a writing carpet." In interviews with Palestinian writers, artists, and cultural workers, she asks: "Do the paintings make the wall beautiful?"; "Will the graffiti have a political impact?"; and, "Are the artists participants in a bigger movement reacting to globalization in art and society?" The answers are revealing of the wall's significance in the Palestinian experience and the function of "network as resistance".

One hundred policemen cannot attain what beauty is able to bring about in a violent person.
Edi Rama, Minister of Culture, Albania

In October 2005, I set off to Palestine and the wall that has become a place for collective activism and maybe also art. I bring with me Giorgio Agamben's State of Exception, which I have been reading and reading, hoping to understand how his theories make sense in reality. I want to meet cultural workers in Palestine and listen to their views on the art on the wall. I want to know what they think about the international artists coming there and painting on it. I wonder if the multitude of works can be seen as a kind of collective creativity, a network. I am also curious why the wall is painted on the Palestinian side but hardly on the Israeli side.(....)

continue reading: Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-05-30-parsberg-en.html