The past is a dead country

Abstract

Most cultures use the past for stability and risk seeing not the other there but itself. One has to be able to see and sense a situation rather than be drawn into the reality depicted by formal historiography and national narratives. Departing from acute memories of conflict, enlisted for barricading identity, we can develop the capacity to contain an event and simultaneously progress towards a new beginning. I aim to question mapped boundaries through a biographical lens; to this end I observe onsite/insightfully the remains of village and its neighbour in northern Israel. The art of mapping debris can introduce new practices into the architecture of conflict.

Keywords

• Famadihana
• Histography
• Amendment
• Narrative
• Memory