BLACK BOX
2023Wooden and 3D printed model, video and sound
Wadi, Haifa Museum of Art (Curation by Dan Handel)
"Black Box" focuses on one house in Wadi Salib that incorporates a history of erasure and reconstruction of the topography and the built environment. The house, which was used by the Abdi family until 1948, became a synagogue in the 1960s, which remained standing while the buildings around it were proactively demolished and then surrounded by land made from the ruins as part of landscape planning. The work brings the voices of Abed Abdi, Yehiel Maman, and Dafna Grinstein. These voices serve as a soundtrack for visual moments that emphasize the material and imagined layers of a complex site. The various stories embodied in the house describe a narrative geology that challenges the human ability to look at the past presently.
The work stems from a larger research funded by the Israel Ministry of Science, Technlogy and Space, in collaboration with Prof. Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, Prof. Aaron Sprecher, Prof. Dafna Fisher-Gewirtzman, Dr. Irit Carmon-Popper, and Dr. Jonathan Dortheimer.
This is the testimony of Abed Abdi. Abdi is a renowned Palestinian artist. In 1948, his family was expelled from Wadi Salib in Haifa. Abed Abdi lived in this house as a child, and came back to it fifty years later to take one tile from its floor, which was then integrated into his own artwork.
Through the hole of the front entrance to the ruin, one can observe a second testimony. Yehiel Maman, a member of the Jewish-Marocon community, set up residence in the dilapidated houses during the 1950s.
As Maman speaks of the worship inside this interior, the back wall of the interior of the model is shifting.
A third hole brings the testimony of Dafna Grinstein, a Landscape Designer that worked on the area surrounding the house.
Dafna Grinstein's video and testimony represent an X-ray image of the ground. The current park surrounding the house was formed from the rubble of destroyed houses, which was shaped by the natural topography and geology of the Wadi.