Monday, June 16, 2008

Gold

The apartment was far up a big hill and had a beautiful view over the valley where there was a large new building complex. It looked like a sports centre but it was hard to tell what it was. On the other side of the valley, on the next hill, you could see a row of new high-rises which were probably residential. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky and the sun was glaring, but as Ramallah is approximately 1000m above sea level there was usually a light breeze and the temperature wasn’t unbearable. After looking around the apartment and at the landscape, Samar and I drove towards the centre of Ramallah. Here we found an Italian café diagonally across from Ramallah’s town hall, which also boasted a little fountain in its small park. Samar told me that the water was probably full of dirt and had never been changed because water was a scarce resource in the West Bank. Therefore, with this in mind, it was a strong and powerful symbol to erect a fountain here. Israel still controls the underground and ground water in the West Bank, which doesn’t leave much water for the population here. Due to water shortages the water supply is at times disconnected entirely which is why most houses have 4-10 large black water containers on the roof serving as a reserve for times when the supply is cut off.

After a coffee, a local artist joined us at the café. His name was Adham. We sat and talked for a while, and he told me that he was a bit worn out because he had been at work and had been out in the sun. He explained that he earned money producing backdrops for what he called “the boring Palestinian movies”. Recently an entire industry has been emerging around Palestinian movies and it was from this that he had got his job. A total of five movies were to have their opening night this year, which was a lot considering that the first Palestinian movie was produced, according to Adham, only 18 years ago. But Samar claimed that films were already being made in the 1960s. She had taken part in organising the Palestinian Film Festival in London last year, so she should know what she was talking about. But Adham was calling for more less boring movies, as the ones he knew of were all so serious, stiff and full of clichés. Apparently there has only been one single comedy produced over the years.

For a short while he pondered why the West expects particular cultural expressions from Palestine, in particular the kind connected to the conflict and occupation. He then went as far as to say that it was a great advantage to be a Palestinian artist because there was so much attention and demand internationally and there were a lot of artists who took advantage of this attention and delivered the images which were anticipated from a Palestinian artist. He claimed that in Ramallah everyone is an artist, “Ramallah is flooded with artists”. It was often enough for a young artist to take a single photograph of a refugee camp and their career would be kick started. He stated that his own work did not build on the theme of the occupation and joked about having only ever produced three pieces and so even if I was interested, there wouldn’t be much to see anyway.

We talked a bit about hip hop and how black people in the USA use music to get out of the ghetto. One can hardly blame a young artist for playing the game if a curator or producer is waving a plane ticket in front of them. Adham didn’t agree with the comparison. He wouldn’t ever go straight for the gold the way the hip hop artists did. No, there was more to it than that. However, he was currently faced with a dilemma: he had been offered a place for a MA in Fine Art at the Royal Academy in London as well as at Columbia University in New York. In that sense he was having his own share of the international attention that Palestinian artists are often met with. He had chosen Columbia, as they had offered him a scholarship. The ‘American Zionist university’ was the way he described it as it was supposedly directed by Israeli special interests. What I knew of Columbia University was that they are extremely good at educating their students to go for the gold in the art market. Perhaps that is an altogether different story though. However, Adham was definitely leaving for the USA at the end of the summer.

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