Objects in conflict:
Personal stories from the heart of the conflict. From Saturday the 25th of September to the 6th of November 2010 the exhibition 'Objects in Conflict' will be on show in Germany at the Nordwalder Biografietage. The opening will take place on the 25th of September at 17.30 pm. Opening words by author Alexandra Senfft.
This exhibition places the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a personal context. The sixteen ordinary objects on display each tell an extraordinary story. The individual objects are, piece by piece, symbolic of a personal experience.
Intrinsically, the objects are almost all worthless, it is their meaning that makes them invaluable to their owners.
An old key, spectacles or sports shoe, they are all irreplaceable symbols because they represent an experience. They tell a story about a great loss or something dearly missed, a life lost or a house left behind. The sixteen stories, half of them Israeli and half of them Palestinian, together give an idea of what living in this conflict can mean.
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict something 'newsy' happens every day. The attention of the media is directed toward that fleeting reality. And that reality, to a certain extend, determines peoples perspective. But there is another way to look at the conflict, one that might be much more relevant, but rarely makes the headlines. It is the conflict seen through the eyes of individual people with their individual stories.
The exhibit puts the focus on that perspective. It distances itself from political spin and statistics and exposes the human proportions. Personal experiences are what the conflict consists of, because they reflect the consequences of the play around power, land and money.
The catalogue of this exhibition incorporates pictures by Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Oded Balilty of the objects and the stories are in English, Dutch, Arabic and Hebrew. By author and curator Nadette de Visser. |
