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In Blog 2025, Voices Blog

Rethinking cultural infrastructures in post-Assad Syria: a forum 

[editor's note: the gd:c blog has been on hiatus for several months because life got in the way, but we're thrilled to be back with this post about one of our in-house events and written by one of our directors. Enjoy.]
christopher balme

The forum participants in the gd:c library, i.e. our in-house cultural infrastructure.

From 16 to 17 September 2025, global dis:connect hosted our first forum. The forum is a new format for gd:c to explore how support for the arts can be rethought in countries and regions undergoing major transitions. The arts are subject to the same forces of globalisation as other areas of cultural and social life. They are highly diverse and at the same time often remarkably similar on an institutional level. Art fairs, theatre, film and music festivals, as well as iconic architecture for their presentation can be encountered around the globe. Yet their status and forms of delivery vary in the extreme, especially in countries and regions marked by ‘turbulence’.[1] Our forums address a set of recurrent questions. Who do these institutions serve? Do they justify their funding? Do they even receive public funding, or are they dependent on the vagaries of private philanthropy and sponsorship? Are they subject to direct political influence, or do they operate ‘at arms’ length’? Are arts institutions required to respond to touristic-heritage demands rather than artistic imperatives? How are local and national activities embedded in wider regional networks? We devoted the first forum to post-Assad Syria as a reaction to the events of December 2024, which saw the fall of the Assad regime and the takeover by a former jihadist group led by Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. Once the most important cultural centre in the region, years of war and mass emigration have left the cultural landscape of Syria in disarray. The workshop gathered artists, directors of funding bodies and curators from Syria and neighbouring countries to rethink how cultural infrastructure might be reconceived going forward. The challenges facing cultural infrastructure globally pose themselves in Syria in extremis, as much material infrastructure has been destroyed and the former structures of a largely state-controlled arts scene no longer function. The conditions in Syria drove us to pose many questions in the discussion. What remains of existing cultural infrastructure — both material and immaterial — and what new forms can still be imagined and built? What possibilities and promises can emerge from these shifting landscapes? Which networks can be activated or reconfigured, and how might the region's cultural life position itself within broader regional and global artistic ecologies, particularly in relation to questions of alliances, dependencies and hierarchies in the arts? Christopher Balme; Sophie Eisenried, gd:c’s curator responsible for our cooperation with the arts; and Dr. Ziad Adwan, a Berlin-based Syrian dramatist, researcher and former lecturer at the Syria’s Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, organised the event. With Adwan’s help, we assembled a group of largely Syrian participants, all of whom work outside the country: Abdallah Al-Kafri (Syria/Lebanon), Raed Assfour (Jordan),  Hala Khayat (Syria/Dubai), Hadeel Abdelhameed (Australia/Iraq), Helena Nassif (Lebanon), Junaid Sarieddeen (Lebanon) and Alma Salem (Syria/Canada). Anne Eberhard (Goethe Institute, Beirut) and the Syrian director and dramaturge, Rania Mleihi (Munich), joined us on the second day. Planning began in early 2025 with the circulation of a concept paper outlining the idea of the forum and how we understand the term cultural infrastructure. We distinguish between three different forms:
    • material: buildings, venues, spaces, heritage sites;
    • immaterial or intangible: the cultural capital of artists and creatives; their networks; sources of funding; and
    • institutional: mainly cultural organisations, which in post-socialist societies such as Baathist Syria are/were still largely state-funded. In liberal democracies they are augmented by different kinds of commercial and non-profit organisations.
There are many ways to study infrastructure, which has become an expanding area of  interdisciplinary research. It is important to remember that infrastructure is not just purely functional but also has a rhetorical use, what the anthropologist Brian Larkin terms the ‘poetics of infrastructure’[2] and Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel, have called the ‘promise of infrastructure’.[3] A second stage of preparation involved mapping existing infrastructure in Syria using Google Maps. Such maps are commonplace, and many cities develop them as online resources. In the UK, the West Midlands Combined Authority, the Greater London Authority, and even local councils such as Milton Keynes provide them. Further afield, cultural infrastructure plans have also been developed in cities such as Sydney, Vancouver and Amsterdam. While such cities produce such maps for diverse reasons, ranging from self-promotion to a genuine need to inform their citizens, the situation in Syria meant it was a largely remedial and reparative exercise. After ten years of war, the question was: what still existed and in what state of repair? Our criteria indicated not just name and location but also functionality, genre and governance (figure 1)  

A section of the cultural infrastructure map, which can be accessed here.

  The workshop ran over two days and combined plenary sessions and breakout groups. The opening session took the map as a point of departure for an extended discussion of what cultural infrastructure entails in a postwar and post-socialist situation. The workshop was overshadowed by recent events, namely massacres of civilians: Alawites in Latarkia and Bedouin and Druse minorities in Sweida. These events, plus the continuing war in Gaza, influenced the atmosphere of discussions. The optimism of early 2025 had given way to uncertainty and even pessimism, not only about the political future of the country but also whether the arts, broadly understood, would have a place in a regime controlled by a government with roots in jihadism. An initial round of discussions opened a set of topics that would recur over the two days. For example, Helena Nassif asked what values can the arts defend, what meta-narratives do we want to construct? Alma Salem wondered how the arts can be embedded in the ongoing political discussions regarding the constitution, elections, and justice, especially when there is already evidence of individual freedoms being denied. Hadeel Abdelhameed pointed to the example of Iraq, which had undergone similar levels of destruction and internecine violence. Now, however, cultural venues and the their spatial memories have gained importance, as evidenced in the renovation of Iraqi buildings in last two years, such as the city of Ur. Abdallah Al-Kafri emphasised the importance of peer organisations in the region while acknowledging that philanthropy and donations had become more complicated with the welfare state in crisis. Currently, there are huge distractions and divisions amongst NGOs in the field of culture. For Junaid Sarieddeen, director, dramaturge and founding member of the Beirut-based Zoukak Theatre Company, a key aim must be to sustain the region’s cultural and religious diversity, which often figures as its weakness because of its potential for dissension. That can/should, however, be used as an advantage. Syria has, as he put it, a ‘super local economy’, created by over a decade of war. Co-convenor Ziad Adwan argued that this element of locality meant that, in the transition phase at least, one should think in terms of pop-up or recurrent festivals rather than extended seasons. The cultural-infrastructure map could be used to identify venues. Raed Assfour, director of the Jordan-based Al-Balad Theatre, a multi-purpose cultural centre, emphasised the need to support regional movements. In three breakout sessions, smaller groups focused on specific topics: alternative venues and training models, national vs. regional curating and models of support beyond state/public institutions. In the latter, for example, the role of NGOs, international funders and philanthropic foundations was discussed. While the traditional supporters, such as the European cultural institutes (British Council, Goethe Institute, Institut français etc.) certainly played a part in supporting local activities by, for example, creating safe spaces for performances and exhibitions outside state control, their financial contribution was relatively modest. Perhaps the most successful example of collaboration between locals and outsiders is in the field of archaeology, which can draw on exceptionally long-lasting partnerships going back decades. Participants emphasised the wide range of non-state and non-public funding. Apart from international philanthropy such as the Ford Foundation and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), which have a long history of supporting the arts, one should also remember that support can come from numerous sources, corporate as well as private families and their foundations. Oil companies have funded art books, churches have supported choral singing, and amateur traditions such as ancient Syrian chants, a Christian singing tradition going back many centuries with claims to the status of a immaterial cultural heritage. The Beirut Museum of Art (BeMA), currently under construction, exemplifies the complex networks of support that extend beyond Lebanon and include UNESCO, the Washington-based Middle East Institute and the Getty Foundation. The Arab Theatre Training Centre (ATTC) based in Lebanon (executive director Raed Assfour) has received long-term support from SIDA, as well as other funding organisations such as the Swiss Agency for Development & Co-operation (SDC) in Jordan and the Anna Lindh Foundation. NGO funding is extremely complex, and there is too little research into the wider field of non-state funding. The second day opened with a plenary paper by Anne Eberhard, current director of the Goethe-Institut (GI) in Beirut and responsible for re-opening the GI in Damascus. The closure of the institute in 2012 due to the war had been countered to some extent by the Damascus in Exile programme, which involved many artists from the Syrian diaspora, especially those based in Berlin. Eberhard outlined current activities and the difficulties in restarting support for artists in Syria, such as a new cultural project fund. Its implementation is still hampered by bureaucratic barriers, such as the difficulties in transferring funds to Syria, which is still not possible. The challenge is to rebuild the networks in Syria. In March 2025, a delegation led by the German Federal Foreign Office that included members from the Goethe-Institut, the German Archaeological Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation visited the country during a period of optimism. Though the desire to reopen remains, the Goethe Institut is beholden to directives of the Federal Foreign Office. The plenary sessions on second day were connected by the idea of ‘strengthening networks’ and looked at ‘community-based production’, ‘inter-city connections’, and ‘diasporic perspectives’. Community-based production belongs to the positively connoted terms, sometimes associated with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ‘community-building’, that circulate in the NGO world.[4] In a wide-ranging discussion participants interrogated both the term itself (‘how to translate the NGO term community into Arabic or other languages’) and its application, as for example when the Syrian government began implementing ‘community projects’ under the patronage of the First Lady, Asma Fawaz al-Assad, in the early 2000s. A positive example was the Lebanon-based theatre group Zoukak, which initiated drama therapy workshops in refugee camps during the 2006 war with Israel. A recurrent critique targeted the equation of ‘community’ with ‘village’ or similar traditional forms of organisation. Helena Nassif proposed redefining the term to mean ‘working with groups in a context’, which also include artist collectives and various kinds of humanitarian actions. The topic of strengthening networks through intercity connections addressed a series of questions including whether artists in the region’s main cities form a shared community and how these ties might be strengthened. Another question revolved around competition vs. collaboration: when do inter-city cultural initiatives risk competing for the same limited funds instead of complementing each other? The importance of hub cities was also discussed, referring in this case Beirut and formerly Damascus. How can the latter regain that function? The current situation sees numerous smaller networks and a productive path might be to form coalitions to encourage them to come together. The importance of diasporic networks for rebuilding cultural infrastructure in new Syria is unquestioned, but discussion focussed on the extent to which diasporic voices can legitimately speak for a future Syrian context and whether the current conditions even permit a large-scale return of exiled artists. On the other hand, diasporic institutions (festivals, galleries, archives) could serve as ‘extended infrastructure’ for Syria. There was consensus that future planning must include diasporic artists because of the sheer numbers involved. As the participants all belong in one way or another to the diasporic network, although it is not formally organised as such, everyone was ready to contribute to strengthening immaterial infrastructure — such as knowledge transfer, networks and funding models. The final section of the workshop was an open mic and provided the opportunity for all participants to formulate plans and ideas for the future of the region, under the current or even a new government. Contributions ranged widely over deeply felt expressions of pain and loss over what has happened in the ‘cradle of civilisation’ formulated by Helena Nassif. It will be necessary to create for Syria, she argued, ‘a new sociality’ after the decades of oppression and war. Ziad Adwan asked: ‘what are my extensions today as a theatre maker towards Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians?’, thus positioning his artistic activity very much in a regional context. He wondered also how to evaluate the mapping project as well as how to record the deliberations of the forum itself (there is no audio or video recording). Perhaps one could think of a medium-term research project. Alma Salem stressed the need to reframe the region away from purely geopolitical arguments to geocultural ones to create more positive, constructive narratives. The regionalisation discussed in the workshop is not an objective to be achieved but is an already existing organic reality. The workshop was a short but intensive interaction bringing together theatre directors, curators, actors, cultural policy makers who were either Syrian or had strong ties to the country. Most described themselves either as expatriates or in exile. All were dedicated to re-establishing the once-vibrant arts scene in Syria, particularly Damascus, but also in other cities such as Aleppo. It was clear at the end of the two days that the forum format had initiated intensive discussions, renewed ties and laid the foundation for further initiatives. Much will depend on the stabilisation of an extremely fragile political situation and whether the current ‘transitional’ government can reconcile its Islamist orientation with the freedom of expression necessary for artistic culture to be re-established.   [1] Milena Dragićević Šešić and Sanjin Dragićević, Arts management in turbulent times: Adaptable Quality Management: navigating the arts through the winds of change, trans. Vladimir Ivir, ed. Esther Banev and Francis Garcia (Amsterdam: European Cultural Foundation & Boekmanstudies, 2005). [2] Brian Larkin, 'The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure', Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013). [3] Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel, 'Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure', in The Promise of Infrastructure, ed. Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018). [4] Hossein Mousazadeh, 'Unraveling the Nexus between Community Development and Sustainable Development Goals: A Comprehensive Mapping', Community Development 56, no. 2 (2024) doi:10.1080/15575330.2024.2388097.
bibliography
Anand, Nikhil, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel. 'Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure'. In The Promise of Infrastructure, edited by Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel,  Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. Dragićević Šešić, Milena and Sanjin Dragićević. Arts management in turbulent times: Adaptable Quality Management: navigating the arts through the winds of change. Translated by Vladimir Ivir. Edited by Esther Banev and Francis Garcia. Amsterdam: European Cultural Foundation & Boekmanstudies, 2005. Larkin, Brian. 'The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure'. [In English]. Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013): 327-43. Mousazadeh, Hossein. 'Unraveling the Nexus between Community Development and Sustainable Development Goals: A Comprehensive Mapping'. Community Development 56, no. 2 (2024): 276-302. https://doi.org/doi:10.1080/15575330.2024.2388097. Continue Reading
25 November 2025
In Blog, Blog 2024, Voices Blog

De facto border. The division of Cyprus in contemporary photography by Heinrich Völkel

samira yildirim
This essay deals with the question of how artists show and document the topography and landscape of a border. Since the end of the 20th century, borders have been developed into a global network of ‘sorting machines’ in which integration, separation and transfer take place.[1] Artists conduct artistic field research along borders and with their works of art capture artificial divisions, politically negotiated and often militarily guarded barriers of the world. Art is, therefore, part of the practice and research of topography, which is made up of the Greek words tópos for place and gráphein for drawing or writing, referring to the description, measurement and representation of a place. Although we see the green and built borders in the images, they simultaneously disappear through their reification, as we aesthetically experience representations of water, sand, mountains, trees, rivers, meadows, cities, villages, roads, traffic routes and infrastructures, which in turn is antithetical to the knowledge of the violence of borders. The Mediterranean plays an important role as a border because it is much more than just a tourist destination for holidaymakers, but also a geopolitically relevant location of the EU’s external border regime. Fortress Europe marks its border to the south in the Mediterranean with various counterparts, and it is being successively expanded and upgraded, making it a constant source of conflict. The absurdity of carving a constructed border into natural topography is clearly illustrated by the sea. Broad and deep waters are already insurmountable hurdles for us humans. Declaring them political borders plays into the hands of states, as no border architectures are required here to demarcate one territorial state from another. At the same time, maritime borders have the advantage of appearing natural, which makes them ‘less vulnerable to attack’.[2] As a border, the Mediterranean is complex and controversial, as the Mediterranean space is formed in the past and future primarily through its relationships, as Fernand Braudel pointed out in his extensive La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II in 1949.[3] This incongruity between political, cultural and social connections and divisions is the subject of numerous contemporary artists who analyse the Mediterranean as a hybrid border region.

Camera view of absences

OSTKREUZ — a Berlin-based photographers’ cooperative — produced Über Grenzen in Berlin and Dresden in 2012.[4] Through the medium of photography, the members of the cooperative approached social questions about borders, clarifying that borders inscribe themselves onto everyday life and humans’ living spaces as well as onto nature. They can take on military, social, architectural and ethical forms. The topography of a border can never be captured in its entirety and remains fragmented in the images. A line on a map can depict the entire course of a border. The topographical works, on the other hand, present very limited and individual perspectives. Heinrich Völkel is a member of OSTKREUZ and integrated motifs of deserted streets, abandoned buildings, UN observation posts and a dilapidated airport into his photo series The Green Line. These are places that separate Northern Cyprus from the Republic of Cyprus. The Green Line, a buffer zone established by the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964, is intended to maintain a ceasefire and covers around three per cent of the island. The zone stretches from east to west, shrinks to six metres wide in the capital Nicosia and widens to seven kilometres elsewhere. It separates the Turkish Cypriot north from the Greek Cypriot south. The buffer zone passed through three stages of escalation and isolation.[5] Between 1955 and 1963 there was the so-called ‘Mason-Dixon line’ — barriers between the Greek and Turkish neighbourhoods. British colonisation of the island ended in 1959 with Treaties of London and Zürich Agreements, thanks to which Cyprus gained sovereignty. The second stage of the escalation took place in December 1963, with serious riots that led to a ceasefire agreement and the physical barrier of the Green Line — a semi-open cordon with checkpoints and the ability to close certain areas in the event of conflict. After the Greek military coup and the subsequent occupation of the north by Turkish military forces in the summer of 1974, the buffer zone was closed and fortified, representing the continuing third stage. On 15 November 1983, the parliament of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus proclaimed its independence, which is not recognised by any UN member except Turkey. As a result, the island’s internal border has been a de facto and not a de jure border since 1974. Attempts at reunification have failed and have no prospect of success. Borders of this kind are provisional and permanent sources of conflict.

Fig.  1: Heinrich Völkel: UN buffer zone, Airport Lefkosia, Nicosia, 2012. A former international airport with the decommissioned Hawker Siddeley Trident of Cyprus Airways. The airport was between the fronts during the fighting and has been closed ever since. Photo from The Green Line series. Copyright Heinrich Völkel/Ostkreuz

Heinrich Völkel took photographs in deserted villages, in Nicosia and its natural surroundings in the border area. Völkel sought traces of the island’s partition. The pictures show barricaded streets and rooms lined with barbed wire and loopholes as well as a green mountain ridge, which is named as a UN observation post in the title of OSTKREUZ’s picture.[6] The border between the north and south appears in all the pictures, evoking a formerly united island. The motif of Nicosia International Airport, which ceased operation in 1974 due to the conflict and is now located within the buffer zone, provides an example. In one picture, we see a plane, derelict and gutted, with smashed windows, missing doors, a dirty surface and barbed wire (figure 1). The aircraft belonged to Cyprus Airways and is still parked at the defunct airport in Nicosia. The airline lost two planes and the airport infrastructure as a result of the war. Lakarna military airport in the south, which was expanded in the same year, and Ercan airport in the north have been used since the island’s partition. Another picture shows a waiting room on the airport grounds. The room is dilapidated, the seat cushions and the floor are littered with bird droppings (figure 2). The photographs confirm the absence of something once present. Half a century has passed since the buffer zone was established, and the images show that this provisional and persistent condition has become permanent without resolution. Völkel’s visual language shows that nothing remains of the former coexistence but absence. Constance de Gourcy describes this emptiness and absence as a ‘double presence’, which results in an ambivalent relationship between two sides: […] absence is not only the opposite of presence as might be suggested by the overtaking — which is also a replacement — of the ‘double absence’ by the ‘double presence’, but an institution of meaning which defines a system of places and relational modalities between members geographically distant from a given collective.[7]

Fig.  2: Heinrich Völkel: UN buffer zone, Airport Lefkosia, Nicosia, 2012. Waiting room of the unused airport. Photo from The Green Line series. Copyright Heinrich Völkel/Ostkreuz.

According to De Gourcy, the experience of absence, which inevitably arises through migration and border crossings, is generated by the missing or the stranger and their relationship to the original place across distances.[8] In relation to Cyprus, the absence of each group in the other creates a connection between them. From 1963 onwards, the populations segregated, with Turkish Cypriots relocating to the north and the Greek Cypriots moving south or leaving the island altogether. Evidence of this relocation remains, and Heinrich Völkel focused on the gaps left by this absence. For example, the classroom covered with straw and a blackboard in the centre of the picture with a quote by Kemal Atatürk: ‘Ne mutlu Türküm diyene’ – ‘Happy is the one who calls himself/herself a Turk’ (figure 3). The abandoned school is located in the south and was being used as a cattle shed at the time of the photo. The inscription on the blackboard is an oath that was used in Turkish schools to instil children with Turkish nationalist sentiment.

Fig.  3: Heinrich Völkel: Pitargou, Cyprus (South), 2012. School building of the abandoned Turkish-Cypriot village of Pitargou. Photo from The Green Line series. Copyright Heinrich Völkel/Ostkreuz.

The picture simultaneously documents the former presence of a Turkish Cypriot population in the south as well as a failed multi-ethnic reality that could have obtained in Cyprus after its independence. In the repurposed classroom, Atatürk’s sentence seems like a curse. Völkel’s photographs of the internal Cypriot border not only show the moment when the photograph was taken and the status quo of this border; they also point to a past in which two groups lived in the same place. Heinrich Völkel’s photographic practice is documentary, and he works in series: ‘Only this sorting and arranging approach to the material turns images of non-pictorial realities into documentation’.[9] He conducts field research by capturing places, perspectives and motifs of a topographical border. A single photograph does not seem to do this justice. The images document a moment and, following Barthes, are a repetition of ‘what has been’.[10] In Camera Lucida, Barthes describes the past tense of what is shown: The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence — as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very existence. The image, says phenomenology, is an object-as-nothing. Now, in the Photograph, what I posit is not only the absence of the object; it is also, by one and the same movement, on equal terms, the fact that this object has indeed existed and that it has been there where I see it.[11] In Völkel’s photograph, the past is doubly present: there is the moment of the photograph in which the classroom was used as a cattle shed and the reference to a more distant past of the classroom as a place of teaching and educating Turkish children. Völkel refers to two periods: before and since the division of Cyprus.

The ambivalent character of ‘green borders’

Can a border be everywhere? Border studies since the 1990s have called for a transition from a geopolitical to a biopolitical definition of borders, according to which the focus shifts to people and their perception. Biopolitical borders demand a pluralised view, as Nick Vaughan-Williams, for example, puts it: ‘[B]orders are not natural, neutral nor static but historically contingent, politically charged, dynamic phenomena that first and foremost involve people and their everyday lives’.[12] Especially when it comes to topographies, borders are a difficult phenomenon to depict, but a fascinating one, as they consist more of practices than of motifs. And yet in art we see the motifs of built architecture, such as walls and fences as well as green borders, such as mountains and seas that are also international borders. In the history of art, the pictorial beauty of landscapes is usually a sign of aesthetic, romantic and sublime observations that offer an impression of nature. The invisibility of borders in landscape images reinforces their ambivalent character and implies the political utilisation of nature. When looking at the pictures, the apparent naturalness of ‘green borders’ is disturbed, as the art reveals political borders in natural settings as constructions. In other words, a border only becomes visible in its function as such in connection with the idea of traversing it. In the case of Cyprus, Heinrich Völkel’s works show that transfer and exchange across the border has been at a standstill for decades.
[1] Steffen Mau, Sortiermaschinen: Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert (München: C.H. Beck, 2021), 19. [2] Anke Hoffmann, 'Border Sampling – oder von hier nach hier', in Nevin Aladağ. Border Sampling, ed. Matthias Lenz and Regina Michel (Friedrichshafen: Rober Gessler, 2011), 5. This work was published in conjunction with an eponymous exhibition at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, 21 October–4 December 2011. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the author. [3] Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949). [4] OSTKREUZ — Agentur der Fotografen, Über Grenzen = On borders (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012), exhibition catalogue for Über Grenzen, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 9 November – 31 December 2012; Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden, 17 May – 11 August 13. [5] Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth, Divided Cities. Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 123. [6] OSTKREUZ — Agentur der Fotografen, Über Grenzen, 132. [7] Constance De Gourcy, 'The Institutionalization of Absence in the Mediterranean', Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/11687. [8] Gourcy, 'The Institutionalization of Absence'. [9]Renate Wöhrer, 'Die Kunst des Dokumentierens. Zur Genealogie der Kategorie "dokumentarisch"', in Beyond evidence. Das Dokument in den Künsten, ed. Daniela Hahn (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2016), 45-57. [10] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 85. [11] Barthes, Camera Lucida, 115. [12] Nick Vaughan-Williams, Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power (Edinburgh: University Press, 2009), 1.
bibliography
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Braudel, Fernand. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II. Paris: Armand Colin, 1949. Calame, Jon and Esther Charlesworth. Divided Cities. Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Gourcy, Constance De. 'The Institutionalization of Absence in the Mediterranean'. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2018, 1-12. http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/11687. Hoffmann, Anke. 'Border Sampling – oder von hier nach hier'. In Nevin Aladağ. Border Sampling, edited by Matthias Lenz and Regina Michel,  Friedrichshafen: Rober Gessler, 2011. Mau, Steffen. Sortiermaschinen: Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert. München: C.H. Beck, 2021. OSTKREUZ — Agentur der Fotografen. Über Grenzen = On borders. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012. Vaughan-Williams, Nick. Border Politics. The Limits of Sovereign Power. Edinburgh: University Press, 2009. Wöhrer, Renate. 'Die Kunst des Dokumentierens. Zur Genealogie der Kategorie "dokumentarisch"'. In Beyond evidence. Das Dokument in den Künsten, edited by Daniela Hahn,  Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2016.
citation information:
Yildirim, Samira, 'De facto border. The division of Cyprus in contemporary photography by Heinrich Völkel', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 5 November 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/11/05/de-facto-border-the-division-of-cyprus-in-contemporary-photography-by-heinrich-volkel/.
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5 November 2024
In Blog, Blog 2024, Voices Blog

Intermarium: Israel between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea

shaul marmari

Neighbours[1]

Sirens went off in Eilat on 31 October 2023. Soon after, aerial targets were intercepted off the coast of Israel’s southernmost city. The Houthi regime, which controls much of Yemen, subsequently declared that it had attacked Israel in response to the war in Gaza. Since then, the Shiite movement whose slogan calls for ‘death to Israel’ has launched numerous missile and drone strikes against Eilat, while at the same time targeting civilian ships plying the Red Sea. On 20 July 2024, the Israeli air force retaliated by massively bombing Al-Hudaydah. The odd conflict between Yemen and Israel exposes a forgotten geopolitical reality that connects these two seemingly unconnected countries. While direct military conflict between countries situated almost 2000 kilometres apart seems inconceivable, the missiles, drones and aircraft that traverse the Red Sea remind us that both countries adjoin a common body of water. Sharing a sea is more than a geographical detail. After all, water connects more than land does; its surface facilitates movement and allows coastal inhabitants to exchange. Eilat shares not only a landscape with Al-Hudaydah, but also a long history of caravans and dhows that once crisscrossed the region. Today, only traces of these ancient connections remain; the histories of the Bedouin, Sudanese, Eritrean, Ethiopian and Yemeni communities in contemporary Israel evoke old migration routes that antedate the arbitrary borders of nation states. Yet Israel is seldom associated with the Red Sea. Recently, the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ — referring to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean — has brought other aquatic images into the public discourse. It is especially the Mediterranean that has become the cornerstone of Israel’s self-understanding. The Red Sea, by contrast, seems out of place. Its relative absence from the collective consciousness renders the conflict between Israel and Yemen almost bizarre. Was the Red Sea always absent? Must it remain absent? A rough sketch of Israel’s historical relation to the Red Sea shows that the southern sea once briefly occupied the Israeli mind before it was eclipsed by other maritime visions. This brief history of emersion and suppression can afford new vistas for the contemporary Israeli imagination.

Strategic sea

On 10 March 1949, during the final stages of the First Arab-Israeli War, soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raised an impromptu flag over the old British police station in Um al-Rashrash on the Gulf of Aqaba. The iconic photograph of the Ink Flag symbolises the conquest of the territory allocated to the Jewish state by the UN partition plan of 1947. As the forces reached the southernmost point of the newly declared State of Israel, they took control over some 10-kilometre strip of Red Sea coast. Um al-Rashrash would become the site for Israel’s only port city on the Red Sea: Eilat.

Fig. 1: Micha Perry. The Ink-Drawn National Flag. 1949. Government Press Office, https://www.flickr.com/photos/government_press_office/7621028734/.

The Israeli leadership recognised the significance of these territorial gains. Located between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, Israel saw an opportunity to bridge East and West. Israeli leaders let their imagination run riot with ideas about digging a canal to connect both seas — visions that still occasionally resurface.[2] While this fantasy hasn’t materialised, access to the Red Sea was immediately perceived as a strategic asset. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, spoke highly of the new route leading from Eilat to South and East Asia, where Israel could make new friends. Yet Israel’s optimistic marine visions confronted a gloomy reality. Israel had to share the Red Sea with Egypt, its then-bitterest enemy, which was seeking regional hegemony. Egypt controlled the Straits of Tiran and could close the coveted maritime route leading to Eilat at will. To counter that threat, Israel sought allies around the Red Sea. Besides the remnants of the declining colonial empires, like British Aden and French Djibouti, the Ethiopian Empire proved most valuable once it annexed Eritrea and obtained access to the Red Sea in 1951. Israel and Ethiopia shared not only similar legendary genealogies back to King David but also geopolitical interest of undermining Egyptian hegemony.

Fig. 2: Nadav Mann. An Israeli military advisor (Shmuel Eitan, second from right) in Ethiopia. 1963. National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/en/images/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL990049703970205171/NLI#$FL79244584.

In this geopolitical situation, the Red Sea became a locus of military, diplomatic and commercial activity. Throughout the first decades of its existence, Israel’s energy was largely directed southwards. Even prosaic transactions, like shipping canned meat from Eritrea to Eilat, became charged with strategic meaning. An incident involving a meat-laden ship sailing from Massawa to Israel in 1954 almost escalated into a full-scale war. Such a war indeed broke out in 1956, when Israel, together with France and the United Kingdom, attacked Egypt and temporarily captured the Sinai Peninsula. From an Israeli perspective, the main objective was to secure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. This goal continued to dominate Israeli policy in the years leading up to the 1967 war.[3]

Fig. 3: Unknown. The Israel ship ‘Queen of Sheba’ en route from Eilat to Massawa, calling at Sharm al-Shaikh. 1956. Government Press Office, https://gpophotoeng.gov.il/fotoweb/Grid.fwx?search=D329-097#Preview1.

A Red Sea moment

In centralised Israel, state interests trickled down to all spheres of life. Red Sea strategy was accompanied by growing curiosity about that mysterious space, which first had to be mapped and studied. During the brief occupation of the Sinai Peninsula in 1956-57, Israeli marine biologists explored wildlife around Sharm al-Shaikh, while a second expedition made it as far south as the Dahlak islands, off the Eritrean coast, in 1962.[4] A delegation of zoologists and parasitologists travelled to Ethiopia in 1958, followed by two expeditions of geologists, geneticists and physicians. One member of an archaeological expedition to the island of Tiran summarised the relationship between knowledge and power: upon Israel’s founding, the Red Sea straits ‘suddenly acquired military importance’; the events of 1956 ‘afforded opportunities for field study in relative favourable conditions’.[5]

Fig. 4: Benno Rothenberg. A woman looking towards the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba. undated. National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/en/images/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL997009858550305171/NLI#$FL169950643).

Beyond scientific knowledge, the military and diplomatic interest inspired literary and artistic engagement with the Red Sea too. Author Nathan Shaham was among the first to have sailed from Eilat to Massawa after the 1956 war, and his impressions from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia were narrated in the Hebrew travelogue Journey to the Land of Cush, which was colourfully illustrated by artist Shmuel Katz. The renowned Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever too travelled to Eilat and Sinai and was captivated by the landscapes. His poetry after 1949, praised by David Ben Gurion,[6] is permeated with images of wadis, coral reefs and — recurring in his desert poems — a great silence:
In the Sinai Desert, on a cloud of granite Sculpted by the Genesis-night, Hewn of black flame facing the Red Sea, I saw the Great Silence.[7]
For a moment, then, the Red Sea — its shores, water, landscapes and surrounding cultures — captivated Israelis. They expressed their fascination in various ways, for example through popular music. The folk duo Hillel and Aviva, with their darbuka and homemade flutes, became known for their desert songs; the Arava (steppe) trio recorded country tunes about Hebrew cowboys; and Lior Yeini employed a cool bossa nova to portray the Red Sea reefs as an escape from city life. The song To Eilat (1970) presented the city as a ‘gate to the south’, oriented towards Djibouti, Mombasa and Kolkata. There, the European capitals of Paris and Rome are but a hazy mirage.

Fig. 5: Uncredited. The Sinai Peninsula, taken from the Gemini XI space shuttle. 1966. National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/en/images/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL990035790120205171/NLI#$FL19169324.

The fascination with the Red Sea intensified after the Six-Day War in 1967, when the IDF defeated the Egyptian army and conquered the Sinai Peninsula, this time with long-term plans. Having more than tripled its size, Israel had become a Red Sea power, ruling over the vast Sinai Desert, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Tiran Straits. While Sinai was not as subject to Messianic projections as was the occupied West Bank — supposedly the heartland of biblical Israel — the conquered desert was similarly envisaged to be populated by Jewish pioneers. As the new frontier aroused an old Zionist passion for colonisation, hundreds of Israeli idealists flocked to Sinai to make the desert bloom. Several Jewish settlements — Ofira (Sharm al-Shaikh), Di Zahav (Dahab) and Neviot (Nuweiba) — concentrated along the Red Sea coast to become centres of fishing and tourism.

Fig. 6: Moshe Marlin Levin. Ofira. 1975. National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/en/images/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL997008872695805171/NLI#$FL151612284.

Fading space

During those years of occupation, a new Israeli identity began crystalising. In the spirit of the global 1960s and 1970s, the highly militarised territory, with its pristine beaches and solemn deserts, became fertile soil for ideas about nature, free love and recreational drug use. In that geopolitical hotspot, hippie culture merged with Zionist idealism, military duty, Oriental fantasy and biblical myth. Former settlers recall a feeling of idyllic freedom and liberation from modern life.[8]

Fig. 7: Boris Karmi. An Israeli plays the guitar in Nuweiba. 1975. National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/en/images/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL997009324688405171/NLI#$FL159538630.

The Neviot music festival that took place in Nuweiba in August 1978 marks the climax of Israel’s Red Sea era. Thousands of partygoers travelled to the remote Red Sea settlement to participate in what has often been described as the Israeli Woodstock. Amid the occupied land, they slept under the starry skies, swam naked and danced to Hebrew covers of Stevie Wonder. Singer Mickey Gavrielov recalled being ‘thrown into a world where the experience was different from your familiar reality’.[9] That experience was short-lived. While thousands were dancing in Nuweiba, negotiations between Israel and Egypt were underway. In September, the Camp David Accords were signed, paving the way for Israeli-Egyptian peace. The agreement prescribed that Israel withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. As Ofira, Neviot and Di Zahav were evacuated, it shrank back to its 10-kilometre strip of Red Sea coast in Eilat. As the leadership was determined not to dwell on the past, Israel’s 15 years in Sinai have largely vanished from the collective memory. The memories of the coral reefs and the barren mountains have faded, kept alive today only by a handful former inhabitants of the evacuated settlements.[10] Once the peace treaty with Egypt ensured safe shipping to and from Eilat, there was no longer any need for Israel to operate militarily or diplomatically in the Red Sea. That Israel’s newfound ally in the region disappeared when Ethiopia sank into a long civil war only diminished the region’s appeal. Without rivals or friends, the Red Sea lost its geopolitical and cultural meaning. As Israeli ships safely plied its waters, the sea became a conduit that moves goods so smoothly that they leave no impression. From a strategic arena, it became a non-issue or ‘non-space’ — a transitory zone without any meaning.[11]

Fig. 8: Sa’ar Ya’acov. The closed gates of the Neviot holiday village shortly before its evacuation. 1982. Israeli Government Press Office, https://gpophotoeng.gov.il/fotoweb/Grid.fwx?search=D320-064#Preview1.

At the same time, Israel turned its gaze elsewhere. In 1978, the year of the Neviot festival, an essay collection by Jacqueline Kahanoff suggested a new direction. Kahanoff, an Egyptian-born Israeli essayist, had previously published a collection of translated African stories, following the Red Sea orientation of the time. Her 1978 book From East the Sun turned away from Africa and the Red Sea towards the Levant. Together with the journal Apirion that has appeared since 1982, the publication marks growing Israeli interest in the Mediterranean.

Mediterraneanism and Erythreanism

Israel has a long history with the Mediterranean. While Zionism turned most of its energy and eros to the land, ‘conquering the sea’ played an important secondary role. In Zionist thought, the conquered water was always the Mediterranean, along whose coastline large Jewish settlements developed. Ultimately, the Mediterranean served as the setting for the Zionist drama of Aliyah, of Jewish migration to the Land of Israel. Fantastic Zionist plans to storm Palestine from the south, from the Red Sea, were overshadowed by the heroic narrative of crossing the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has featured prominently in Zionist thought, affording Jews ways of belonging to the region while evading the hostility of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. For Israelis who feel trapped in their imagined outpost of Western civilisation, the Mediterranean provides an alternative self-image that is neither entirely Western nor Eastern.[12] Instead, the Mediterranean space emerges as a zone of cosmopolitan, fluid, syncretic identities between East and West. By adopting that kind of Mediterraneanism, the implied argument goes, Israel could forge greater harmony with its neighbours and among its internal divisions. Mediterranean identity contains more than lofty ideas.[13] It suffuses Israeli culture, where Greek music, Turkish mezze and a ‘Mediterranean temper’ are unanimously prized. Feeling thoroughly Mediterranean, Israelis forget or suppress any connection to the Red Sea. That Africa is next door, that Massawa is closer to Eilat than Palermo to Tel Aviv, is ‘cognitively, culturally and politically repressed and denied’.[14] And while the beaches of Eilat are still a popular tourist destination, they are drained of cultural meaning; grandiose attractions like waterparks and skating rinks dominate the landscape. Tellingly, even Eilat’s Queen of Sheba hotel, whose namesake’s kingdom flanked the Red Sea, invites its guests to ‘explore the culinary delights of the Mediterranean’.[15]

Fig. 9: Moshe Milner. Water slide in Eilat. 2005. Israeli Government Press Office, https://gpophotoeng.gov.il/fotoweb/Grid.fwx?search=D927-032#Preview1.

Israeli consciousness appears to have completely shifted away from the Red Sea and towards the Mediterranean. When the geopolitical reality required, however, Israel turned to the Red Sea with military, political, commercial, scientific and cultural enthusiasm. The connections it formed in that space only dissolved when the geopolitical circumstances changed. Israel’s history with the Red Sea is thus one of dis:connection, of globalisation and deglobalisation.[16] But some connections remain. The Negev Bedouin, the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, the Ethiopian and Yemeni Jewish communities, and the aging hippies of Ofira and Neviot all share affinities to the south. In Eilat, the colloquial designation for flipflops as ‘Djiboutis’ still recalls past ties overseas. The Red Sea need not resurface only in relation to drone and missile strikes; Israel might strike a better balance between Mediterraneanism and Erythreanism.[17]

Fig. 10: Boris Karmi. Nude swimming in Eilat. 1967. National Library of Israel, https://www.nli.org.il/en/images/NNL_ARCHIVE_AL997009325145805171/NLI#$FL159554099.

 
[1] A longer version of this essay appeared in Hebrew in Hazman Hazeh magazine in March 2023 (https://hazmanhazeh.org.il/red-sea/). [2] See, for example, Mordechai Chaziza, 'The Red-Med Railway: New Opportunities for China, Israel, and the Middle East', Begin-Sadat Center Perspectives 385 (11 December 2016). [3] Eitan Barak, 'Between Reality and Secrecy: Israel’s Freedom of Navigation through the Straits of Tiran, 1956–1967', The Middle East Journal 61, no. 4 (2007). [4] Meirav Reuveny, 'The Heinz Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory in Eilat: Science and Politics between Father and Son', in Dubnow Institute Yearbook, ed. Yfaat Weiss (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 486-88. [5] A.P. Schick, 'Tiran: the Straits, the Island, and its Terraces', Israel Exploration Journal 8, no. 2 (1958): 122. [6] Jowita Panczyk, 'Is the War Over Yet?', Shaul Marmari ed. Mimeo: Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut, Leibniz-Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Simon Dubnow, 18 December 2013, https://mimeo.dubnow.de/is-the-war-over-yet/. [7] Avram Sutzkever, 'The Great Silence', in A. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Benjamin Harshav (Oakland: University of California Press, 1991), 343. [8] For recent recollections, see Osher Assulin and Yoav Gross. Sinai. Israel: Kan11, 2022. [9] Rachel Neiman, 'Looking back on the 1978 "Woodstock of Israel"', Nicky Blackburn ed. Israel21c, 9 October 2017, https://www.israel21c.org/looking-back-on-the-1978-woodstock-of-israel/. [10] For examples, see the testimonies on http://myofira.com/en [11] Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 1995). [12] Yaacov Shavit, 'The Mediterranean World and “Mediterraneanism”: The Origins, Meaning, and Application of a Geo-Cultural Notion in Israel', Journal of Mediterranean Studies 3, no. 2 (1988): 112. [13] Alexandra Nocke, The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity (Boston Brill, 2009); David Ohana, Israel and Its Mediterranean Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). [14] Eitan Bar-Yosef, A Villa in the Jungle: Africa in Israeli Culture (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute Press and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2013); Haim Yacobi, Israel and Africa: A Geneaology of Moral Geography (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). [15] Quoted from http://www.dinearound.eu/en/189/195/132/eilat/hilton_eilat_queen_of_sheba . [16] Roland Wenzlhuemer et al., 'Forum Global Dis:connections', Journal of Modern European History 21, no. 1 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221148939. [17] This point has also been made by Ofri Ilany, 'Israelis Need to Stop Turning Their Backs on the Red Sea', Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 13 May 2016, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-05-13/ty-article/0000017f-f571-d044-adff-f7f933f70000.
bibliography
Assulin, Osher and Yoav Gross. Sinai. Israel: Kan11, 2022. Augé, Marc. Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso, 1995. Bar-Yosef, Eitan. A Villa in the Jungle: Africa in Israeli Culture. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute Press and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2013. Barak, Eitan. 'Between Reality and Secrecy: Israel’s Freedom of Navigation through the Straits of Tiran, 1956–1967'. The Middle East Journal 61, no. 4 (2007): 657-79. Chaziza, Mordechai. 'The Red-Med Railway: New Opportunities for China, Israel, and the Middle East'. Begin-Sadat Center Perspectives 385 (11 December 2016). Ilany, Ofri. 'Israelis Need to Stop Turning Their Backs on the Red Sea'. Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 13 May 2016. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-05-13/ty-article/0000017f-f571-d044-adff-f7f933f70000. Neiman, Rachel, 'Looking back on the 1978 "Woodstock of Israel"', Nicky Blackburn ed. Israel21c, 9 October 2017, https://www.israel21c.org/looking-back-on-the-1978-woodstock-of-israel/. Nocke, Alexandra. The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity. Boston Brill, 2009. Ohana, David. Israel and Its Mediterranean Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Panczyk, Jowita, 'Is the War Over Yet?', Shaul Marmari ed. Mimeo: Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut. Leibniz-Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Simon Dubnow, 18 December 2013, https://mimeo.dubnow.de/is-the-war-over-yet/. Reuveny, Meirav. 'The Heinz Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory in Eilat: Science and Politics between Father and Son'. In Dubnow Institute Yearbook, edited by Yfaat Weiss,  Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. Schick, A.P. 'Tiran: the Straits, the Island, and its Terraces'. Israel Exploration Journal 8, no. 2 (1958): 120-30. Shavit, Yaacov. 'The Mediterranean World and “Mediterraneanism”: The Origins, Meaning, and Application of a Geo-Cultural Notion in Israel'. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 3, no. 2 (1988): 96-117. Sutzkever, Avram. 'The Great Silence'. Translated by Barbara Harshav and Benjamin Harshav. In A. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose, edited by Benjamin Harshav,  Oakland: University of California Press, 1991. Wenzlhuemer, Roland, Tom Menger, Valeska Huber, Heidi J. S. Tworek, Sujit Sivasundaram, Simone M. Müller, Callie Wilkinson, Madeleine Herren and Martin Dusinberre. 'Forum Global Dis:connections'. Journal of Modern European History 21, no. 1 (2023): 2-33. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/16118944221148939. Yacobi, Haim. Israel and Africa: A Geneaology of Moral Geography. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
citation information:
Marmari, Shaul, 'Intermarium: Israel between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 22 October 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/10/22/intermarium-israel-between-the-mediterranean-and-the-red-sea/.
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22 October 2024
In Blog, Blog 2024, Voices Blog

Material bleeding: the erasure of Ajami neighbourhood and its evidence on Givat Aliyah/Jabaliyeh Beach

tal hafner

 

In this essay, I look at expressions of historical erasure in the form of environmental colonialism as it appears in the Ajami neighbourhood and on the Givat Aliyah Beach, which is also known in the local Arab community as Jabaliyeh Beach in the city of Yaffo, also known as Yaffa.

Fig. 1: Givat Aliyah / Jabaliyeh Beach (Image: Tal Hafner)

First, some historical background: in 1947 the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, which certified Israel as an independent state and caused the Israeli War of Independence, known among Palestinians as the Nakba.[1] The city of Yaffo, which is an ancient port city on the Mediterranean shore and one of the most important Arab cities in Palestine, was occupied in 1948. It was annexed to Tel Aviv in 1950 after the war, most of its remaining Arab residents fled their homes while the rest were  concentrated in Ajami, an originally Arab neighbourhood, south of the old city walls. Of about 70 000 Palestinian residents, 5000 remained in Yaffo after 1948.

In 1950 the Absentees’ Property Law was passed in the Knesset, declaring that any person who left their property in Israel or Palestine for up to six months from the beginning of the war would generally forfeit their property to the state of Israel.[2] Palestinians who lived in one neighbourhood in Yaffo and were transferred to Ajami had no rights to their homes, neither the old nor the new.

From 1949 to 1992, the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yaffo had Ajami and the adjacent Jabaliyeh neighbourhood marked for demolition and did not issue any permits for construction or renovation.[3] In accordance with the city plan, between 1960–1985 the municipality demolished large parts of Ajami and re-evacuated some of its residents. Jewish immigrants were settled in the remaining empty houses in Ajami upon arrival to the new state and were given the option to move into a shikkun apartment block (the ‘national housing blocks’ of Israel) in the new south-eastern neighbourhoods of Yaffo after the citrus orchards had been uprooted. At the same time, the Arab residents were forced to live in the wreckage and voids of ruined houses until they were ‘legally’ evicted by various means.[4]

The debris was then dumped on the Ajami coast, accreting into a monstrous district dumping site extending 15 meters above sea level and 200,000 square meters into the sea, which was known as ‘the Garbage Mountain’.[5]

Fig. 2: Works done to strengthen the Kurkar ridge above the beach where old Christian and Muslim cemeteries lie. (Image: Tal Hafner)

In the early 2000’s, an environmental protest led to the site being converted into a park called Midron Park/the Jaffa Slope Park/Mutanazahun Munhader Yaffa, and by 2010 a beautiful landscape obscured the memory of the underlying layers and blocking almost all direct access to the sea in this coastal town that had survived millennia.

Midron Park is not the first case of using greening tactics — a type of environmental colonialism that, in its local Israeli version, turns demolished Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages into aestheticised green lungs and national parks for the leisure of the Israeli public.[6] I still couldn’t help but wonder — why greening? Why not just erase and be done with it?

According to WJT Mitchel, landscape is primarily a multi-sensory physical medium that encompasses codes of cultural meaning and value. He also states that the imperialistic perception sees ‘cultural’ and ‘civilised’ movement into ‘natural’ landscapes as a ‘natural’ process, an inevitable historic ‘development’.[7] Such movement toward creating the Zionist landscape was based on the concept of ‘Making the desert bloom’ (Hafrahat Hashmama). Another expression of this principle is ‘redeeming the land’ (Geulat Hakarka), referring to the need to revive the local environment that has been neglected by the other peoples living on this land since the Jews last left about 2000 years ago.[8] The Zionists needed to see the land as almost non-existent so they can turn it into their new homeland.

The notion of ‘making the desert bloom’ has several potential various historic and cultural sources:

  • In the biblical creation myth, on the third day God created the land and then covered it with vegetation, so bare land is incomplete. Generally, the desert is a place of hardship in the Bible, especially Exodus, in which the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt and wandered in the desert for 40 years before arriving to the promised land of Canaan, the land of Israel-to-be.
  • Another biblical reference is from Jeremiah, 2:2:

‘The word of the Lord came to me: “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem:

‘This is what the Lord says:

“I remember the devotion of your youth,
how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the wilderness,
through a land not sown.”’[9]

This is Jeremiah conveying God’s words to the Israelites in Jerusalem, acknowledging the people’s love and commitment to him before arriving in the promised land and surviving all the hardships of the desert.

  • A relatively current possible influence is European folklore and (especially German) forest culture. Until Zionism arose in late 19th-century Europe, the Jewish people were without a country or a plan to acquire one, so there was no folklore about it. Then, as talk about migrating to the promised land started, they absorbed pre-existing folklore and appropriated them.[10]
  • Another current idea about making the desert bloom connects to a broader Zionist motivation to restore what the Jewish people lacked in their diasporic life. This would include returning to the Promised Land, reviving ancient Hebrew as a modern national language and reappropriating the ‘Jewish body that was thought to be weak to break from ascription as ‘the people of the book’. There are countless instances of Zionists making the desert bloom while reappropriating their own bodies, gaining strength through the hard labour in the fields.[11] Another hypothesis by Schama is that the tree roots were the Zionists’ own metaphorical roots. If exile is desert, Israel should be a forest.[12]
  • A further process that coincides with Zionism and has accelerated the greening of the country profusely is the reconceptualisation of the national holiday Tu Bishvat. Tu Bishvat is a date in the Jewish calendar relating to the ripening of the crops that had been negligible. But since the beginning of the 20th century, the Zionist movement has turned it into a national planting holiday, a familial happening of planting all over the country.[13]

All these potential explanations help account for why environmental colonialism was chosen over pure destruction.

Afforestation was one of the first and main actions to take root in this land and green it, taken mainly by the Jewish National Fund, and to this day the JNF is reframing archaeological findings to give them a connection to Jewish ancient history.[14] Most Arab villages in Israel were demolished on purpose, some completely disappeared from  the landscape, but almost half of those villages’ remains have been included in postwar nature reserves and national parks, greened and unknown to most of the passersby on their Saturday family outings.[15]

Coming back to Yaffo, Ajami and the Park, I had no idea about this history of Yaffo, though I was born in Tel Aviv and had lived there most of my life. Only when I moved to one of those shikkun buildings and started visiting Jabaliyeh Beach, which borders the southern part of Midron Park, did I become aware of this history. No, there was no sign, no explanation anywhere, but there was physical material that made me start asking questions.

Over my frequent visits to the beach, I eventually noticed something strange: on the sand, mixed with the seashells, lay all this debris of what seemed to be pieces of homes. Some are tiny, some the size of my palm and some bigger, in all shapes and colours and textures, scattered on the beach but definitely not from the sea.

Fig. 3: Human debris among natural maritime rocks and shells on the beach. (Image: Tal Hafner)

After some physical and theoretical digging, I realised that they came from beneath the park, from what it is still concealing from the time it was the garbage mountain, before it was sterilised and greened. Those pieces were taken by the currents, by nature. They were not dumped there as part of the garbage mountain because, above that section of the coast, blocking the access from the city to the beach, is a Kurkar ridge on which old cemeteries reside that have remained intact since before 1948. These pieces are relics that the park hides — they preserve and recall the absent homes, people, history and culture. They, to this day, carry the city’s trauma, because not only bodies bleed; material can bleed too. The environment retains this collective memory of its prior residents, it unearths them, hiding them in plain sight.

My photographs portray some of these pieces from the beach. I can’t say for sure whether they are from Ajami, but from what I was able to gather about the architectural history of the neighbourhood, they might be.

Fig. 4: Current aerial photo of Yaffo coastline. The cemeteries are on the lower third of the image. Image: Google Maps, 2024.

Though not connected directly, it has become impossible to talk about Jewish-Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict without mentioning Hamas’s attack on the Gaza Envelope area on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli retaliation on Gaza. No greening is happening at the moment, neither as a colonialist tactic nor as a rehabilitation technique; only wreckage, carnage and desperation. Though not symmetrical in scale, human pain and grief are equal anywhere in the world. I wish to end my essay with the hope of peace, freedom and prosperity for all in my homeland and anywhere on this planet.

Fig. 5: A green tile, a fragment of a home, on a beach, part of what was and could still be a paradise. (Image: Tal Hafner)

[1] For an overview of the social climax before and after 1948 in Palestine/Israel, see Dan Rabinowitz and Daniel Monterescu, ‘Reconfiguring the “Mixed Town”: Urban Transformations of Ethnonational Relations in Palestine and Israel’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (2008). For an overview on Jaffa/Tel Aviv and the Jaffa Slope Park specifically, see Naama Meishar, ‘UP/ROOTING: Breaching Landscape Architecture in the Jewish-Arab City’, AJS Review 41, no. 1 (2017); Ravit Goldhaber, ‘”The Jaffa Slope Project”: An Analysis of “Jaffaesque” Narratives in the New Millennium’, Makan: Adalah’s Journal for Land, Planning and Justice 2, The Right to a Spatial Narrative (2010); Sharon Rotbard, White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa, trans. Orit Gat (London: Pluto Press, 2015).

[2] Knesset, ‘Absentees’ Property Law 5710-1950′, (United Nations, 1950). https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209845/.

[3] Sebastian Wallerstein, Emily Silverman and Naama Meishar, Housing Distress within the Palestinian Community of Jaffa: The end of protected tenancy in absentee owership homes (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Planning et al., 2009), 2, https://bimkom.org/eng/wp-content/uploads/Housingdistressjaffa.pdf.

[4] There are three typical reasons for eviction: the death of the initial owner or their legal heirs under certain conditions, illegal renovation or construction (which covered every renovation or construction project because no permits were issued), and failure to pay rent (though many tenants were not aware of the process and lost touch with the representatives of the Israel Land Administration that was in charge of collecting it). See Wallerstein, Silverman and Meishar, Housing Distress, 2-3.

[5] Naama Meishar, ‘In search of meta-landscape architecture: the ethical experience of Jaffa Slope Park’s design’, Journal of Landscape Architecture 7, no. 2 (2012): 12 https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2012.746086.

[6] For more about such green erasure, see the works of Na’ama Meishar as well as Noga Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948, trans. Dimi Reider (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).and; ‘From Nakba to Return’, Zochrot, 2024, accessed 2024, https://www.zochrot.org/welcome/index/en.

[7] W. J. T. Mitchell, Holy Landscape, ed. Larry Abramson, trans. Rona Cohen (Tel Aviv: Resling 2009), 30, 34.

[8] Kadman, Erased from Space.

[9] ‘Jeremiah 2:2’, in the Bible (NIVUK) (BibleGateway).https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%202&version=NIVUK

[10] Mitchell, Holy Landscape, 72.

[11] Haim Kaufman and Yair Galily, ‘Sport, Zionism and Ideology’, Social Issues in Israel 8 (2009).

[12] Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 14; Mitchell, Holy Landscape, 58.

[13] Amir Mashiach, ‘From Past to Present – An Analysis of the Various Sectors in Modern Israel Based on Jewish Identities from Ancient Times’, Social Issues in Israel 17 (2014): 53.

[14] Kadman, Erased from Space, 42, 70.

[15] Kadman, Erased from Space, 11, 68.

bibliography

Goldhaber, Ravit. ‘”The Jaffa Slope Project”: An Analysis of “Jaffaesque” Narratives in the New Millennium’. Makan: Adalah’s Journal for Land, Planning and Justice 2, The Right to a Spatial Narrative (2010): 47-69.

‘Jeremiah 2:2’. In the Bible (NIVUK): BibleGateway.

Kadman, Noga. Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. Translated by Dimi Reider. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

Kaufman, Haim and Yair Galily. ‘Sport, Zionism and Ideology’. Social Issues in Israel 8 (2009): I-VII.

Knesset. ‘Absentees’ Property Law 5710-1950′. United Nations, 1950. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209845/.

Mashiach, Amir. ‘From Past to Present – An Analysis of the Various Sectors in Modern Israel Based on Jewish Identities from Ancient Times’. Social Issues in Israel 17 (2014): 38-68.

Meishar, Naama. ‘In search of meta-landscape architecture: the ethical experience of Jaffa Slope Park’s design’. Journal of Landscape Architecture 7, no. 2 (2012): 40-45. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2012.746086.

———. ‘UP/ROOTING: Breaching Landscape Architecture in the Jewish-Arab City’. AJS Review 41, no. 1 (2017): 89-109.

Mitchell, W. J. T. Holy Landscape. Translated by Rona Cohen. Edited by Larry Abramson. Tel Aviv: Resling 2009.

Rabinowitz, Dan and Daniel Monterescu. ‘Reconfiguring the “Mixed Town”: Urban Transformations of Ethnonational Relations in Palestine and Israel’. International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (2008): 195-226.

Rotbard, Sharon. White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Translated by Orit Gat. London: Pluto Press, 2015.

Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Wallerstein, Sebastian, Emily Silverman and Naama Meishar. Housing Distress within the Palestinian Community of Jaffa: The end of protected tenancy in absentee owership homes. (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Planning, The Philip M. and Ethel Klutzneck Center for Urban and Regional Studies, The Community Planning Lab, Planners for Planning Rights and BIMKOM, 2009). https://bimkom.org/eng/wp-content/uploads/Housingdistressjaffa.pdf.

‘From Nakba to Return’. Zochrot, 2024 2024, https://www.zochrot.org/welcome/index/en.

citation information:
Hafner, Tal, ‘Material bleeding: the erasure of Ajami neighbourhood and its evidence on Givat Aliyah/Jabaliyeh Beach’, Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. global dis:connect, 8 October 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/10/08/material-bleeding-the-erasure-of-ajami-neighbourhood-and-its-evidence-on-givat-aliyah-jabaliyeh-beach/.
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8 October 2024
In Blog, Blog 2024, Voices Blog

Odyssey of oblivion: a chronicle of displacement from the Kerkennah Islands

rim harmessi
 

Was not the earth of God spacious enough for you to emigrate therein? [1]

  Since 2020, I have frequented Kerkennah Islands — my mother’s homeland — to document illegal migrants’ attempts to reach Europe and follow the traces of their journeys. As destitution drove migrants to a distant shore, the archipelago became a harbour for human trafficking and corpses tainted its beaches with the stench of death.[2]

The Kerkennah Islands

The Kerkennah Islands, located off the coast of Tunisia, have gained notoriety as a transit point for illegal immigration. African migrants converge here, united in the pursuit of a better life in Italy or Malta along the Central Mediterranean route (CMR).[3] The CMR claims hundreds of lives each year, accounting for more than 90 per cent of deaths in the Mediterranean in 2016.[4] Tunisia is bearing the brunt of this tragedy, with 729 deaths in 2023. The majority of which occurred off the coasts of Sfax (349) and Kerkennah (140).[5]

A different view on migration

Being from the island, it has always held a primal allure for me. I envision it as a place of genesis where generations of mothers reach back to the source: the first mother and universal woman. Instinctively, the only compelling commentary on what was taking place on its shores lay in the voices and experiences of women. And while the hardship of the crossing is shared by all who attempt it, the gender-based vulnerability makes it riskier for women, who make up half the world's refugees and are disproportionately susceptible to abuse. UN statistics reveal that 60 per cent of preventable maternal deaths occur in humanitarian settings, and an estimated one in five refugee or displaced women have endured sexual violence.[6] Personal narratives in the form of documentary photography have helped tackle migration issues. Images of people with distinct names and faces, crying mothers in the chaos of capsized vessels and lifeless babies washing ashore next to striped parasols are potent tools for fundraising and policy-reform appeals. But is there a different approach in the same medium, one that would resonate with equal force. My work explores the narratives beyond immediate emotional effects. The focus shifts from ‘the displaced woman’ as a singular entity to the concept of displacement and how women actually experience it. These faceless figures embody the collective experience, and the lack of identification reflects the marginalisation that migrants face as their identities are replaced with the ‘Migrant Persona’.

Imperfections as narrative

Analogue photography is the medium that gives this project its voice. Shot primarily in the Kerkennah Islands, the work embraces the imperfections inherent in 35mm film. Scratches, light leaks, missing frames, faded hues and occasional blurs all complement the themes of absence that permeate the narrative. Further amplifying this concept are deliberate technical and chemical manipulations. Double and triple exposures, premature stops, bleaching, burning, etc. emphasise erosion and erasure, implying a sense of discontinuity. This exploration extends beyond the captured image. Collage and textual footnotes are also visual elements suggesting that absences define the Mediterranean as a fluid border. My aim is to transcend mere documentation, for it is insufficient to understand the psychological complexities of flight. I aspire to unveil and reimagine the feminine migration journey from the islands where I took the photographs. In four chapters, each echoing a specific location, emotional state and pivotal step in this odyssey, the narrative unfolds in a linear fashion, mimicking a traveller's physical journey. A fixed point of departure contrasts with the open-ended unknown in every clandestine voyage.

Chapter 1 LAND: SCENES FROM THE ISLAND

The first chapter depicts the point of departure. Earthy tones dominate the scenes, evoking a sense of connection to one's roots. These are not the perfect vistas commonly associated with Kerkennah, the vibrant tourist destination. Instead, the focus shifts to the marginalised scenery, easily overlooked by those seeking the allure of orange sunsets and glistening waters. Here, amidst the seemingly ordinary, lies the hidden face of the place that bears the invisible scars of human exodus. Vast, empty and abandoned spaces (Fig. 01) symbolise the vacancy that coexists with the buzz on the island. They underscore the duality of presence and absence, the actual scarcity and perceived abundance, and reflect the substitution of the land's fertility with aridity.

Fig. 01: Abandoned car, Kerkennah (2020), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

Double and triple exposures (Fig. 02) are visual metaphors to convey coexisting yet contrasting realities. The serene island life, steeped in tradition and governed by the quotidian rhythms, contrast with the ‘criminal’ world that emerges mainly after dark.

Fig. 02: Shore , Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

  Any sense of belonging is fleeting, a mirage shimmering in the desert. The land offers no solace, no promise of a future. This chapter serves not as a haven but as a crucible to steel travellers for the journey.

Chapter 2

WATER: FIRST CONTACT WITH THE MEDITERRANEAN

The second chapter explores what it means to be a woman on such a journey. This overflows with a feminine presence. The concept of vessel-like entities is explored through the philosophy of inner and outer spaces. The outward journey is mirrored by the physical vessel, the ship, braving the elements. The inward journey is embodied by the female form, a vessel carrying the weight of the unknown (Fig. 03). Both journeys converge towards a shared destination.

Fig. 03: Woman chained , Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

I have further manipulated some film. Bleaching, for example, dissolves colour so that the bleached area appears white in the negative and black in the print (Fig. 04). This erasure reinforces the theme of absence, exploring the transit from a place where the migrant was once present to a void through a visual metaphor for disappearance. Infiltrating a new space blends into the act of vanishing from the old one. The profound loss created by these journeys is often overlooked. The physical absence from one’s home, the replacement of familiarity with fear and estrangement, the emotional void left behind for loved ones and the silencing of the harrowing migrant experiences all add another layer of absence. Migration itself becomes a catalyst for absence, the severing of ties to surroundings and social connections is a journey into a liminal space, a state of being neither here nor there. The origin leaves an echo in memory even after physical departure. It is not merely a geographic point but a nexus of experiences, emotions and histories.

Fig. 04: Bleached away, Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film , digital scan (Post processing: bleaching of the negative).

  While tension and anxiety permeate this chapter, the island is not as gloomy as the journey would suggest. Those not compelled to escape experience its vibrancy and charm with postcard-worthy sunsets and sunrises (Fig. 05). Not all enjoy that luxury. Postcolonial conditions, exploitation and discriminatory migration policies condemn entire regions to cycles of poverty and deprivation. For many women, the island could never be anything more than a sojourn. Philosophical meditations on absence take on a new dimension when juxtaposed with the harsh reality of the Mediterranean as a colonial sea.[7] Gaps and voids are geo-politically relevant, defining the experience of those who traverse it.

Fig. 05: Postcard series , Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film , digital scan.

 

Chapter 3

PILGRIMAGE: THE JOURNEY WITHIN AND AT SEA

  Traversing the central Mediterranean can take several days. This section examines the heart of the voyage. Fully in black and white, it reflects the sacred nature of this transformation as a testament of faith and resilience. Each soul will emerge renewed, irrevocably altered and absolved.

Fig. 06: Mother and Son (2022), Black & White 35 mm film, digital scan.

  Black-and-white photography detaches itself from reality by stripping away vibrant hues, and it feels surreal because we experience the world in colour. But in this narrative, such detachment is necessary for the metaphor to sink in. We witness not the singular struggle of one migrant, nor a solitary woman's plight. Instead, this chapter is about a cluster of migrant women from several backgrounds aiming at the same end. Therefore, we must transcend individual journeys, aiming instead for a global phenomenon encompassing the full range of roles women play from daughter to mother and everything in between (Fig. 06).

Fig. 07: Parts of a sum (2021), Black & white 35 mm film. Intentional light leaks, digital scan (in-camera processing, light leaking).

  The narrative embraces intentional light leaks while photographing, mimicking water effects (Fig. 07). Fragmented portrayals of the female form are deliberate, as their sum may allow reconstruction of the body that once left the shore.

Fig. 08: Sum of parts (2021), Black & white 35 mm film. Intentional light leaks, digital scan (in-camera processing, light leaking).

  The experience and the tragedy remain obscure from the outside, but we yet hope that the vessels reach their destination whole ( Fig. 08).

Chapter 4

THE GREAT BEYOND: ARRIVAL OR LACK THEREOF

 

Fig. 09: Blouse on shore, Kerkennah (2021), 35mm colour film , digital scan.

The seemingly straightforward concept of arrival gains complexity on this trip. What does this hard-won destination signify for the individual? And for those lost at sea, claimed by the fear that haunted their journey, arrival is a grim fulfilment of prophecy. How do the adventurer and the observer grasp this notion (Fig. 09)? From the European perspective, the Mediterranean remains a frontier, a line dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’.[8] Eurocentric narratives paint the region with a broad brush, privileging the protection-worthy global North over the struggling South. This fosters not only the erasure of entire cultures through continued colonial marginalisation, but also a stark dichotomy in the perception of the same absence, referring to the migrants’ absence as well as that of the destination’s inhabitants.

Fig. 10: Gaze (2022), 35mm colour film, digital scan.

  Even in the celebrated kind of arrival, a disquieting truth lingers. Crossing this fluid border disorients identity, expanding beyond measure the emotional rift caused by the severance of intimate ties with land, people and perhaps life itself (Fig. 10). This project began as a personal odyssey, a quest to grasp the complexities of womanhood, the trauma of displacement and the resilience of the migrant spirit. I sought to illuminate, through the lens of femininity, secret journeys across the Mediterranean Sea (Fig. 11). Ultimately, however, the exploration raised more questions than answers.

Fig. 11: Womanhood (2022), 35mm colour film , digital scan.

Yet a single question persists. And it is essential. And it is relentless: Where did she go? And what should we do about it?     [1] Quran. 'Surah An-Nisa [The Women] 4:97', in The Qu'ran: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meaning, ed. and trans. Saheeh International (1997). [2] For more on this tragic pattern, see 'Four bodies recovered off Tunisia following migrant boat accident', 2022, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/45687/four-bodies-recovered-off-tunisia-following-migrant-boat-accident; 'Tunisia: Navy recovers seven bodies from Mediterranean Sea', 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/51170/tunisia-navy-recovers-seven-bodies-from-mediterranean-sea; 'Tunisia recovers around 210 bodies of migrants', 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/48625/tunisia-recovers-around-210-bodies-of-migrants. [3] Liska Wittenberg, Managing Mixed Migration: The Central Mediterranean Route to Europe (New York: International Peace Institute 2017). [4]  'Tunisia's Kerkennah Islands: A land for smuggling', The New Arab, 2018, accessed 2 June 2024, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/tunisias-kerkennah-islands-land-smuggling. [5] Riman Abouelhassan, Middle East and North Africa: Migrants Deaths [sic] and Disappearances in 2023,  (United Nations Migration, IOM, 2024). [6] 'Women refugees and migrants', UN Women, accessed 30 June 2024, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-refugees-and-migrants. [7] M. Borutta, & S. Gekas, ‘A Colonial Sea: the Mediterranean’, 1798–1956. European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire (2012). [8] Michael A. Kozakowski, 'Making “Mediterranean Migrants”: Geopolitical Transitions, Migratory Policy, and French Conceptions of the Mediterranean in the 20th Century', Cahiers de la Méditerranée 89 (2014) 10.4000/cdlm.7776.
bibliography
Abouelhassan, Riman. Middle East and North Africa: Migrants Deaths [sic] and Disappearances in 2023: United Nations Migration, IOM, 2024. 'Tunisia's Kerkennah Islands: A land for smuggling'. The New Arab, 2018, accessed 2 June 2024, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/tunisias-kerkennah-islands-land-smuggling. 'Four bodies recovered off Tunisia following migrant boat accident'. 2022, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/45687/four-bodies-recovered-off-tunisia-following-migrant-boat-accident. Kozakowski, Michael A. 'Making “Mediterranean Migrants”: Geopolitical Transitions, Migratory Policy, and French Conceptions of the Mediterranean in the 20th Century'. Cahiers de la Méditerranée 89 (2014): 181-93. https://doi.org/10.4000/cdlm.7776. 'Surah An-Nisa [The Women] 4:97'. Edited and Translated by Saheeh International. In The Qu'ran: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meaning, 1997. 'Tunisia recovers around 210 bodies of migrants'. 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/48625/tunisia-recovers-around-210-bodies-of-migrants. 'Tunisia: Navy recovers seven bodies from Mediterranean Sea'. 2023, accessed 15 May 2024, https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/51170/tunisia-navy-recovers-seven-bodies-from-mediterranean-sea. Wittenberg, Liska. Managing Mixed Migration: The Central Mediterranean Route to Europe. New York: International Peace Institute 2017. 'Women refugees and migrants'. UN Women, accessed 30 June 2024, https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-refugees-and-migrants.  
citation information
Harmessi, Rim, 'Odyssey of oblivion: a chronicle of displacement from the Kerkennah Islands', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. global dis:connect, 24 September 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/09/24/odyssey-of-oblivion-a-chronicle-of-displacement-from-the-kerkennah-islands/.
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24 September 2024
In Blog, Blog 2024, Voices Blog

Picturing the sea of absence

florian bachmeier
  In my work as a documentary photographer, particularly in my reports on refugees and their escape and migration routes from the Mediterranean and the war in Ukraine, I have consistently explored the theme of absence. Initially perhaps unconsciously, and later more deliberately, this concept became a central motif. Photography is a powerful tool, capable of evoking profound emotional reactions and shaping narrative discourses. As a medium, photography has an inherently intimate relationship with the concept of absence. Absence in photography refers to the deliberate omission or lack of elements in an image that one might ordinarily expect to find. This approach can serve various conceptual purposes and is intentionally used to achieve a specific effect. By omitting certain elements, photographers can amplify the significance of the objects that are present, guiding the viewer's perception. Absence in photography thus also fulfils a narrative function. In documentary photography, for instance, the absence of people in a place that would usually be bustling with activity can powerfully comment on social, political and emotional states. This absence can evoke feelings of isolation, loss and emptiness, prompting deeper reflection. It serves as a blank space, a hint of what is not visible in the image. It challenges viewers to think about the unseen and the unspoken. The blank space metaphorically represents absence or what is past and transient. Absence in photography creates a potent aesthetic impact. The presence of absence is, in a sense, the full stop, the ‘sudden awakening’ in the sense of Roland Barthes,[1] in many of my photographs.

Fig. 1: The horizon stretches across the sea off Lesbos Island, embodying the profound absence left behind by those who once sought refuge on its shores. Lesbos, Greece, 2017 (Image by the author)

Since my stays and travels to the hotspots of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in the Mediterranean, I have been deeply engaged with these concepts as a photographer. Through my images from places like Idomeni, the transit camp in northern Greece, the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, warehouses in the Serbian capital Belgrade, refugee shelters in Bulgaria and the Spanish enclave Ceuta on the African continent, I strive to document and analyse absences. Absence here is not only the physical lack of something but also the emotional, social and cultural void created by flight, displacement and migration.

Fig. 2: Amid the barbed wire and bleak surroundings of Idomeni camp, the absence of certainty and stability hangs heavily over the refugees waiting at the closed border. Idomeni, Greece, 2016 (Image by the author)

The meaning of absence

Absence, at its core, is a state or feeling of lack. When one considers the inhumane conditions in the camps, this lack or absence, the shattered hopes and the associated pain become particularly visible. The absence or loss of home, security, family, belonging and identity. In the worst cases, it is the absence of any hope. These absences are tangible and experiential both physically and psychologically. Photography can capture and depict these absences profoundly. I think of the emptiness and hopelessness in the eyes of many individuals portrayed and the bleak, chaotic landscapes of camps like Idomeni or Moria, which seem to gnaw like festering wounds at their surroundings. Pieces of torn clothing on barbed wire fences and other obstacles, faded photographs of those left behind or deceased, abandoned belongings left by those who had no choice but to leave their previous lives behind. Possessions lost on the run or hoarded in a drenched tent. Traces of escape through hostile territory. Motifs that represent and symbolically condense absence, repeating themselves in varied yet similar forms, becoming a constant that runs through the situation of refugees and their flight.

Fig. 3: Empty blankets and drenched sleeping bags, painting a poignant picture of absence in the heart of the refugee camp. Idomeni, Greece, 2016 (Image by the author)

Susan Sontag argued that images, photographs, have the power to haunt us and elicit emotional reactions, something pure narrative storytelling often fails to achieve.[2] She describes the haunting quality of photographs that penetrate deeply into our consciousness, compelling us to reflect on what we see. I hope that my images from these camps and of the people I have been able to accompany on their journeys will ultimately serve not just as mere records but as windows into the reality of these people who otherwise remain largely invisible. They hopefully challenge viewers to confront the harsh reality of refugees and their flight, grasping the intolerable absences that shape their lives. Perhaps photography can thus serve as an alternative, complementary method to highlight, investigate and reflect on such dissociations and absences. Traditional sociological investigations rely on empirical and quantitative methods to collect and analyse data. But do these methods capture the deeper emotional and psychological dimensions of these existential human experiences? Here, photography as a medium can be a valuable complement. It can make the invisible visible, showing gaps and voids created by absences and document them. Camps like Idomeni or Moria are places where absence is omnipresent. The people who have to live in these camps have fled their home countries to escape war, persecution and poverty. They have left everything behind — houses, apartments, possessions. Often, they have lost loved ones. They have often experienced the unspeakable, carrying deep traumas with them. Arriving in one of these camps, they find themselves in a sort of limbo, a space between the past they have left behind and a future that remains uncertain. Many images from these contexts, including my own, depict people living in cramped spaces under often unbearable conditions, in cold, in extreme heat, without access to vital and basic services, without access to clean water, food and basic medical care.

Fig. 4: In the dim confines of a Belgrade warehouse, traumatised refugee Mohammed washes in freezing temperatures, the stark absence of safety and home evident in his solitary ritual. Belgrade, Serbia, 2017 (Image by the author)

Absences in refugee camps and other locations along migration routes refer pragmatically but primarily to the lack of resources necessary for a commodious life. There is often no medical care, injuries often remain untreated or are inadequately treated, chronic illnesses go untreated, and the lack of psychological support exacerbates the trauma many refugees have experienced and suffered. On migration routes and in camps, there is also a constant, often life-threatening lack of security. Extreme cold, constant rain and the outbreak of a fire like in Moria often have catastrophic consequences. Violence, abuse and exploitation are widespread. Security forces, where present, are often unable to adequately protect the residents. Women and children are particularly at risk and often suffer from sexual harassment and abuse. The sanitary conditions in the camps and informal settlements along migration routes are often catastrophic. There is no sanitation. As previously mentioned, there is a lack of professional psychosocial support and networks to provide mutual support. Conflicts between people of different nationalities often occur. All this exacerbates the burdens refugees already face. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. These absences have serious impacts on individuals and communities. They undermine human dignity and worsen the already precarious living conditions of refugees and those in flight. In some of my photographs, I depict the architecture of makeshift, hastily erected shelters that often provide no protection. I show people who have to live in hiding, who must remain invisible. I show their sparse meals, their torn clothes, their injuries, the effects of violence and the hardships they endured during their escape. There are images of blankets, drenched sleeping bags, camps in inhospitable areas, pictures of worn-out children's shoes—a sad reminder of a childhood denied to the wearers of these shoes, likely to remain thus. Images that tell of a lives in a constant state of emergency in the sense of Giorgio Agamben,[3] particularly relevant in this context and these places: a situation where seemingly normal laws and rights are suspended in response to a crisis, creating a space where human rights are systematically suspended. Especially the camps exist in a state of lawlessness, operating as legal grey zones, and this state of emergency has long become the norm. Ideally, images evoke emotional reactions — this, at least, is my hope and drive as a photographer — and make the absence of normality, of safety palpable. They hopefully speak a clear language and show the deep scars caused by this life on the run. Can photographs, as visual stimuli, evoke affective responses? Can they compel viewers to engage with the situations they depict, to connect with the people in these images? Images are a bridge between viewers and refugees, who are otherwise only perceived as abstract numbers in statistics.   [1] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981). [2] Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). [3] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Translated by Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections of Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.  
citation information
Bachmeier, Florian, 'Picturing the sea of absence', Ben Kamis ed. global dis:connect blog. Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect, 10 September 2024, https://www.globaldisconnect.org/09/10/picturing-the-sea-of-absence/.
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10 September 2024