welcome to jerusalem.
This city is an ancient one, with roots dating back to about 4000 BCE, but it cannot--and does not--remain frozen in its antiquity. And as it struggles to craft a new identity that weds its ancient history to this modern era, its physical landscape is changing to reflect this development, as well. There are the obvious changes--the construction of the light rail in 2011, the burgeoning downtown area in West Jerusalem--but then, "just as street-level vernacular has innovated and filled in the gaps of a culture's formal language, the street has as well developed its own vernacular to fill the gaps in the city's formal design" [1]. One of these innovations: graffiti.
Artists here are not erasing the historic Jerusalem stone (in fact, as one artist told me, besides the fact that the stone is a bad surface on which to paint, the general "graffiti culture" in Jerusalem tends to avoid these areas out of respect), but rather participating in the collective visioning process for their city. As Iveson would contend, it is perhaps one of the most democratic of acts [2]. In a place where a web of intersecting identities--religious, secular, Israeli, Palestinian, rich, poor, left-wing, right-wing--cuts across the population to produce vastly different "'cities within the city'," some with more influence on City Hall politics than others, graffiti challenges these traditional modes of power and perceptions of what is "allowed" and what is not [3].
With graffiti, "the assertion of inhabitance as the basis for authority inscribes a part for those who have no part in cities where authority is based on wealth, or birth, or technical expertise, or national citizenship, or some other source of non-democratic authority [4]. It is a voice for those without one, a reminder to the other residents of the city that the artist, and the identity they are representing, simply exists. As Dr. Ben Baruch Blich, a history and theory senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy for the Arts and Design in Jerusalem, affirms, many of these displays are "a means of pressure by a group that is not acknowledge by the general public...They are like all other groups that want to make the public aware of their particular 'ism'" [5].
Why is this form of expression so important? During my last semester studying abroad in Jerusalem, I was able to take advantage of my outsider status to float between some of its multiple internal cities, and it was through this privilege that I discovered how rare my social fluidity truly is for many of Jerusalem's permanent residents. In a city where invisible walls have been constructed--sometimes institutionally, sometimes self-imposed--between residents of these different worlds, it is the physical walls that sometimes becomes some of the sole remaining spaces for residents to share their ideas, which may otherwise never be heard beyond their own community. To put it bluntly: “'Everything happens in Jerusalem…so graffiti is much more extreme here than elsewhere,'” said Sassun Mualem, head of maintenance for the municipality's City Beautification Division in 2007 [6]. Let's take a look at what he means...
This project focuses particularly on the graffiti found in West Jerusalem, almost entirely composed of Jewish Israelis. In my analysis of graffiti here, I explore the following questions:
Artists here are not erasing the historic Jerusalem stone (in fact, as one artist told me, besides the fact that the stone is a bad surface on which to paint, the general "graffiti culture" in Jerusalem tends to avoid these areas out of respect), but rather participating in the collective visioning process for their city. As Iveson would contend, it is perhaps one of the most democratic of acts [2]. In a place where a web of intersecting identities--religious, secular, Israeli, Palestinian, rich, poor, left-wing, right-wing--cuts across the population to produce vastly different "'cities within the city'," some with more influence on City Hall politics than others, graffiti challenges these traditional modes of power and perceptions of what is "allowed" and what is not [3].
With graffiti, "the assertion of inhabitance as the basis for authority inscribes a part for those who have no part in cities where authority is based on wealth, or birth, or technical expertise, or national citizenship, or some other source of non-democratic authority [4]. It is a voice for those without one, a reminder to the other residents of the city that the artist, and the identity they are representing, simply exists. As Dr. Ben Baruch Blich, a history and theory senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy for the Arts and Design in Jerusalem, affirms, many of these displays are "a means of pressure by a group that is not acknowledge by the general public...They are like all other groups that want to make the public aware of their particular 'ism'" [5].
Why is this form of expression so important? During my last semester studying abroad in Jerusalem, I was able to take advantage of my outsider status to float between some of its multiple internal cities, and it was through this privilege that I discovered how rare my social fluidity truly is for many of Jerusalem's permanent residents. In a city where invisible walls have been constructed--sometimes institutionally, sometimes self-imposed--between residents of these different worlds, it is the physical walls that sometimes becomes some of the sole remaining spaces for residents to share their ideas, which may otherwise never be heard beyond their own community. To put it bluntly: “'Everything happens in Jerusalem…so graffiti is much more extreme here than elsewhere,'” said Sassun Mualem, head of maintenance for the municipality's City Beautification Division in 2007 [6]. Let's take a look at what he means...
This project focuses particularly on the graffiti found in West Jerusalem, almost entirely composed of Jewish Israelis. In my analysis of graffiti here, I explore the following questions:
- How do the walls transform into sites of call & response exchanges between residents to express their visions for the political and religious future of their city, and how do these pieces of art then play off of and amplify each other to become a citywide connected conversation?
- To what extent can these “calls” & “responses” provoke conversation in reality, transforming the city’s physical walls into a platform for dismantling or transcending its cognitive and social ones?
Downtown West Jerusalem, the focus of this project
Map courtesy of Google Maps Detail of municipal borders around East Jerusalem
Map courtesy of Ir Amim |
JERUSALEM BY THE NUMBERS*|| population ||
as of end of 2011 804,400 people 511,400 Jews 293,000 Arabs || religious identification || adults 20+ years old surveyed 2009-2011 80%traditional/religious 20% secular || voting trends || 2013 elections for 19th Knesset: of those who voted (65%)... 74% right-wing parties 17% centrist parties 5% left-wing parties *all data, in disaggregated format, from Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies 2013 Report [6] |
the power of words in graffiti
The following slideshow will bring you across time and space within Jerusalem, witnessing how similar motifs reappear in multiple places over several years, as each artist echoes, satirizes, reinvents what's come before. The result: surrounding the city in a constant wash of familiar symbols and slogans, some changing to reflect new events and some timeless in their message. The question then becomes: who is listening? The first and second pieces of graffiti display the hand signs that correspond to "?שומע", the Hebrew word for "listening?" But with most passerby (myself included) unfamiliar with these signs, most don't even know what question is being asked--and that is exactly the point. |
"The question then becomes: who is listening?" Language, whether in the traditional sense of the word, or the rhetoric we come to use to describe the "city within a city" which we inhabit, can so often act as a barrier to understanding, which is why I believe it's words in all their various forms that command such a central role in Jerusalem's graffiti culture; it is an opportunity for artists to express to passerby that while they might not understand the language of that particular world, its speakers do exist, and therefore, so does their reality.
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what does it all mean?
an accompanying guide to the slideshow
I compiled the slideshow above as if I was playing "six degrees of separation" with the graffiti of West Jerusalem. Duplicate images, common motifs, layered writings, shared creators--these are the links that weave together Jerusalem's graffiti, creating a cacophonous tapestry of voices rising up from all corners of the city.
Sometimes it is about the response a piece provokes, the questions and thoughts it leaves lingering in the minds of passerby, the gut emotions it provokes on first sight, and sometimes it is simply about the call itself, the bold declaration of one's presence in the city and ownership over its space. Together, the calls and responses act as a roadmap to the concerns and opinions that have gripped West Jerusalemites over the years, and together, they comprise perhaps one of the only comprehensive public records of the many cities that exist within the city of Jerusalem.
Sometimes it is about the response a piece provokes, the questions and thoughts it leaves lingering in the minds of passerby, the gut emotions it provokes on first sight, and sometimes it is simply about the call itself, the bold declaration of one's presence in the city and ownership over its space. Together, the calls and responses act as a roadmap to the concerns and opinions that have gripped West Jerusalemites over the years, and together, they comprise perhaps one of the only comprehensive public records of the many cities that exist within the city of Jerusalem.
|| works cited ||
[1] Scott Burnham, as quoted in Kurt Iveson, “Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself urbanism and the right to the city," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37:3 (May 2013): 946.
[2] Kurt Iveson, “Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself urbanism and the right to the city," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37:3 (2013): 946.
[3] ibid, 942.
[4] ibid, 946
[5] Esther Hecht, "Feature: Graffiti," Hadassah Magazine, March 2007 (http://www.hadassahmagazine.org/2007/03/12/feature-graffiti/).
[6] ibid.
[7] Maya Choshen, Michal Korach, Inbal Doron, Yael Israeli, and Yair Assaf-Shapira, Jerusalem: Facts and Trends 2013, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (2013). http://www.jiis.org/.upload/facts-2013-eng%20%281%29.pdf.
[8] Kim Dovey, Simon Wollan, and Ian Woodcock, "Placing Graffiti: Creating and Contesting Character in Inner-City Melbourne," Journal of Urban Design 17:1 (February 2012): 30.
[9] Adam Heffez, Words & Walls: Social Commentary through Graffiti in Israel and the West Bank, (2012), 47.
[10] ibid.
[11] ibid, 39-40.
|| acknowledgements ||
Many thanks to the following for answering my questions, helping interpret graffiti, and serving as excellent sources for finding more instances of graffiti beyond my own pictures: Elie Adelman, Dr. Ben Baruch Blich, Marisa James, Noam Kuzar, and Street Art Jerusalem
[1] Scott Burnham, as quoted in Kurt Iveson, “Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself urbanism and the right to the city," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37:3 (May 2013): 946.
[2] Kurt Iveson, “Cities within the City: Do-It-Yourself urbanism and the right to the city," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37:3 (2013): 946.
[3] ibid, 942.
[4] ibid, 946
[5] Esther Hecht, "Feature: Graffiti," Hadassah Magazine, March 2007 (http://www.hadassahmagazine.org/2007/03/12/feature-graffiti/).
[6] ibid.
[7] Maya Choshen, Michal Korach, Inbal Doron, Yael Israeli, and Yair Assaf-Shapira, Jerusalem: Facts and Trends 2013, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (2013). http://www.jiis.org/.upload/facts-2013-eng%20%281%29.pdf.
[8] Kim Dovey, Simon Wollan, and Ian Woodcock, "Placing Graffiti: Creating and Contesting Character in Inner-City Melbourne," Journal of Urban Design 17:1 (February 2012): 30.
[9] Adam Heffez, Words & Walls: Social Commentary through Graffiti in Israel and the West Bank, (2012), 47.
[10] ibid.
[11] ibid, 39-40.
|| acknowledgements ||
Many thanks to the following for answering my questions, helping interpret graffiti, and serving as excellent sources for finding more instances of graffiti beyond my own pictures: Elie Adelman, Dr. Ben Baruch Blich, Marisa James, Noam Kuzar, and Street Art Jerusalem