An interview with
Zohar Kawaharada & Yuval Yairi LAND is not conceived using metaphoric approach, but adopting a performative research. When did you get the idea for this work? Could you tell us a particular episode that has helped the birth of this project, or simply an epiphany, a sudden illumination?
tion to settle permanently or claim ownership on the territory. The symbolic act, working as a group and the temporality were the essence of the idea. At first we worked with the group to build the infrastructure of the Kibbutz, afterwards we worked separately in this temporary space, each of us creating a work related to the place.
We first met during an event called "Kibbutz", a happening which was initiated by "Empty House", - a group of artists and activists operating in Jerusalem, with a habit of invading abandoned spaces, and inviting other artists to join them in order to create a temporary, autonomous "Hall of culture".
We decided to create a joint work and found an isolated warehouse which seemed suitable to work in, at the edge of the farm. Our initial thought was to create a series of still-photographs, in which a figure is present inside an empty, closed space, possessing only a metal pole and the wooden letters of the word LAND. We wished to convert or transform the ideas and feelings that came to us in connection with the subject into images and actions.
A kind of 'artistic squatting'. The "Kibbutz" was established on the premises of an abandoned agricultural farm on the outskirts of Jerusalem, an area that until 1967 was No man's land – on the border between Jordan and Israel. Unlike 'conventional' settlements there was no inten-
Zohar (who performed the character) felt that it was not natural for her to freeze or stop her mo-
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