the Place Where Remote Futures Meet Remote Pasts

(2007), video, 3:45 min

The opening of Jerusalem’s Western Wall tunnel to the public in 1996 inflamed one of the most violent riots in Israel’s history, with Palestinians claiming the tunnel ran beneath the Temple Mount and was therefore a physical threat to some of the most sacred sites in Islam. The bloody events ended up with the death of 70 Palestinians and 16 Israeli soldiers and helped to escalate the political strife in the Middle East.

Filmed in the tunnel under the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the work features the artist crawling along in a narrow tunnel system. She is blind-folded and is digging using sharp claws made out of metal. This strange mole-woman is juxtaposed with footage of a real blind mole-rat (filmed by a special camera attached to its head), a species that lives underground in elaborate tunnel networks, and is highly territorial, aggressive and solitary. When the artist-as-mole detects a second mole-woman a violent struggle ensues.