I have been touring this land since 2002 to document the sight of sites, turning my gaze at the new, because many have already captured the past.
Some five years ago I bought a biblical atlas and started to travel in the footsteps of ancient borderlines. In addition, I visited sites that fascinated landscape painters in the 19th century. I was enthralled by their visual aesthetics, and at the same time adopted, to some level, Mark Twain’s cynical outlook.
In my travels I discovered cultural mounds of ruin that time had failed to cover over, and turned them into conglomerates instead. In my view, these sights bespeak hardship, hardship related to identity, the identity of the people living here and now. Each culture invaded the temporality of its counterpart. Among the people living here today, few come from elsewhere, while the majority of them have roots here - a narrative. Such narrative may be just or distorted, depending on who you ask. But the people living here are not the same as those who lived here in the past. Their identity relies on cultures that had existed here but it also clashes with the changing cultures of the present. These are mounds of cultural matter made up of local materials. A mashup of past and present. Picturesque mounds made of fears and desires.
Some five years ago I bought a biblical atlas and started to travel in the footsteps of ancient borderlines. In addition, I visited sites that fascinated landscape painters in the 19th century. I was enthralled by their visual aesthetics, and at the same time adopted, to some level, Mark Twain’s cynical outlook.
In my travels I discovered cultural mounds of ruin that time had failed to cover over, and turned them into conglomerates instead. In my view, these sights bespeak hardship, hardship related to identity, the identity of the people living here and now. Each culture invaded the temporality of its counterpart. Among the people living here today, few come from elsewhere, while the majority of them have roots here - a narrative. Such narrative may be just or distorted, depending on who you ask. But the people living here are not the same as those who lived here in the past. Their identity relies on cultures that had existed here but it also clashes with the changing cultures of the present. These are mounds of cultural matter made up of local materials. A mashup of past and present. Picturesque mounds made of fears and desires.
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