I came back home in spring to shoot a film about foraging wild food. Food manifests as a container for family and community histories tied to landβtraditions that face suppression encoded into the legal dynamic of nature protection.
My daily activities are like that of a preteen or pensioner. They feature small adventures like foraging, collecting miscellaneous objects around the neighborhood, home-improvement projects, reading, drawing, watching films, and writing.
Having slowly accepted the serendipitous gifts offered by the virus, I begin enjoying my exilic nostalgia, a new-old way of being present in Jerusalem after having lived abroad for over a decade. Lingering fears of having become a cultural tourist in my hometown are now, thankfully, relieved.
Asim Abu Shakra, Cactus , Gouache on paper. Courtesy of Gallery One. I go walking in the neighborhood every day. I cross paths with animals, plants, and piles of scrap. Helicopters watch us from above, and soundscapes from construction sites continue despite the strict curfew measures. As expected, Israel responds to the virus with a militarization of medical discourse.
It fills the streets with the army, police, and border control, and it bypasses a Knesset vote and authorizes Shin Bet 1 tracking technologies to enforce social distancing. A dataset of people gasping for breath. Red-listing nonhuman life to shield it from human damage on the one hand, and protecting populations from the nonhuman threat of an illness on the other, are not quite comparable activities. Yet the pandemic has highlighted varying governance structures and the intertwined politics of care all over the world.
