24.11.2015
Between States
Simon Faulkner and David Reeb
Presentation of the book Between States by the two authors: Simon Faulkner and David Reeb.
The launch will coincide with a display of videos of demonstrations in Palestinian villages in the West Bank by David Reeb and photographic images of popular struggle in Israel/Palestine by ActiveStills.
Between States is the result of a dialogue between the Tel Aviv-based artist and video-activist David Reeb and the Manchester-based writer and academic Simon Faulkner. The book addresses relationships between aesthetics and politics, focusing on the complex geography of Israel/Palestine, where borders and the nature of political statehood remain unresolved. The title Between States refers to the unfinished political nature of this area, while also describing the condition of in-between-ness defined by the book itself as it shifts from artistic concerns to more explicitly political subjects. This in-between-ness also relates to the complex spatial relationships between the UK, Israel, and the West Bank that were involved in the development of the dialogue between the two authors.
Between States is made up of a set of images and texts that move the reader between different forms of representation and knowledge: from paintings to photographs and video- stills, and from texts involving varying degrees of theoretical abstraction to first-person accounts of events and experiences in Israel, the West Bank and the UK. The uncertainty that defines the political conditions explored through these different forms is echoed in the sense of uncertainty created by the overall format of the book and the relationships between its different elements. This format is intended to help the reader make their own connections between different images and textual narratives, and through this to explore the themes of the project in a relatively open way.
As well as reproductions of paintings by David Reeb and photographs and articles by both authors, the book also includes works by other visual producers, such as Hans Haacke, Peter Kennard, Miki Kratsman, and the Israel/Palestine-based photographic collective ActiveStills.
[three_columns_one]
Between States
Published by Black Dog Publishing
Paperback, 23 x 17 cm,
176 pages, colours
ISBN 978-1-908966-38-4
www.blackdogonline.com
[/three_columns_one]
[three_columns_one]
Curated by Boaz Levin and Marianna Liosi.
[/three_columns_one]
[three_columns_one_last]
Regarding Spectatorship.
www.regardingspectatorship.net
[/three_columns_one_last]
[divider]