An Arab Houses for Sale – Urban Action @ Platform Art Fair (2013)
A short video of the urban intervention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw1zpnp8KNc
More about the project here: http://www.a4community.com/2014/04/05/an-arab-houses-for-sale/
The intervention took the shape of a “creative real estate sale stall” at Platform Art Fair at Jaffa Port. The project was introduced as a collaboration between the prevalent real estate agency “HomeLand Properties” and the artist. The stall exhibited a miniature Arab – style Houses which supposed to be of real ones in the area. Buying the model house (supplied with an address) offered the purchaser an exclusive viewing for one week of the real property. However, the addresses that were supplied with the model were of places in the Jaffa’s neighborhood, which were obliterated in 1948.
The buyers could gain a half price discount for the model if they rang the company telephone line which was on a large banner behind the stall. The banner was a separate travelling artwork which had been hung on Palestinian properties around Jaffa and depicted on one side a graphic design for the symbol of the city (when/if it was separate from Tel Aviv) and on the other side a mutated logo of “Home Land” real estate company with a phone number. The number was not a real one and it led to an automatic message: a well-known national Israeli poem – “I have no other country”. However, in the message the song was sung in Arabic by a Palestinian singer. The work was created as a critique of the gentrification of Jaffa, and the sale of Palestinian refugees’ property, a process in which artists and art organizations took part in.
Video documentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw1zpnp8KNc&feature=youtu.be