Emily Jacir

(Ramallah, Palestine, 1970)

In the video installation ENTRY DENIED (a concert in Jerusalem), 2003, three musicians are filmed playing in a theater. They receive no applause because the concert occurs in the absence of an audience. Emily Jacir organized their performance in Vienna. The artist explains as follows the origins of the work: “Austrian nationals Marwan Abado, Peter Rosmanith, and Franz Hautzinger were invited to perform on July 25, 2003 in Jerusalem and July 26th in Bethlehem as part of the 12th Jerusalem Festival – Songs of Freedom concert series organized by Yabous Productions. Marwan Abado, who is of Palestinian origin, was officially invited by the Austrian Embassy in Tel Aviv as well as the United Nations Development Program. He obtained a visa through the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Vienna prior to his arrival. On July 20th, 2002 Abado arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport and was immediately detained by the Israeli authorities. After being held for 24 hours in the airport prison (a representative from the Austrian Embassy who had come to welcome him remained with him during this time), Israeli Security cancelled his visa and he was put on the next plane back to Vienna. He was denied entry into Israel for ‘security reasons’. No further explanation was given. A few days later, the same thing happened to musicians Black Umfolosi from Zimbabwe who were also slated to partake in the same concert series. What threat are musicians to the security of Israel? Abado is one of hundreds from around the world – filmmakers, artists, doctors, lawyers, students, government officials, human rights workers, etc. – who has been refused entry by Israel with the official reason given being ‘security’. In an empty theater in Vienna, I asked Marwan and his band to perform the concert exactly as it was to have taken place in Jerusalem, as if they were in Jerusalem.” According to the Jacir’s instructions, the video is projected on a specifically built structure, a temporary wall positioned in a passageway in the space of the museum.

Like other works by the artist, ENTRY DENIED is inspired by facts and historical events that the artist frees from silence and re-contextualizes into current reality. Political and personal, Jacir’s art recounts the collective Palestinian experience through individual stories that at times entail the artist’s first-hand involvement. Issues concerning resistance, movement and migration, and the way they are inscribed over time or across geographies, are central to her practice, that includes a wide range of media, spanning from film, video, photography, sculpture, installation and performance. [MB]

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