In 2004 Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, who resides in Mexico, performed an action, a walk, through Jerusalem demarcating with a leaking can of green paint the “green line” representing one side of the partitioning of Jerusalem. Fifty-eight litres of paint were used to trace twenty-four kilometres. This statutory division of Jerusalem after the 1947/48 conflict between Israeli and Arab forces was along two front lines. This “green line” was marked on a map in November 1948 by commander of the Jerusalem Israeli forces, Moshe Dayan, after the ceasefire agreement was signed between himself and the representative of the Arab Legion, Abdullah al-Tel. The line made by Abdullah al-Tel was in red and between the two lines was a topographically contested area of sixty to eighty metres.
Through the action Alÿs said he wanted to explore the axiom: “Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic.” He further elaborates saying: “What I try to do really is to spread stories, to generate situations that can provoke through their experience a sudden unexpected distancing from the immediate situation and can shake up your assumptions about the way things are, that can destabilize and open up, for just an instant—in a flash—a different vision of the situation, as if from the inside.”
As part of the film documentation, Alÿs asked both Palestinians and Israelis to comment on the film, which can be found here: http://francisalys.com/the-green-line/.
In the context of the current situation in Israel/Palestine, such a gesture might seem arbitrary and meaningless given the lives harmed and lost, and the overall devastation on both sides. Yet as the action illustrates the conflict is rooted in a history of contested territory, conflict and divisiveness that makes any objective understanding that much harder, or as Alÿs suggested, a different vision or perspective so difficult to achieve in such incendiary times.
(Film documentation, The Green Line, Jerusalem, 2004, 17.41 mins. In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux.)