Jerusalem Quarterly (JQ) is preparing a special issue on residual spaces and their historical context. The idea behind the contributions is to create a dossier that examines a number of architectural remnants and derelict spaces in the greater Jerusalem area, which have been transformed by successive regimes, wars, reuse, negligence and/or abandonment.
The notion suggested by this issue is to give voice to the silence that continues to surround these remnants, and to rediscover their social, material, and visual meaning within their contexts. Yet, the inquiry unpacks the narrative behind their abandonment, deterioration and transformation, which was silenced or had been reduced to silence.
The contributions focus on studying the impediments that have prevented a particular attention to these remnants, yet prohibited their integration in the contemporary. Al-Atlal investigates the intelligible messages these spaces seize, yet the uncertainties beneath signs and surfaces which claim to express individual or collective will at the moment of their inception. Contributors are encouraged to uncover the contradiction between the history that held back a particular formulation, allowing these spaces a certain glory upon their conception, and the present that repressed a particular form of value enunciation and promoted a prevailing unconscious to the history and contemporary meaning of their demise.
Contributors are invited to submit short essays of about 2000-4000 words, with sketches, diagrams and photographic images on the topic along these lines. The contribution should include a narrative within their inquiry, which can vary between artistic reflection, social history, or documentation of disappeared.
Submission deadline, December 1st, 2016 to jq@palestine-studies.org
Separate image and text submission.
Image resolution 600dpi if possible. Make sure that all submitted images have copyright clearance from owners.
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Following are various possible examples for examination:
- Balou Al-Bireh/Bitunia
- King Hussein’s skeletal palace in Beit Hanina
- Hasan Fathi’s orignal Gurnas in Marj Na’je
- Al-Jallad Flour Mill, Qalandia
- Cinema al Assi, Nablus
- Zalatimo Sweet Shop, Khan Al-Zeit, Jerusalem
- Ottoman Court (Metamorphosis) Ramallah
- Byzantine Church, old Bireh
- Lido, Jericho (Scene of Miss Jordan Contests)
- Bellevue Hotel in Jericho
- Solomon Pools, Bethlehem
- Cinema Al-A’si, Nablus
- The Arab Development Society, Jericho
- TAKO Factory, Ramallah
- Silvana Factory Ramallah
- Haddad’s Tamka Factory, Al-Biereh
- UNRWA’s Refugee Camps brick shelters in the 1950s
- Jericho’s Synagogues
- Grand Hotel, Ramallah
- The remnants of Lifta, Jerusalem
- Saraya Buildings
- Tegart Forts
- Qalndiya Airport
- The Clock Tower, Jerusalem
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