The Stones Distributor, stills from performance video, 4:15 min. 2019.
The Stones Distributor
The video is a documentation of a performance held in the tomb of the Zvhiller Rebbe, in "Sheikh Bader" – a Palestinian Arab village on a hilltop in West Jerusalem that was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine. It is located between the Knesset building and the Supreme Court in Jerusalem.
The artistic act intervenes in the permanent, known-in-advance ceremony mechanism and changes it from the inside- to make a new intimate ritual, involving the audience in the new-made order. The artist held a private ceremony of her own "stone distribution".
This area was inevitably converted into a temporary cemetery with the outbreak of the Israeli War of Independence, as it was not possible to pass through the Arab neighborhoods to the Mount of Olives Cemetery. In this compound martyrs of war whose bodies were found were buried in a field burial and the residents of the besieged neighborhoods. Many believers come to the tomb of the Fifth Rebbe of the Zvehil dynasty every year. The custom is to arrive on Monday, Thursday and Monday again in a row - then say a certain order of texts, light a candle in the tin structure, and then place the left hand and a stone on the tomb, ask for a specific wish.