Palestinian, paris-based multidisciplinary artist 00970 released the experimental video installation earlier this week, providing visual accompaniment to the tense and introspective track ’04’ which punctuated the midpoint of his last album Under The Ground, and was by far one of it’s most powerful moments.
Produced by Berlin-based Palestinian visual artist Carmel Al-Abbasi, Oranges Ideology draws upon the visual history of the world-famous Palestinian citrus fruit known as 'Jaffa Oranges', which in the years following the zionist Israeli occupation came to be a symbol for the erasure and destruction of the Palestinian homeland, and of the imperialist-colonialist Israeli State. Born in a refugee camp in Syria following the displacement of her grandparents from their home in Jaffa, Al-Abbasi never actually had a chance to taste these Jaffa Oranges, memories of which were passed on to the artist from her grandmother’s memories and stories.
“With this project I want to reflect on how I live with a memory of a taste that I never
tried, only inherited from the stories of my grandmother? How can I inherit a taste of
fruit?” - Carmel Al-Abbasi
Punctuated by passages of paraphrased text from the words of legendary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, 'Oranges Ideology' invokes these themes of memory, history and taste, perfectly set to the dark and reflective musical accompaniment from 00970’s Under The Ground.
While the video installation may initially appear like abstract waves of distorted, digitized footage, as Oranges Ideology progresses Al-Abbasi and 00970 give us narrow glimpses of a somber, street-level take on the reality of the Palestinian experience, and the echoing generational effects of forced displacement and a “past that keeps haunting [us]”
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