No Man’s Land

The jury's
conclusion

“No man`s land” is initiated by visual artis Alaa Minawi and is planned to take place in the no-man`s land between Egypt and Israel. The Ibsen Scope Jury was intrigued and moved by the artistic vision and social context presented in this art-project. “No man`s land” is investigating and gives expression to the embodied tensions that are surrounding the 75 years old Palestinian – Israeli conflict. The topics that are raised has been given a form that is both subtle and concrete. This performance-installation is dealing profoundly with giving the future a chance. “The present is not working, let us reimagine a future” Alaa Minawi states. The description is followed by interviews filled with strategies for creating new realities. We are encouraged to “inject a sense of peace in the harsh reality” - is stated in one of the many interviews Alaa Minawi has undertaken. In the core of this project, we find an installation formed as a wall. The wall embodies both sides, the sound and life from the other side and also as a character no one can avoid. The Ibsen Scope Jury was deeply impressed by how Alaa Minawi is able to give artistic expression to an ongoing conflict surrounding us all. We believe this project will convey both stark and nuanced sides with artistic potential and importance.

About the project

“No-man’s land” is a performance and installation unfolding as an auto-biography of a Palestinian body that inherited infinite “survival-modes”. The performance tackles the implications of the continuous erasure attempts towards the Palestinian presence and narrative. Through a series of explorations, it seeks to identify the tensions within this Palestinian body, unravel the historical roots of these tensions, and explore methods to disentangle them. It explores the liminal space; No-man’s land, as a space for initiating new systems. There, all the tension is neutralized and a future might have the chance of cultivation.

“No-man’ land” stems from Alaa Minawi’s research around the Arab Futurism movement where he focused on the notion of “re-imagining a future with alternate or no power structures”. Questions about borders, systems, colonial powers, peace, war, and the banality of it all. This performance goes back to the innate spaces with a critical gaze at borders, lines, and the human savagery while questing ownership.

At several moments in the Palestinian – Israeli conflict, a recurrent suggestion of transforming parts of the Sinai desert into a home for the Palestinians to be “moved to” was a prominent hypothesis. At the borders with Israel. The idea of moving a community to a barren land assumes a “final solution” of the 75 years old conflict. In a world that seems not to have any space left for Palestinians, squeezing them in a no-man’s land has been promoted as a “solution”. No-man’s land is a place not owned by any one, it is the crossing between two spaces.

About Alaa Minawi
Alaa Minawi, Beirut – 1982, is an artist based between Amsterdam and Beirut. In his practice, Alaa explores the possibilities of merging installation and performing arts. Absence, presence, Arab-futurism, wars, traumas, and healing are subjects that were tackled within his works. His performative series “2048” explored the possibilities of creating performances in the absence of the performer; an absence that is induced by societal violence. Alaa is a lecturer in several academic institutions in the Netherlands and the founder of the “Beirut Summer School for Theater and Performance”.