We propose a stretch of jammed earth art with a neutral international territory on top that cuts through the hotspots of Jerusalem, confronting boundaries, infrastructure, monuments, and lieux de mémoire, as well as the mundane spaces of conflict. As it engages with the physical and moral armature of the city, it will occasionally dissolveinto small spaces where the human flow might eddy, pause, and flow back onto itself. As wall, viaduct, tunnel, and interactive media device, it will subvert regimes of surveillance and offer an international place of political demonstration, exhibition, and co-existence from Bethelem to Ramallah. As an art installation on an urban scale, it will act as a civic space that enhances and challenges the urban fabric.
From the top of the wall-to-end-all-walls, anyone can re-envision Jerusalem, anticipatingthe next step for this once and future international city. As a formal, but ephemeral, urbanintervention that would invite amendments of informal urbanism, this wall/non-wall,would call attention to issues of justice, inequality and occupation, and gesture towardsurban livability for the most insecure populations. Through an examination of the strategies used to spatialize and concretize sectarian interests, we might arrive at aconsensual urbanism.
Its disappearance over generations aligns with the Gegendenkmal's ability to allow people to engage, resolve, and then let go. In its impermanence, it speaks to the transitory natureof all boundaries. By 2050, when complete, its earliest parts will have begun to molder,instigating dialogue again. Its constant state of flux will challenge people to think aboutthe dynamic nature of Jerusalem in its many physical and temporal layers, but also in its many fragments, as part of a dynamic set of localities that share a history and reveal larger issues about the human condition.
