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Museum of Contemporary Art – Palestine (CAMP):
The Museum of Contemporary Art (CAMP) was established to relate to one of the core Palestinian experiences – displacement; as well as to account for the growing collection of visual art that has been safeguarded by Al-Ma’mal over the past ten years. There was/is a need to create a lever for new opportunities, innovative thought, and dynamic multi-cultural activity within, and surrounding Palestinian art, culture, and environment. Our goal is to utilize CAMP to relate to Palestine and its rich and multifaceted textures (traditional/ historical backdrop embedded within contemporary ambitions), while encouraging and strengthening international communications as well. We believe that a contemporary art museum must be a flexible, living organism; an expanding space that will facilitate the realization of cultural projects, empower creative individuals of all nationalities, and avoid stagnation that might otherwise act negatively in like developments. For this reason, we envision CAMP’s essence not solely as a physical place (for that would undermine our working philosophy and limit creative potential), but as an authentic, accessible, and fluid entity, a nomadic site where dialogue, growth, and resourceful experimentation are encouraged.
Our project involves the biennial 'nomadic' movement of CAMP, its cumulative art collection and 'portable' structure. Every year, CAMP will find a temporary 'home' under the auspices of a 'host museum.' The 'host museums' – located across the globe – will be invited to interact with CAMP's presence and to initiate projects and exhibitions.
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Beat Streuli
East Jerusalem
1999
Born in Switzerland in 1957.
Solo exhibitions include, The Stedelijk Museum, with Gabriele Basilico, Amsterdam; Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino. In 1999 he exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and at the Kunsthalle in Zurich; in the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, and the Spiral Art Center in Tokyo, as well as at Gallery Anadiel in Jerusalem.
Group exhibitions include, The Fondation Cartier, the Museum of Contemporary Art; Gift of Hope, Tokyo; Quotidiana, The Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2000). Bondi Beach/ Parramatta Road, The Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (1999). Everyday, Sydney Biennale, Sydney (1998).
The powerful pulse that Streuli’s photographs aim for is the street realm of the ‘nobody’. In East Jerusalem, the title of the project he undertook during his visit to Jerusalem, Streuli directs his gaze at the city’s pedestrians, and the random circumstances of their lives, and it is in doing so that he expresses a continuing interest in the anonymous person in the street. For East Jerusalem, his subjects are young Palestinians, photographed by impromptu method, characteristic of Streuli’s style. The places and things that his subjects see and inhabit, love or hate are absent. They are photographed without their awareness, or preparation, frequently evading direct eye contact with the camera. Each photograph fixates on one individual at a time, transforming the anonymous person into an individual to whom to direct our attention to, and it is this consciousness that earns the characters recognition, as their everyday random gestures are identified with our very own.
A comparison of his works, carried out in diverse cities, reveals recurring patterns or links that unite the inhabitants of the sites in a manner of positive identification. In this sense, Streuli’s system of representation transcends the potential personal drama of his subjects; resisting to talk about one particular culture or city, relating the city dweller to an anthropological space, while inviting us to reflect on history without yielding to the pressures of social convention.
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