Revolutions per Minute
July 2023 - 2024
An optical glass cast of a Lebanese Baidaphon label shellac record, like the pre-1948 fragments found broken and scattered amongst the ruins of the village of Qadas.
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Qadas is located in Galilee near the ‘Blue Line’ demarcation between Israel and Lebanon on a site which contains the remains of a Roman Temple and layers of human settlements spanning thousands of years. The Palestinian village was depopulated in the 1948 Nakba and became, for a short time, an Arab Liberation Army camp, before it was demolished.
Composed of optical glass, a transparent material used to magnify perspectives, employed across satellite, surveillance and military technologies, the glass record incorporates sand from the mouth of the Na’aman River in Acre (a place known to the Romans as the Belus River; an important source of sand for Roman glass and the site of Pliny the Elder’s origin myth of glass) along with ashes of olive wood from Bethlehem. The glass blurs the boundaries between antiquity and the contemporary; the liquid flow of the object from inherited narratives of archaeology to more recent events, by merging the raw ingredients of the museum object with burning olive groves and the voices of 20th century popular Arab music.
With thanks to National Glass Centre, University of Sunderland, Angela Thwaites, Northern Bridge Consortium, Durham University, Noam Leshem, archaeologists and volunteers in Palestine and Israel. Photography by John McKenzie.
July 2023 - 2024
An optical glass cast of a Lebanese Baidaphon label shellac record, like the pre-1948 fragments found broken and scattered amongst the ruins of the village of Qadas.
Qadas is located in Galilee near the ‘Blue Line’ demarcation between Israel and Lebanon on a site which contains the remains of a Roman Temple and layers of human settlements spanning thousands of years. The Palestinian village was depopulated in the 1948 Nakba and became, for a short time, an Arab Liberation Army camp, before it was demolished.
Composed of optical glass, a transparent material used to magnify perspectives, employed across satellite, surveillance and military technologies, the glass record incorporates sand from the mouth of the Na’aman River in Acre (a place known to the Romans as the Belus River; an important source of sand for Roman glass and the site of Pliny the Elder’s origin myth of glass) along with ashes of olive wood from Bethlehem. The glass blurs the boundaries between antiquity and the contemporary; the liquid flow of the object from inherited narratives of archaeology to more recent events, by merging the raw ingredients of the museum object with burning olive groves and the voices of 20th century popular Arab music.
With thanks to National Glass Centre, University of Sunderland, Angela Thwaites, Northern Bridge Consortium, Durham University, Noam Leshem, archaeologists and volunteers in Palestine and Israel. Photography by John McKenzie.