Untitled (servees) is an audio work located at Bab il Amoud (Damascus Gate) which stands at the start of the road leading to Nablus and onward to Damascus. Once a massive hub of the main regional transport network of serveeses (communal taxis), it had direct links to Beirut, Amman, Baghdad, Kuwait as well as every urban Palestinian center such as Lyd, Jaffa, Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza, Ramle. Damascus Gate was the point where servees drivers used to pick up customers by calling out the names of their various destinations. Untitled (servees) recalls that purpose and the once fluid space of movement, connection and exchange and attempts to make visible the fractures and interactions of everyday life within the disintegrating urban landscape. Calling out cities servees drivers recall their destinations.
This audio work is a part of an ongoing long-term research, which explores and investigates the disappearing transportation network in Palestine and its implications on the physical and social experience of space. This is a result of the ongoing fragmentation and continued destruction of the urban landscape by the Israeli Occupation.
This audio work was a Public Sound Intervention installed at Bab il Amoud, Jerusalem in 2008 and commissioned by Al-Ma'mal Foundation, Jerusalem.

Emily Jacir

As poetic as it is political and biographical, Emily Jacir’s work investigates silenced histories, exchange, translation, transformation, and resistance. Jacir has built a complex and compelling oeuvre through a diverse range of media and methodologies that include unearthing historical material, performative gestures and in-depth research. She investigates personal and collective movement through time and space and its implications on the physical and social experience. Drawing on rituals such as dances, processions and games, the artist charts the way space, collectivity, and memories are claimed. Jacir has been actively involved in education in Palestine since 2000 and is deeply invested in creating alternative spaces for knowledge production internationally. She has been honored for her work internationally, including an honorary doctorate from NCAD in Dublin, Ireland (2023); an American Academy of Arts andLetters prize (2023); the Andrew W. Mellon Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome(2015); and the Alpert Award (2011); Hugo Boss Prize, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008); Golden Lion, Venice Biennale (2007). She is the founder of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem.