Reconnaissance

Since the Gaza war and first Ferguson protests, many projects have traced intersections between these two contexts: the role of military power and systemic oppression of brown people in Israel and in the US. We visited the African Hebrew Israelites’ Village of Peace in Dimona looking for less familiar language to describe the colonial legacies connecting Israel and the US. What we got was a lesson in deep history, meta-narrative, and prophetic visions. And, many lingering questions: about what it means to reclaim an ancestral home, a promised land; about the margins of Israeli society and the politics of outsidership there; and about the legacy of slavery in the US today.

In September 2015 hundreds of thousands of refugees fled in Syria and other countries and ended up in Austria, most on their way to other European countries. In October hundreds of thousands of people continue to flee, by foot, car, bus, and train. In United States media they are described as waves, masses, a crisis. What makes a crisis? Over the month of September a large volunteer effort collected and organized themselves at Wien Hauptbahnhof, one of two central train stations in Vienna. People set up cooking stations, child care stations, prayer and medical stations, all within the train station. Reconnaissance, Episode 2: Your bed in Vienna, describes the scene at and around Wien Hauptbahnhof in September.

We talk with friends, collaborators, and strangers, asking each of them a leading question: “What happened on September 11th, 2001?” By asking people with different kinds of expertise to provide straightforward narrative accounts of the events of a day now so firmly congealed in public consciousness, we hope to learn something about the construction of political stance through language and memory. What conversations does such a question provoke?

We talk with friends, collaborators, and strangers, asking each of them a leading question: “What happened on September 11th, 2001?” By asking people with different kinds of expertise to provide straightforward narrative accounts of the events of a day now so firmly congealed in public consciousness, we hope to learn something about the construction of political stance through language and memory. What conversations does such a question provoke?

We talk with friends, collaborators, and strangers, asking each of them a leading question: “What happened on September 11th, 2001?” By asking people with different kinds of expertise to provide straightforward narrative accounts of the events of a day now so firmly congealed in public consciousness, we hope to learn something about the construction of political stance through language and memory. What conversations does such a question provoke?