up the hill down the hill - Bird Cages - an installation

In the valley, Al Abdali - dialogue, a scene, a real time “collage” of a structure - borrowed from the mountain - superimposed on the empty asphalt. A loop that puts the two places against each other re-questioning/re-thinking a one’s place in the city and trying to create a dialogue with the passing by/the users on how places are constantly being re-shaped by politics of inclusions/exclusion and [Public] is repeatedly drawn and redrawn by boundaries. 

The Friday market has been taken place since the 70s, and now with the Global capital change that is taking place in Amman in general and in this spot in particular, the threat of dislocation/extraction to those alternative realities and practices becomes very vivid in favor of projects like “Al Abdali Regeneration Project”. 500 cages were rented to do an intervention on a regular Friday in the Friday market. Modules of walls were created to make the intervention easier on site, as you can never expect how much area will be free or if there would be any in the first place (I tried to rent out a spot and install there, but it was impossible as all the spots are reserved till God knows when). 

In the very early hours if Friday morning, we headed with the cages to the market, found a small empty spot by the entrance of the market, and started installing. The idea was to create some sort of interaction with the people who are there, users, passing by, etc…  

I reshaped the entrance of the market by creating a path, kind of a maze with the walls made from the cages ... the users of the market adjusted with the change immediately, and even started to mark their position to others referring to the new Land mark, “I am next to the bird cages”, a man on the phone directing his friend!  

To me I always felt there is a dramatic schism between the Domestic/Urban in the Rural yet inflated city, and I feel its directly linked to how Amman always succeeded in portraying itself as the “Permanent Temporal” , where the right to the city vanishes in the peoples’ mind in the first place.  

installation (part of the public art project) and text by Saba Innab

images by Juliana Irene Smith, curator of the project “Utopian Airport Lounge” , Amman, Jordan, December 2010
 

FEATURED THEME ON CITY SHARING

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