Advice about Sharing a Country,
2010–13
Advice About Sharing a Country
Advice About Sharing a Country
Advice About Sharing a Country
Lifschitz created two projects that look at two European conflicts as a way to address the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’s key question: namely, can two people share one political entity?
Both projects started with identical adverts placed in local and national newspapers that read:
“Israeli woman visiting Belfast/Belgium would like to meet people for advice about sharing a country”.
Flanders Is Next to Wallonie—Estranging the Line,
2010–12, Series of 21 inkjet prints
When none of the meetings panned out, following her ad in the national Belgian newspapers, Lifschitz took to the Belgian railroad system. Over the course of several days, she rode the trains, attempting to engage her fellow passengers in conversation. Often she asked people to draw the line that separates Flanders from Wallonie (Wallonia) on a copy of the Belgian rail map. The artist tells the story of this journey in twenty-one prints that combine abstracted versions of these drawings with texts written in her voice. Each print consists of the line drawn by a fellow passenger that has been extracted from the original map and enlarged; below, a text relates Lifschitz’s conversations and observations in her attempt to experience the nature of the Belgian reality.
Best City in the World—Looking after Belfast (Raymond’s Loss),
2010–13 Single-channel HD video, 19'26''
In early April 2010, the artist placed an advertisement in several Northern Irish newspapers: “Israeli woman visiting Belfast would like to meet people for advice about sharing a country.” One respondent was Raymond McCord, a Protestant, whose son was murdered by members of a Protestant militia during the conflict in Northern Ireland. A year after their initial meetings, McCord took the artist in his car to see the locations where his story is played out. The video was shot by the artist with a handheld camera from the passenger seat.