Common Assembly – Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR)

Common Assembly is a cross-section of an abandoned and never used Palestinian Parliament in Jerusalem, scaled to fit the ground floor space at BAK. Its construction, which began in 1996 during the Oslo Accord, was halted in 2003 after the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, marked the failure of the political process. Discovering that the building was, intentionally or not, built on Israel’s unilaterally declared border within Jerusalem, DAAR developed the film and installation Common Assembly, which highlight the strip of land, partly within Israeli territory and partly within Palestinian land, which is in legal limbo. In the context of the exhibition Unstated (or, Living Without Approval), Common Assembly provides a forum for works of art and discourse to unfold over the course of the project.