A barricade in the middle of the exhibition room bars the unhindered passage. A single motive appears as projection on the wall: a roadblock somewhere, in any city. The situation seems like a pleonasm, the picture of the wall appears on a wall. But this doubling dissolves if one recognizes the fundamental difference between those two pictures. The constructed barricade in the exhibition room works as a model, which clarifies the barrier. Somehow it is not a barrier because it stands in the middle of the room and the visitor can walk around it without being disturbed, like around a sculpture. The barricade in this room represents all barricades and thought; it allows a direct physical experience. The moment of restricted movement and of the free view is prototypically presented but remains without direct consequences.
The documented situation in the projection is presented completely different; it describes a real barricade in a real city, where people live having to live with those barriers every day. It restricts their possible movements, shifts their view and obstructs the communication with the hidden side behind it. The bounds have two sides where in each is said that it protects from the other and vice versa. This barrier, which was filmed by Claudia Aravena Abughosh, can be found in Bethlehem on a through road and prevents the access to Jerusalem. In the background we can hear a short dialogue sequence: a dialogue between the artist and the soldiers who guard the crossing sentry. It culminates in the sentence of the artist: It's only one picture! The sentence reflects a position already known from tourists who just want to take a quick picture. But here it is not the pressure that forces the rapidity but the precarious situation of a crossing sentry, the worries of a soldier who can't calculate if there could occur any danger from the woman with the camera. Abughosh's calls her installation Greetings from Palestina. This little marks the angle of view and the political point of view of the work on the one hand, on the other the formulation reveals a topic how we know it from postcards and souvenirs. With the help of Greetings from Palestina, we get a view of the town Bethlehem, which does not appear inviting anymore, as usually the postcards do, but excluding. If there are normally beautiful I motives on the postcards identifying the town, where it comes from, there is also another picture with the barricade presenting us a completely different pictorial identity.
Catalog Text of 20. Kassel Doc. And Video Festival 2003