dreaming energy
Video with sound, (HD, 11 minutes)
Edition 3 + 1
2018
In juxtaposing a Swiss dam (Mauvoisin and Grande Dixence) and the Palestinian city of Rawabi (in the neighborhood of Ramallah) the film "dreaming energy" tries to consider the figure of the dam and its accumulated energy. Seeing Rawabi as a dam, on the one hand, in terms of its monumental impact on the landscape and, on the other hand, on the inhabitants to be regulated in it, has a metaphorical function.
In both situations, in Switzerland and in Palestine, the landscape is intervened both realistically and symbolically, thereby producing, storing and also diverting, regulating and controlling energy.
Both situations make visible only a fraction of what is subliminally (or subterraneously) regulated, channeled, controlled.
In both situations, water (albeit with varying degrees of effectiveness) is a crucial factor: as stored energy in one case, as a vital but scarce and externally controlled resource in the other.
Both situations, and the related potential form-issues, though connected by different economic, energetic, political aspects, ignore each other, are totally unconscious of their kinship and connectedness, of their amalgamation. They seem to ignore each other.
Their juxtaposition seeks to uncover this and to question articulations of landscapes, monumentality, norms, perspectives, and enclosures.
