Output details

Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost

Research content/process:

The output was a product of Makhoul’s intellectual conception, planning and practical realisation. The output was conceived as a complex interactive, mixed media installation. The work combined a large number of lenticular panels organised into an effective maze-like structure at the Yang Gallery, at the 798 arts district in Beijing, China. The maze eventually leads the viewer down a circuitous path towards an opening where the onlooker is confronted by a large-scale model of a camp or town of Palestinian buildings suggestive of a refugee facility or a provisional settlement. The lenticular panels combine images of Palestinian sites and buildings at various historical points in the recent past, indicating British and Israeli military rule and domination of the environment, people and culture. The motif of the installation is the instabilities of vision, position, knowledge and power – as the viewer moves past the lenticular panels the images change, producing an effect of disorientation. The work thus physically condenses an understanding of Palestinian (and regional) history based on this continued disruption of certainties, settlements and understandings. ‘Perspective’ is shown to be a matter of physical as well as intellectual and political position, with evident relation to matters of power and vested interests. The work is also playful in tone, however, rather than didactic, and allows for a range of viewer reactions and other estimations of its meanings, contexts and aesthetic significance.