Yiru Qian

Yiru Qian featured image

About

The project began with the occupation of Masudiya station by Gush Emunim, an Israeli settler organization, which led to the Sebastia agreement. The Sebastia agreement is a document signed between Gush Emunim and the Israeli government that legitimates the settlement movement by the Israeli government even though it is illegal under international law. It was a turning point that opened up the northern part of the West Bank for Jewish settlement. The station was on the Hejaz railroad, which originally connected the Middle East, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. The Gush Emunim occupation of the station is not only an entry point to further land grabs in the northern West Bank but also a foreshadowing of further control of Palestinian access to their own lands in the area as is the case in Sebastia, an archaeological site and living village northwest of Nablus in the West Bank.

The project focuses on the occupation of the site and was developed in three stages: the collection of testimonies about the Masudiya Station occupation, the testimony translation in material and spiritual terms, and finally, the production of a short film and an archival website as intervention claims.

The short film presents key testimonies and reflections on the occupation: the performance of hands reveals the materiality of the occupation, while the constant interplay of reality and fiction in the simulated re-entry to the station reiterates the severance of the memory of the station from the current present. Memory acts as an extension of the physical environment, connecting the past and offering the possibility of reimagining the future.

The archival website exposes the collection of testimonies and forms a forum that fosters public awareness and discussion and aims to rebuild mobility through solidarity. Some of the testimonies during the project's research phase were taken from The National Library of Israel and the State Archives (see footnote for details). Only 1.29% of materials from the state archive are open to the public and are usually presented in a standard archival format with names, descriptions, times, and places. This narrative serves state propaganda, provides legitimacy to the invasion of the land, and obscures the brutality of the occupation. The archival website as a design proposition complements the limitations of the linear narrative of this project’s short film and gives the public a platform to freely explore the testimonies and the relationships between individual testimonies, presenting the origins of the design proposition and the transcription of the testimonies, thus challenging the materiality and one-way narrative erased from the authoritative record represented by the state archives. Meanwhile, the free access to my research data supports future potential research, which functions as solidarity building too.

Keywords: occupation, materiality, memory, archive, narrative identity 

Contact

Degree Details

Statement

Yiru Qian is a multidisciplinary architect/artist currently based in London. She has an interior bachelor background from Konkuk university Seoul, and worked as an architect at StandardArchitecture/ZAO in Beijing before recently graduating from the Royal College of Art in City Design. 

As Calvino states: “ Language connects visible traces with the invisible, with what is not in sight, with events that are hoped or feared to happen... The correct use of language brings us close to what is (immediate or not) in front of us. We should be careful and cautious in our descriptions and respect that (what is or is not in front of us) things do not use the information that language conveys to us.” Rooted in similar principles of thinking, her interdisciplinary background has led her to turn towards the motif that is 1) the temporality of moving images and 2) the materiality of substances, in an attempt to explore the non-verbal narratives hidden between space, substances, and individual existence. She believes that diverse media can help her better understand how materiality forms a complete ecological subjectivity and how immateriality transcends the limitations that language brings to thinking and imagination.

Qian Yiru's works transform space into a discursive arena, focusing on the subtle grotesque. In constantly manipulating materials, texts, and moving images, abstract concepts extracted from research are reduced to a representational situation, offering us an alternative imagination of the future. Space is no longer the result of a passive Anthropocene activity, but a participant with subjectivity, providing the roots of existence for fluid individual identity.

Sebastia disagreement

1. Ottoman Railway Map
1. Ottoman Railway Map — Sebastia train station is a legacy from ottoman period, which connects the most important cities in middle east around 1900.
2. Occupation Mapping
2. Occupation Mapping — However, the station was abandoned after 1908 and occupied by Gush Emunim movement settlers starting in 1975. The mapping map shows how the station was spatially occupied based on historical photos found and studied.
3. Sebastia Agreement
3. Sebastia Agreement — Sebastia agreement was signed between the Israeli government and settlers which promised settlers settlements in the west bank even though the international community considers Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law. The Sebastia agreement was a turning point that opened up the northern West Bank to Jewish settlement.
4. Settler's Moving Trace
4. Settler's Moving Trace — The map shows how settler's spread into the northern west bank after the occupation around the Sebastia agreement period.
5. Hidden Station
5. Hidden Station — Historical narrative varies from different stands and perspectives. Archeology has been weaponized by the Israeli government to gain the legitimacy of settlements. This negative model of station property shows the occupation mapping through the reflection of black acrylic below the land.
6. Film as Intervention
6. Film as Intervention — The station is still inaccessible to outsiders because it is controlled. The writing of history is confined to images, texts and archives. As a typical urban space, it has become a living archive, revealing to us more aspects of the past. Memories, sounds, time, and gaze open up a re-imagining of history - a great potential for spatial narrative emerges from the fissure between reality and memory, and it is this potential that a great potential for spatial narrative emerges from the fissure between reality.
7. Film Still 01
7. Film Still 01 — From a physical perspective, the act of occupying space interacts with the land, in various ways. In making the castings, the hand reproduces the action of occupation. In the constant production of positive and negative space, the occupation and the occupation and the occupied appear and disappear as the opposite of reality.
8. Film Still 02
8. Film Still 02 — Oral history, as an important historical witness, unfolds the more vivid side of history for us. A local old man tells how catching an orange dropped from a train when he was a child became a romantic and moving moment.
9. Film Still 03
9. Film Still 03 — A local young woman speaks of her good wishes to go to the beach. In the course of the investigation, sound recordings are uncovered and used in the film, and these vivid recordings not only unfold the past for us, but also tell us about a possible future
10. Sebastia Disagreement trailer — Sebastia Disagreement 1 minute trailer

Medium: drawings, plaster, video, slides, digital

Size: varies