A multimedia installation for the exhibition The Make-Believe Consulate, as part of Open House Jerusalem. The exhibition took place in a house in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood that straddles the East and West of the city. The house, overlooking its Old City and Temple Mount, used to function as the Iranian consulate during the British Mandate of Palestine and later, following the establishment of Israel, as the residence of Yehoshua Baruchi, Jerusalem Municipality’s in-charge of distributing abandoned Palestinian properties.

The boundary line that runs through Abu Tor, along the former border separating the East and West of the city, is still evident in the distributional inequity of resources and rights between the neighborhood’s Jewish and Palestinian residents. We chose to focus on access to water as a reflection of this civic inequality, weaving a vision for a social-ecological Commons that would enhance solidarity among Abu Tor’s residents and advance fair and sustainable approaches to sharing resources among them. Baruchi famously used to say that, living on the way to the Temple Mount, he would be the first to offer the Messiah a cup of tea when the he arrives in Jerusalem. This served as our inspiration for the name of the installation, seeing as the act of offering a cup of water might do more to hasten his coming, at least figuratively.

As a tribute to the building’s past as a diplomatic mission, we created the “Consulate of Good Advice” as a representation of an environmental and social vision for a possible alternative future. Global climatic processes, as well as regional processes of increasing warming and desertification, raise the question of how space, environment, and living intertwine. In the past, a communal exchange existed among Abu Tor’s residents through the use of shared water cisterns. The house itself demonstrates a unique architectural approach that characterized construction in the area a century ago. This is expressed in an aesthetically pleasing and calming appearance, and is based on an environmental perception of space and living, an integrative environmental approach that has all but disappeared over the last hundred years.

The house’s “Green Room” served as our presentation space for this unique vision, along with the historic furniture within. The space housed an installation with performative, visual, and audio elements that exposed visitors to this conceptual process. As part of our work in Abu Tor, we rolled a large water tank through the neighborhood’s streets, which served us as a prop for initiating conversations with residents on the theme of water and for collecting their written responses on its surface. This water tank and writings, along with videos of our interactions and sketches of our vision, was presented as part of the installation at the exhibition.