The book was based on a 9 month project I carried out in the remnants of an old arab olive grove, situated in what is now the back yard of a suburban home in the Tel Aviv area.

The site, and the work are intimately connected with my own experience of living here in Israel, its personal immediate dimensions as well as the larger context and issues connected with the political, historical and ecological realities of this region. The olive grove and the olive tree have become images, and sites loaded with symbolic and political implications. They highlight the entangled issues of ownership, property, rights and historical realities here. I interact with the trees intimately, using my own body and materials from the house and the garden.

Whose olive grove is this anyway? The project I took on became both an active physical engagement with the specific materials of the place, as well as simultaneously an ongoing mental task —  carrying on an inner dialogue about  history, justice, time (intensified by  the intifada going on at the same time close by.)

The book format is particularly suited to this work. It contains and reflects the multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary character of the project, its duration, the different media (videostills, sketchbook entries, drawings, photos…) and the complex experience in the olive grove itself, with jumps between actions, reflections, past and present, serious and playful. It fixes the transient performances and installations into a relatively permanent form. But its unfinished format reflects the indecisions, the shifts, the unfinished quality of the exploration.

In the course of creating the book, I put together a rough draft- consisting of Xeroxes, photos, with sketches taped on, continual additions and changes. The choice to leave the final book rough, to scan the pages of the maquette, allows the book itself to be an unreloved exploration of different dimensions of the site and my involvement with it.

On each book, I handwrite the title in English and Hebrew on the cover.

Available from the artist

Lezli Rubin-Kunda, multidisciplinary artist, in the last 10 years has focused on site-specific, time-extended projects based in live action and performance.  The works occur over periods of time extending from 15 minutes to several months, and are an intuitive response to the complex dimensions of the specificities of the site. The videos explore different possibilities for capturing the essence of the activities.

Over the past several years she has done works in the context of residencies, festivals, symposiums and exhibitions and as a private initiative, in urban and natural settings. Her performance videos have been shown at many venues and festivals, and she has given lecture presentations of her work at many educational institutions.

As an instructor in the Architecture and City Planning department at the Technion, Haifa, she works with students on creating and documenting site-specific projects in diverse settings around the country.

Recent book-based performance includes Topographical Readings, Ticho, Israel Museum, Reading to the Landscape, Mamuta Art and Media centre, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, Consolation of Philosophy, Rishon Municipal gallery. Other projects include: Marking Stones, Binaural Residency, Nodar, Portugal;  Intimate Investigations, Western Front ‘Contemporary Ritual’ series,  Vancouver 2003, Down to Earth, Ebent Performance Festival, Barcelona, 2003, 10 Mandalas Boreal Art/Nature Center residency, Quebec, Canada 2003, Volume: compressed and Expanded, City Site,  San Francisco Art Commission , San Francisco, California 1999,  18 Short Ceremonies, for Memory and Vision- Grosse Glienke Military base, Potsdam, Germany .2000-1. In Israel where she currently lives, she has participated in VIP- performance event at, Blurrr Performance Biennial, Heara , 4,5,and 7multidisciplinary site events  in Jerusalem, (2002-4) Backyard with Olive Grove, in the remnants of an olive grove in a suburban town near Tel Aviv 2001-5 , as well as exhibiting in many solo and group shows.