A Home Is A Home

The third part of The Court Jester project, the installation A Home Is Home, explores the notions of nomadic habitat, ancestral land, borders, dispossession, forced displacement, and reconstruction. It uses the location of the Peripherie 8 space, situated on the border between Basel-City and Basel-Land, as both a chromatic and geographical reference. The pieces bear stigmata reminiscent of gutted buildings and the landscape seen from above in a war zone. The installation focuses on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, a zone, a land, and a home for millions of people. It serves as a philosophical and personal reflection on issues of responsibility, information, and involvement, examining what it means to have—or lack thereof—a home, or not, within one's own country. How can we find objective and accurate information about the ongoing war if no international journalist is allowed to cover the conflict? I won’t forget the partisan machinations and political calculations, defying all common sense, humanity, and peace. I won’t forget all the “surgical strikes” by the IDF that tore apart buildings and dug ten-meter-deep holes in the ground. I think of the Geneva Conventions, trampled on with each new incident. Beni plays the situation like a deck of cards, making alliances with his knaves, turning laws and rules into his queens, thinking himself a king, always keeping an American ace up his sleeve, without even bothering to wear the joker’s mask. I think of all I want to say, and the only sentence that comes out in this moment: “Gaza, my heart bleeds when I think of you.” Missile launcher, human target, house of cards, rocket launcher, human shield, iron dome. I think about slipping a watermelon into the thought bubble of a chat on Instagram instead of a comment. I will not forget the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs dropped on Gaza in one year.
 I think of the numbers and reports every day. Human beings become statistics, existing only through their disappearance. A land is a homeland.
 A country is a house.
 A territory is a refuge.
 A home is a home.