katalog-overlapping voices - Ritesinstitute

ded and comfortable belief that none of this has
anything to do with our everyday world.
By “processes of transformation”, we mean here
all forms of change and shifts in perspective that
take place once we displace the questions of israel
and Palestine to austria and place them in an
arrangement here.
it is our hope that an immediate and less fearful
engagement with the voices “from there” will in the
future have effects in turn upon what is “here”.
we know, of course, that those austrians who seek
to address these questions in a sensitive manner
have developed anxieties and cautions about engaging
artists from israel or Palestine. these attitudes
arose out of an awareness of how quickly the
deeply rooted anti-semitism in our society is called
into action once the subject of israel and Palestine
comes up.
Based on this caution, one of the foundations of
our work was that we did not believe that we could
“simply do” it.
these anxieties have their justifications. we believe
that the only way to deal with them is to counter
them. they are the consequence not least of
an awareness of how much ignorance – or how
much “not wanting to know” – there is here; and
how dangerous it is.
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