Clogged – Terminkalender

BENJI BOYADGIAN: CLOGGED, Multi media. 2015-2017

This project attempts to write a story for the second aqueduct, a collage of projected fragments collected along its path, dowsing the ghost of the water that flowed in this pipe. This water channel ceased to function about fourteen centuries ago, probably due to recurrent clogging of the pressure pipe, the best-preserved trace of the ?higher-level aqueduct?. It was built by the Roman Tenth Legion at some point during the 2nd century AD, perhaps on the ruins of a Herodian aqueduct, in order to bring water back to the upper city that had been rebaptised Aelia Capitolina. Climbing 40 meters of topography and spanning a distance of about 2 km, its function was to allow water to flow the straight way to Jerusalem, the short stretch of the historic artery that was the Way of the Patriarchs. Today, this north?south vertebra is the urban highway of the Hebron road. Spanning a distance of 13 km, the aqueduct connects two obsolete pools, from the south of Bethlehem to the old city of Jerusalem. In between, the continuous urban fabric forms an urban pâté, while miscellaneous infrastructures fragment the agglomeration. The genesis of Jerusalem happened around a spring at the fringe of the desert around which Canaanite fortifications were built some 4,000 years ago. Since then, the demography has oscillated with the availability of water. The agglomeration as we know it today is a manifestation of the latest phase of growth that began in the late 19th century. A city growing from its ancient water systems, from its ground, a fiction that is its own reflection. The spring grew into pools and aqueducts that collected water from other sources, and ultimately into a machine pumping from lakes and aquifers elsewhere to channel dreams into this insatiable city.

Other events at the CrossSections HUB:
14.06.2018, 17.00 Talk with Ricarda Denzer (DE/AT)
16.06.2018, 17.00 Presentation by Barbara Holub (DE/AT)