Witness: Palestine centers close-up portraits of Palestinians Hammer met during the first LGBTQ Solidarity Tour of the country in 2012. Hammer was moved to amplify these personal accounts and cultural histories of the Israeli occupation, underscoring the humanity of the Palestinian cause in their struggle for political autonomy. The interviewees share details of day-to-day life under occupation and describe how mainstream media has created a stereotype of Palestinians as terrorists by publicizing their resistance against the Israeli state without full historical or interpersonal context.

Witness: Palestine was first performed at MoMA PS1 on the occasion of the retrospective Pier Paolo Pasolini (2012), projected onto a group of seven volunteers wearing white shirts and masks. This staging references Fabio Mauri’s Intelletuale (1975), in which the artist projected The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) onto Pasolini himself—according to Mauri, “a way for the author of the film to become objectively responsible for his own work.” Hammer’s creation of a “human screen” added literal depth to her footage, which molded to the three-dimensional surface, and emphasized the political charge that everyone carry the stories and universal human desires of the Palestinian people.

Hammer’s accompanying documentary footage, Checkpoint, is available upon request. For more information, please contact the EAI office.