The devastating assault still underway in the Gaza Strip has produced harrowing images that have flooded our eyes, but in such abundance that they now seem almost normalised. Israeli artist and architect Eyal Landman, while completing his master’s degree in design and technology at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, set himself the courageous challenge of conveying the horror of death to his fellow citizens, who are in some way—directly or indirectly—connected to that heart-wrenching slaughter. Working with the casualty figures from the ongoing war in Gaza, the artist extracted the over 900 names of Palestinian children under one year of age and used them to create an interactive installation exploring the concept of “zero distance”—the state in which the observer can no longer maintain an emotional or cognitive separation from the event being depicted. In a dark room, a marble slab rests on a stainless steel cart. The visitor, immersed in a solitary and intimate experience, is invited to place their hands on it and remain still, waiting, in present reflection. Only after a few moments is the image of their hands projected onto the wall, accompanied by the name of one of the 958 infants who died in Gaza. In this way, the archive of those who are no longer alive is juxtaposed with the archive of visitors who choose to remain standing, confronting their own personal realisation. In an era dominated by the overproduction of images of literally every kind, Landman adopts a strategy that is the exact opposite: he uses the languages of statistics and information not to explain reality, but to reveal the limits of communication.

 

Eyal Landman – Zero Range