Remember This Place: 31°20’46’’N 34°46’46’’E

Remember this place: 31°20’46”N 34°46’46”E explores the concept of a fragile home: one that has been continuously threatened in the physical world, yet continues to survive thanks to the determination of local women who fight daily to preserve their rights to the land. The story does not take place in one location. It does not have one protagonist. It is a journey across many homes, communities, and villages, where we encounter powerful Bedouin women who are activists, architects, artists, and poets working tirelessly to preserve their homes, culture, and histories from being erased.
Along the way, these women became key collaborators in the project. Together we visited various Bedouin communities that have been threatened with demolition or displacement, in order to record personal memories, digitize communities, and homes across the region, so that they can be remembered in the collective imagination. This VR experience weaves together fragments of spaces, personal memories, and visions of the future to create a virtual universe that speaks to the universal longing for “Home”.

Between 2019 and 2021, I lived in Ramallah, where I witnessed for the first time what life under military occupation looks and feels like on the ground.
I wanted to create a virtual reality project that could transport an outside viewer into this reality, one that was not my own, but had deeply affected me on a personal level. I embarked on a rollercoaster journey searching for protagonists and storylines that could convey this reality. However, I could not find one clear story line or protagonist. Instead, I realized that the story was about home and belonging, and what happens when the concept of home is continuously threatened. While being far away from my own home, I visited many communities, across areas A, B, and C of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), where I continuously heard stories of uprooting and displacement. Although this is the story of a phenomenon that takes place in many locations across the region daily (at a scale that is small enough to go largely unnoticed), I chose to work with Bedouin women, a particular community affected by this phenomenon, whose stories tend to receive less attention in the media.

PRODUCTION 1: Patricia Echeverria Liras - The Office for Public Therapy Politics
Calle Motrico, 4
28023 – Madrid, Spain
Tel. +34 634716080
patricia@experimentonpurpose.com
http://theofficeforpublictherapypolitics.com

PRODUCTION 2: The Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar
Education City
PO Box 34102
Doha, Qatar
Tel. +974 44545253
jack.taylor@northwestern.edu
http://mediamajlis.northwestern.edu

PRESS OFFICE: Patricia Echeverria Liras - The Office for Public Therapy Politics
Calle Motrico, 4
28023 – Madrid, Spain
Tel. +34 634716080
patricia@experimentonpurpose.com