Looking at Jerusalem / Al-Quds: a cultural-political-visual lexicon

Jerusalem / Al-Quds presents a unique combination of urban conditions: it is divided between East and West, and between Palestinian, ultra-orthodox and secular-traditional neighborhoods. It is a city where memories of the past and dreams of the future are part of present life, but also an everyday urban space, which produces unexpected encounters that defy predetermined categories. Beyond the purely human aspects, Jerusalem / Al-Quds is also a city that has plants and animals, water springs and urban nature sites, cracks and grasses, orchards and butterflies. In the course we will explore Jerusalem/Al-Quds with multidisciplinary tools, which encourage multi-departmental collaborations. The organizing framework will be a cultural-political-visual lexicon, within which groups of students will explore different concepts in the concrete Jerusalem context, using different methodologies for gathering information and diverse mediums for presentation. The concepts could be abstract or concrete; man-made or natural; devices; Places, and more. The results of the course will constitute a conceptual lexicon and a subjective atlas of the city, inviting observation in a surprising way, but one that does not lose its connection to the concrete political, social and urban conditions. From this, we would like to open up a possibility for a different future of inclusion, concern, justice and cooperation between the different populations that together make up the city.