لقاءات الواقع الافتراضيّ في متحف إسرائيل: بيوت فلسطينيّين ومدار الفؤاد

This essay discusses the relationship between intimacy and violence in the context of colonial oppression. Drawing from geographical literature on spatial intimacies, the article delves into the specific ways Israel targets socio-spatial entities while deploying and targeting intimacy. It does so through an analysis of Visitors, a virtual reality installation at Israel Museum that abolishes the social and political realities of Palestinians, which are juxtaposed with the settler colonial violence that daily targets Palestinian homes outside the borders of the Israel Museum. The author argues that home as a site of analysis can shed light on how political representations become mapped out and framed in the case of Palestinians, making explicit the relationship between the geography of home and the politics of representation. While Landau’s exhibition is meant to bridge a social gap between two people, his ideological assumptions, seemingly divergent from the state of Israel, remain infused by settler colonial politics of fear and racial superiority.