Tali Keren | Preaching to the Choir
Tali Keren’s New Jerusalem is a research project which gave rise to a “bureaucratic musical performance” at the monthly meeting of the Jerusalem City Council. A cantor sang parts of the codex of the municipal outline plan, Plan 2000, to the mayor and council members. The plan, which was never authorized but is nevertheless implemented in situ, is the first plan drafted in Jerusalem since the 1967 occupation and the annexation of East Jerusalem; the document refers to a “united” Jerusalem and describes it as the capital of the “Jewish-democratic” state. By combining two types of appeal to the public – a religious ceremony and an administrative ceremony – the performance analyzes the text of the plan, which consists of legal language intertwined with messianic rhetoric. It thus exposes the routine textual expression of a charged ideology.
