Color poético, color político: Francis Alÿs y The Green Line

Poetic Color, Political Color: Francis Alÿs and The Green Line

Autor: Alexandra Tighe

In The Green Line (2004), a video by Belgian conceptual artist Francis Alÿs (1959), the artist walks through the municipality of Jerusalem with a punctured can of green paint. During his walk, he follows the Green Line, the border line that divided Jerusalem in two between late 1948 and 1967 and whose legacy continues to mark the city.

As the work itself states at its beginning, citing Meron Benvenisti’s book City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem, the Green Line was created in 1948 after the ceasefire between Israeli forces and the forces of the Arab Legion. Abdullah al-Tal of the Arab Legion drew his proposed border with a red pencil, and Moshe Dayan of the Israeli forces drew his with a green pencil. In the end, Dayan's green proposal was adopted, hence the name of this boundary: The Green Line.


The origins of The Green Line
The origins of the Green Line, which was intended to be a temporary armistice line and not a permanent dividing line, created enormous ambiguity regarding its exact boundaries. Over the following decades, in some parts of the border there was no limitation; in others, a physical fence was built (two different fences); in others, permanent military posts were maintained, and others seemed to be "no man's land." In the most absurd examples of the border's arbitrariness, entire streets and even private houses were found in the middle of the dividing line. As Benvenisti recounted, “it is surprising that the inextricable tangle caused by the cease-fire maps did not result in daily shooting incidents,” throughout its validity several people were indeed killed due to border ambiguity. Although the Six-Day War of 1967 and Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem marked the end of the Green Line as a physical and agreed-upon border, its creation and the subsequent imposition of a new series of municipal limits, divisions, and controls, often contradictory, continues to shape the city and the lives of its inhabitants.

The Green Line. Francis Alÿs. Via Youtube and Francis Alÿs Official Website. Watch video


The Green Line: Activism through color
In The Green Line, Alÿs walks through the city of Jerusalem with a perforated can of paint, dripping 58 liters of green paint randomly while filmmaker Julien Devaux follows him and records his intervention. This performative gesture, which the author himself describes as “political and poetic,” was later edited into a video lasting 17:41 minutes. The video follows Alÿs's walk and adds a quote from the artist, an excerpt from Benvenisti's book, and subtitles with the names of the neighborhoods and checkpoints the artist crosses. In addition to the original version, Alÿs conducted a series of eleven interviews with activists, historians, politicians, journalists, and researchers, compiling their reactions to the work and their reflections on the implications of the Green Line in general. Afterward, the artist superimposed the interviews onto the original video, creating twelve distinct versions: the initial act, with the initial video and different audio tracks, as well as numerous pieces re-signifying the work.

Social criticism is often a constant in Francis Alÿs's work. In The Green Line, color becomes a political statement through impact and irony. Using green paint to trace his line is an obvious reference to the name of that boundary and links Alÿs's action in the work to the political act of inventing and imposing borders. With his gesture, Alÿs transforms the city of Jerusalem into a canvas, "painting" a visual, tangible, and semi-permanent green line over the political—and now invisible—Green Line. This performative walk highlights the arbitrary and contradictory nature of this geopolitical boundary. During the journey, Alÿs passes through depopulated areas on the outskirts of Jerusalem and next to military checkpoints that evoke a traditional border. But he also walks through the city center, sometimes crossing the same avenue, sidewalk, or park. There are scenes in the video where city dwellers walk over the green paint trail created by the work. As Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan says in his interview with Alÿs, “It’s quite fantastic to see to what extent the absurd of the act corresponds exactly to the absurd of the line.”

The Green Line succinctly and with great visual power depicts how this separatism was imposed on an existing reality and suggests that dividing territory, and in this case a single city, is at least conflictive and absurd, highlighting the social and political differences that this invented border entails. Although there were no delimiting fences in 2004, the video shows the high and stark levels of segregation between Palestinians and Israelis. In his interview with Alÿs, Palestinian-Armenian historian Albert Agazarian reflected: "...in my mind, it [the Green Line] is a border...it's complete—two different societies. Now you can say living separately together. You can coin words like that, but the current situation is tragic." This aspect—the duality of a border that does exist and impacts the lives of Jerusalem residents, but is neither seen nor physically understood—was a recurring theme for many of the interviewees. The nature of Alÿs's act, tracing a line with the motion of his body and marking his path with a seemingly permanent substance that will soon disappear, embodies this contradiction. Israeli architect Eyal Weizman reflects that although it may seem not to, “when you walk with the paint you are designing, you are making a gesture, you are drawing a line and it implies…that you request two kinds of space…you project a difference…you are creating a kind of a barrier.”

The ability to move and travel is key in The Green Line. Here, privilege stands out. As a foreign man and artist, Alÿs moves through the segregated city, attracting curiosity and provoking reactions of surprise or confusion. However, at no point do soldiers intercept his path or attempt to search his backpack. As perceived in the audiovisual piece, he passes through the Ein Yaël and Ramot checkpoints without restrictions or pauses. Cars with Israeli drivers also do not stop. Unlike Alÿs, the border is a source of constant frustration and repression for Palestinians. “Anybody wanting to go over to the West,” –the part of Jerusalem administered by Israel–, “they’re stopped by these groups of border police…For young guys…it’s a complete nightmare,” describes Rima Hamami in her interview. Many Palestinians living in certain areas of the eastern city or on the outskirts endure daily mandatory searches to go to work, study, or visit family. Compared to Alÿs, who has the freedom to walk as he pleases and only stops to refill the green paint can, Hamami reiterates in her interview that as a Palestinian, “there is always this way in which you can’t just be relaxed and natural walking through a city…you are always a criminal.”

The visual power of the work clearly communicates that in the territory of Jerusalem, some have the right to free movement and others do not. The freedom of green paint, the color embodied, further highlights this reality of restricted movement. The green paint is not limited to one side of the border or the other: it drips wherever it wants. In certain scenes, the video shows the artist refilling the metal can, turning around, and starting to walk again. The camera stops and focuses on a color oozing onto the can and the ground, leaving a green puddle on the rocks and marking the territory with an artificial color with no political issues to infer its control. The green flows, according to the artist's movements and nothing else, staining the ground without considering who is around or the possible repercussions of its spill. The free movement of green, without inhibitions, contrasts with the control of mobility experienced by Palestinians in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories (and to a much lesser extent, by Israelis), provoking an inevitable reflection: how can it be that color has more rights than human beings?

Although color has a visual function, delineating a contrast with the black of the road or the browns and grays of gravel paths, in the context of the state of Israel and the apartheid it imposes on Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, green implies embodying the cultural, social, and political separation of its inhabitants, the violence of an occupation that is increasing daily, and the imposition of borders that devastate an entire region. With only a poetic act and a can of green paint, Francis Alÿs uses the power of color to show the absurdity of border creation and its consequences.

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