Today we are releasing our new body of work, Gaza Strip Destruction Kit. This installation consists of two D9 wooden bulldozer replicas, Ralph Lauren (™) paint, cardboard, and concrete. It looks like this:
The project was inspired, among other things, by Eyal's Weizman Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (2007), Stephen Graham's Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (2010) and George Eisen's Children Play in the Holocaust (1988). Below is an excerpt from Graham's book:
“The main damage to the physical infrastructure of Palestinian cities, roads, water systems and electricity grids was done using massive, sixty-tonne D9 armoured bulldozers. As Mark Zeitoun remarked in August 2002, the behemoth D9s were retrofitted with ‘special blades and buckets optimized for concrete demolition and a powerful asphalt-ripper in the rear. The resultant power house machinery... is the tool of choice for destroying electrical grids, digging up buried water and sewerage services, taking out shop fronts and demolishing cars’.” (p. 285)
Additional glosses and quotes can be read here.
You can see Gaza Strip Destruction Kit here.