SETTING FOR HOLINESS

The Western Wall Plaza is the most important public space in Israel. It is a forum where questions surrounding religion, state, and nationality are negotiated. When it was first built, the Western Wall served as a retaining wall for the Temple. Over the centuries, and perhaps even millennia, it has been infused with a deep religious significance.

The Wailing Wall was a vestige, a narrow alleyway at the end of the Maghrebi Quarter, but since 1967, the Wall has become a spacious ritualistic site, a square where the Jewish religion and the new Zionist nationalism met, and to a large extent, underwent metamorphosis: the Jewish religion was changed by the romantic encounter with the site, as was the secular nationalism – which allowed religion a chance to permeate nationality. 

In addition to becoming a national site, the Western Wall has undergone many archaeological excavations. These were generally used as a tool to reinforce the Jewish identity of the site. In recent years, preliminary excavations have begun under the Western Wall Plaza, which serves as the central tool in this project, offering a new opportunity to discuss this fraught space.

The project proposes a different type of excavation: a descent into the subterranean, into what has been repressed, into the subconscious space. The excavation reveals another wall (the extension of the familiar Wall) and an alternative plaza. Together, they unearth the multifaceted and rich past of this site with its multiple competing narratives This action sets out to reformulate complex relationships that exist there today, and to create an alternative space; a parallel world, which will transform the plaza, and allow for a multitude of voices and stories.