The City, the Bag, and the Liminal Space: A Performative Appearance of an Orthodox Object in the Jerusalem Landscape. An External Perspective on Visual Language, Identity, and Resistance.

The most mundane objects are the ones that can reveal the most. And the city, like the body, wears them over and over again. This research was born from a random glance at a plastic bag carried by one who is other than me. The bag, no mere carrying tool but rather an item that becomes part of dress and of the spatial appearance of identity, made me ask: How can such an everyday object serve as a nexus of culture, belonging, and space?

My research relies on visual and material culture research methodologies, and focuses on an urban and consumer-oriented reading of the haredi plastic bag as a performative object within Jerusalem’s liminal spaces. Through rambling and visual and textual documentation, and from the reflexive position of an external observer, I seek to trace the instances of the bag in Jerusalem, and to examine how it embodies communal, consumer, and cultural affinities.

The bag offers an alternative framework for reading the urban landscape: Not through central power structures, but through the little details that tile the margins. By deliberately looking at what seems marginal, this research proposes a new interpretation to questions of material, identity, belonging, and resistance – and to the ways in which everyday objects shape how the city is seen, experienced, and understood.