The Production Office

The Production Office is a conceptual and physical setting for a series of artworks and events, a publication and research material related to Uriel Orlow's multi-part project Unmade Film. As an expansive collection of audio-visual works Unmade Film points to the structure of a film but never fully becomes one; an impossible film, fragmented into its constituent parts.
The works take as their starting point the mental hospital Kfar Sha'ul in Jerusalem. Initially specialising in the treatment of Holocaust survivors – including a relative of the artist – it was established in 1951 using the remains of the Palestinian village Deir Yassin which was depopulated in a massacre by Zionist paramilitaries in April 1948. Unmade Film probes the spatial and narrative layering of the Holocaust and Nakba, addressing conflicting narratives without comparing them and engaging with blind spots of remembrance and psychological aspects of trauma and haunting.

Unmade Film evolved out of long-term research as well as collaborative workshops with amateur actors, musicians and pupils in East-Jerusalem and Ramallah. The various parts combine voice, drawing, video, text, music and photography in an assemblage whose multiple meanings emerge in collaboration with the visitors of the exhibition. The Production Office considers the works at various stages of production, and re-connects with reflexive processes, research materials and further references on the politics of memory in a series of talks, screenings, readings and discussions.

A modular publication edited by Uriel Orlow and Andrea Thal and concieved in collaboration with Georg Rutishauser and Sonja Zagermann accompanies the exhibitions and events of Unmade Film at Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem; Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; Centre culturel suisse, Paris and Les Complices*, Zurich. The publication is published by edition fink.