I gave an interview to Subtopia about the project in Manshia. I think it came out good so your are all welcome to read and comment. Irrelevant to me I think it’s a good site to check out anyway.

I remember when I found Ronen’s project (un)Documented Disappearance back in March I was blown away. I thought it made crucial reflections on migratory space today, filling the street drains of Europe with images and documents of refugees and immigrants trapped in the gutter, being washed away like trash in a perpetual stir under everyone’s feet, conjuring this kind of urban consciousness about migrant struggles as they ghosted past in the peripheries of our street-wandering eyes.
Well, his latest project is an awakening of the ghost of Manshia, a coastal Israeli city known today as Jaffa that was garrisoned from the Arabs back in 1947. This time Ronen has outlined with chalk the old boundaries of the Arab neighborhood just south of Tel Aviv before it was transformed by the Israelis.
I love this project for many reasons but mostly because of the way Ronen understands borders as outlines of memory, as ephemeral bodies in themselves, and not merely lines of state power.
Segueing nicely from my last chat with Jay Isenberg about the Israeli Security Wall and his future plans to retrace “the spaces of the uninhabited” along a “pilgrimage of hope” somewhere near the Israeli/Palestinian border, Ronen and I recently talked about his work as a public artist, his skepticism of archeology, what he hopes to achieve as a ghost chaser and No Borders activist, and different ways public art in the form of direct action can subvert the political regimes that cement themselves in structures like border walls.

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