Gardi – Being – Moving – Identity – Offline/ Online

There are only 2 places i know how to get to in Jerusalem without getting lost. “Stardust” a bar owned by my friend Avii and Yad VaShem – the Holocaust Museum – where i conducted a visual research in 2006. Every other destination in this city makes me disoriented.

My friend Gardi now lives in Ramallah. Last year she did research there for her dissertation (entitled: ‘”Before our Eyes: Les mots, non les choses. Jean-Luc Godard’s “Ici et ailleurs” and” Notre musique”‘) and now that her dissertation is finished (w00t!) – she’s back in the middle east. Since Israelis aren’t supposed to roam Ramallah and it takes three hours (!) to get to TLV using public transportation we often meet in Jerusalem. Our regular spot is the notorious “Kikar Zion” which she calls “ATM sq.” because of all the banks that are located there. My disorientation and troubles getting to Jerusalem are nothing in comparison to what she has to go through in her voyage from the occupied territories into Israel.
Gardi and i met in Toronto about 6 years ago. We were both misfits in our departments, constantly struggling with (what we considered) the ongoing attempts of both Academia and Canada to put out our fire. Gardi fled to Paris, slept in the Bastille area but technically lived in the Centre Pompidou Library and set up a Latino circle of thinkers and artists. I found refuge in New York, which I visited every time I could escape Toronto and finally moved back to Tel-Aviv, seeking distractions by working in the local Internet and hi-tech industry while completing my dis.
I always look at Gardi with awe and admiration. She’s fearless – a professional world-traveler, unbeatable border-crosser, and a sworn continent-hopper. She travels the world with her pink suitcase, laptop and inquisitive gaze.  Her stories from all over the world always make my eyes widen, my head spin, and often confuse me – make me want to cry and laugh simultaneously. As one of her profs said – every word in her dissertation is written in passion. I told her that sometime it seems like she’s one of the characters in Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives – a book she gave me as a gift.

gardi spotted at Havara checkpoint

Identities, Bios, Abouts

Since both of us have been teaching @ the Visual Culture Center in the University of Toronto (VCC) – and we’re quite familiar with the issue of (dis)location and identity we talked about it last time we met.I am fascinated with the way ppl nowadays describe themselves online and in the way online and offline personalities interact (and intersect). I come across many over the top descriptions on Twitter and bloggers’ “About” pages which make “go hmmm…” Take for example this guy’s bio - “Zebra Crossing, Brooklyn Play, Starving Artist (Trader Joe’s), Reluctant Yogi, G Train Distruster, Other Stuff”. Or this one – “Bio Seeker of truth in 140 characters or less. Scientia potentia est. Tweet me a cool fact the world should know. I will RT it. Freelance writer at your service.” And I haven’t even mentioned all those “Guru’s” and the people that are “obsessed” about things (as if there’s no other option, you either don’t care about something or obsessed about it).

It looks like everybody’s trying to be so unique and eye-catching but in face they aren’t saying much. A friend of mine even described Tweeter as the place where everybody try so hard to show how unspecial they are. This could be part of the game of online/ offline and may go with the territory (esp. on Twitter with its 140 characters). But it’s interesting to see how people openly define themselves while seeking a recognition of sorts, or maybe just “followers.”

“Leave it all behind, again”

After our talk Gardi emailed me. Her take is more philosophical:

“Maybe “where we are/been” defines us? I feel sometimes  detached from any roots (…), kind of like a nomad. But I don’t like the romantization of nomadism because it is actually very hard to be one (especially with the ‘wrong’ papers)… dunno also like a subject of globalization while refusing to buy into the ‘wired, virtual community’ of globalized sould because that presupposes a homogeneizing mindset… I told  you I dig the first line from Bolano’s Manifesto: “Leave it all again.” Which is really hard… although more and more, I’m finding certain stability and continuity in my work (while again, being weary that this stability will be homogeneous with the environment I’m in).

In a way this struggle to NOT fit in helps us “leave it all again.” The quote Gardi refers to is “the true poet is the one who is always abandoning himself. Leave it all behind, again. Take it to the road.” Leaving means resisting belonging. Taking it to the road refuses stability and denies us of the comforting fantasy that identities are stable, that they are not shifting. Being reborn, constantly “abandoning” oneself may be an act of a (true) poet, but it is so so difficult. Going against the stream may mean opposing the “homogenizing mindset” but it seems that for most people the question is less substantial. The flux of identity and the grip of Social Networks turned us all into teenagers, dealing with questions of identity, self-definition, self-expression and trying somehow to pass as someone special, or at least as non-conformists.