Ava Aviva Avnisan in collaboration with Doug Rosman, Specters of Home - Prologue (first 90 seconds), 2024

Video Description:

The film begins with two quotes in white text against a black background. The first, from Walter Benjamin's On the Concept of History, reads, "...cultural heritage is part and parcel of a lineage which she cannot contemplate without horror. There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism." The second, from Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, reads, "What does it mean to follow a ghost?... Here again what seems to be out in front, the future, comes back in advance from the past, from the back."

A black screen appears while the narration begins. We then see a view looking down on a book laying on a wood surface. The book is called The Holy Land from the Air, by Amos Elon and Richard Nowitz, and features a photograph of a mountainous, desert landscape. Hands with light skin and green nail polish enter the frame and open the book. As the book opens, the image changes to appear as if rendered in watercolor. The hands flip through the pages of the book, and the screen goes back to black.

There is a brief view of a digitally rendered landscape before the screen returns to black again. White text then appears on the screen. It reads, "Ava Aviva Avnisan proposes," and then "Specters of Home," followed by translations of the title in Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew.