"Overloaded" - Video Installation

Faten Nastas & Jabra Mitwasi

The video installation "Overloaded" is an imaginary journey that takes place between the two temples of a person who is in a state of exhaustion, a state of a system collapse. Reality overpowers him, his consciousness overflows, flooded with visions, memories and imaginations. He feels overloaded, a claustrophobia that leads to escape, collapse and resurrection. It is a portrait of an escape from the town of Bethlehem - a Palestinian town overflowing with construction sites, collapsing scaffolding, childhood memories, reality divine power and hope.

The film begins with a man running to the desert, exhausted from life. Everything the surrounds him becomes a weight around his shoulders, a heavy load, a burden. He is threatened by his environment so that he cannot disengage himself, he cannot detach the reality from his mind, his heart and his feelings. He runs, escapes, breathing hard, until he falls and collapses. While he is falling, he is flooded with visions, reality takes hold of him even while he falls, seeking peace and quiet images from Bethlehem still appearing in his head. At the zero point, Jesus' eyes lift him, and he hangs on to them. In a state of blurred senses he sinks into deep thought, reviewing his memories, looking through his photo album, his childhood memories. He re-experiences them, with innocence, love and joy. In his imagination, without any boundaries, he reconstructs the picture of his childhood. With exaltation, he is carried towards the sunset, and vice versa…

In the space of the room, Jesus' eyes (from a Byzantine icon*) are spread on a huge reproduction. These eyes are also echoed on several monitors, present, absent and reappearing. The "escaper" believes in supreme power, he believes that this supreme power is watching him and that only this power can lift him when he falls. Two eyes with divine power are looking at him. They more than look at him - they lift him high into the sky, into the sunset that also takes place on several monitors on which the film echoes simultaneously, replicated, existing in an inner reality that recurs time and time again without a beginning, a middle and an end.

Curator: Tal Ben-Tzvi.

*"Christ Blessing = Christ the Pantocrator" (the ruler of all) is a unique Byzantine Icon from the 7th Century. It is 50 X 85 cm. It was painted and still existing at Saint Catherine Monastery in Sinai. It is unique for its way of representing Jesus Christ. He is represented in his both natures. Some explain it as representing the nature of Jesus Christ as "Jesus the God & Jesus the Human": These are the two natures of Jesus Christ; they are two united in One. They are both equal with no priority to any of them. So, the left side of the Icon represents the Divine nature, it is without shadow. While the right side represents the Human nature, with shadows.

Others explain that it is representing the nature of His Divinity as "Jesus the Merciful God & Jesus the Just God": Mercy and Justice are the main characters of God. As a Just God, He is judgmental for all the sins that we, the human beings, are always committing (the right side). While as a Merciful God, he is represented with a kind of a sad and loving look (left side of the Icon).