The Schneller Case

Participating artists: Einat Amir, Tali Amitai-Tabib, Joshua Borkovsky, Pesi Girsch, Shlomo Serry, Zvi Tolkovsky, Ktura Manor and Rotem Manor, Karine Shabtai

An unplanned visit to the former military base at the Schneller Compound gave rise to the exhibition “The Schneller Case”. Here, on the margins of Mea She’arim, billboards announcing the construction of a luxury residential quarter concealed the renowned historic Syrian Orphanage. Since its establishment in 1860 by German Protestant missionary Johann Ludwig Schneller, the place has undergone numerous transformations: from a small missionary station to a vast educational enterprise, in the heart of a flourishing German-Arab neighborhood; from a Mandatory British military headquarters to the IDF Jerusalem District HQ. When Camp Schneller was evacuated in 2008, eight of its historical buildings were listed for conservation, but most of them remain sealed and deserted, primarily the monumental orphanage.
Soon thereafter, the building was squatted by homeless people, and valuable elements were looted or destroyed.

Nine artists were commissioned to conduct their own “salvage excavations” in this historic mound. Each in his/her own personal language, the artists depict impressions of their on-site visits and the fruits of their research. Some are drawn to the fragments while others perform acts of resuscitation and rectification, conjuring up scenarios and characters both real and fictive. Deserted rooms, graffiti, broken objects, and a game of basketball in the former chapel—the artists’ gazes depart from an immediate scene of disaster, sailing off to engage in conceptual matters prevalent in contemporary artistic discourse: memory and repression, culture and chaos, beauty and decay.

A chance encounter thus offered not only fertile ground for curatorial and artistic expression; it also issued a call for keen thought and critical reflection. In the ever-changing, disrupted urban sphere, the exhibition introduces an open proposal for observation and response, a real-time experiment as yet unfinished. The exhibition integrates archival photographs with contemporary artworks in the mediums of photography, video, installation, and painting.