PASSAGE2015 Single-channel video installation, 7 min 40 sec, color, sound
Filmed in Jerusalem, Passage is a single-take sequence that follows the path taken by the artist toward Al-Aqsa. At the entrance to the Esplanade of the Mosques, a guard questions him about his identity and the purpose of his visit, ultimately labeling him as “dangerous” upon discovering a camera in his bag.
For most of the video, the camera remains concealed in the artist’s jacket pocket, caught between the desire to reveal and the need to withhold. In this way, Halloubi interrogates the viewer’s impulse to consume images of the “elsewhere.”
Yet the artist reclaims the responsibility for what is shown — and for what is deliberately withheld — raising the question of the ethics of the image in a space where nothing escapes the gaze of the camera nor the circulation of images. The image, rendered partially abstract and accompanied by the ambient sounds of the city and the muezzin’s call to prayer, transforms this ordinary route into a mystical experience of travel.