qais assali

And did those feet in ancient time — Jerusalem hymn

Qais Assali w/ Joseph Devine; JU-EH; Or Zubalsky

since 2015

immersive audiovisual experience/installation 

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Jerusalem hymn

3:35 min video Link to Vimeo

Voice: Joseph Devine

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And did those feet in ancient time – Greenland

6:48 min audiovisual (stereo) Link to SoundCloud

Voice: JU-EH 

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Time Travels: Building a State in the Middle East

Custom software, high school history textbooks, score insert

Voice: Or Zubalsky

For 22. SURVIVAL Art Review FRENZY AND INDEPENDENC's Romanticism at Brochów estate, Wrocław, Poland, my immersive audiovisual experience/installation in Poland June 21 – 25, 2024, titled: And did those feet in ancient time — Jerusalem hymn asks for the image of Romanticism on the level of emotions, myths and facts, sometimes in opposition to what is already known, familiar and oft-reproduced.

The installation builds on the popular and revered British ‘Jerusalem Hymn’, a poem written by William Blake (1804) with music by Hubert Parry in 1916. Assali explores it in the contemporary context in order to prove questions around the religious, the political, the voice, and the politics of listening. It focuses specially on the image of Jerusalem, which is (re)imagined, (re)translated, and (re)performed in the hymn.

William Blake’s poem 'And did those feet in ancient time' (1804), written during the Industrial Revolution, reflects the disenfranchisement of British peasants by the Enclosure Acts, which privatized common land and drove many to industrial cities. The poem suggests, according to a British folk tale, that Jesus visited England during his undocumented years. Jerusalem has been used as a metaphor for Heaven by the Church of England, as well as other Christian churches.

Irish-Scottish Arabic language student Joseph Devine sings the notable hymn in different locations (England, Ireland and Palestine) in both Arabic and in English exploring how meaning is transformed by having these nuanced interventions.

The British occupation of Palestine was not only disastrous in politically pitting Arabs, Jews, and their respective nationalism against one another but also saw a collision between earthly and spiritual Jerusalems. The British vision imposed on Jerusalem during its colonial occupation transformed it into a "Biblical theme park," prioritizing heritage over modernity. Blake’s poem and Hubert Parry’s 1916 musical setting legitimized British colonial rule, fostering a collision of earthly and spiritual Jerusalems.

The immersive audiovisual experience, in collaboration with Cantonese soprano JU-EH, reimagines the romanticism of an empire where the sun never sets. Exercise singing at Disneyland in Florida became an act of producing self-orientalism, as Asssali related to the Disney Moroccan village and JU-EH related to the Japanese one. 

Or Zubalsky’s ‘Time Travels: Building a State in the Middle East’ inserts Blake’s poem and Parry’s music, the British hymn into Israeli history textbooks to expose patterns of legitimization in settler colonial pedagogy. These textbooks, showing a single image from 1948 of Al Nakba, are altered to make this visible, encouraging self-study and deeper engagement with the ongoing Palestinian catastrophe.

William Blake, And did those feet in ancient time, 1806

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