Pivoting around the restaging of two historical events – the 1947 UN debates over Resolution 181 which partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state; and scenes from a fictional film, The Middleton Family, made for the 1939 World’s Fair – this project excavates the seeds of destructive forces of Western diplomacy based on the twin powers of colonialism and capitalism. Examining this fraught moment in time, where the politics of democracy and the concept of the “common good” became bound up with the language and violent imperatives of capitalism and colonialism, this project imagines the past as our dystopic, violent present.
