^{To begin with, the territory itself is inseparable from vectors of deterritorialization, working it from within: either because the territoriality is supple and "marginal," in other words itinerant, or because the territorial assemblage itself opens onto and is carried off by other types of assemblages. . . D is in turn inseparable from correlative reterritorialization. (Deleuze and Guattari 1989, 509)}

Olive Groves

The landscape performance of olive groves expresses the long-standing tradition of agrarian culture. In the Jewish tradition, olive trees symbolize peace and are one of the seven species mentioned in the Bible. Contemporary Israel/Palestine, they are also a terrain of political-ideological conflict. In contradiction with their firm and solid image, olive trees are easy to relocate and are occasionally being uprooted and displaced. This occurs when the ground plots are needed for housing, infrastructure, or highway building, and in exchange for compensation enshrined in law. Sometimes, however, mainly in the occupied territories of the West Bank, olive trees are the subject of direct violence, being uprooted as an act of terror against their native Palestinian owners. The common practice of (legally) displacing olive trees is an act of deterritorialization. This practice conveys a sense of abuse and an instrumental approach to the notion of the olive grove. When repositioned on-site – such as in public piazzas or traffic roundabouts, shaped in a bizarre topiary manner – it produces hybrid and detached landscape performances of the public realm, foreign to the urban or suburban context.

The streets around the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station are the residence of work immigrants and asylum seekers (mainly from Sudan, and Eritrea). In the hectic pastiche of residential buildings, industrial workshops, garages, warehouses, small shops, and ethnic groceries, there is a tensioned co-existence between impoverished locals and newcomers – immigrants and Israelis. In Tel Aviv, as in other places around the country, new groves of matured displaced olive trees were used to re-occupy land after the evacuation of unauthorized tenants, creating a hybrid landscape performance. The groves operated as a means of holding the land and were declared as 'temporary public groves' mainly in lower-class neighborhoods around the city. Either in roundabouts or as temporary groves, this act of reterritorialization of the olive trees is a landscape expression of power, a manifestation of W.J.T. Mitchell's (2002) notion of landscape as an agent of power.

The manipulation of gardens, olive groves, and the landscape in general, reveals social, cultural, ideological, and political conflicts. Addressing the idea of deterritorialization, the hybrid groves imply power enforced over people, plants, and landscapes, exposing tension such as planted/displaced, rooted/uprooted, local/foreigner, and temporary/permanent.

Olive trees in a roundabout and road's mediator. Photo: Efrat Hildesheim, 2022.

Temporary Olive groves in Tel Aviv, Shlavim st. Photo: Efrat Hildesheim, 2022.

Gardens To Go

Gardens are rooted in the ground in which they were formed, and presumed to be non-transferable or detachable. Ponds are the core of the garden, and their lively enchanting ecosystems operate as its source of life and desire. Uprooting the ponds seems inconceivable, implying the dissolution of the garden as a whole.

Between the years 2010-2013, I made three installations titled Gardens To Go, reacting to the displacement of landscape features, peoples, and trees, underlining the notion of deterritorialization and power in the landscape. The Gardens To Go attended to inherent dialectical tensions in gardens, sites, and human (im)mobility and drew on the concealed and unveiled power relations practiced in landscapes and urban spaces such as public gardens and groves. The installations – comprised of a whole freshwater ecosystem of ponds or water tanks – suggested variations of an uprooted garden while implying the vibrating desire of the ponds as the garden's core conveying both its Eros and Thanatos. The works suggested a deconstructed and fragmented in-situ garden's core which unfolded against their surroundings, unveiling the elusive nature of landscape and gardens.

The installation Water Lilies Garden To Go #1 was realized in September 2010 as a part of the Shapira neighborhood art festival near the Tel Aviv central bus station. It lasted for only three days, in a neighborhood where temporary olive groves instantly appeared and where many of its residents are work immigrants and foreigners. The semi-opaque plastic water tanks contained Water Lilies (Nymphaeaceae), Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), and tiny frogs. Its lively unmediated character appealed to the neighborhood's children that enjoyed a hands-on experience of the work. It was positioned at an empty plot, similar to those with the temporary groves, thus echoing the same practice. The work reflected on political-ideological conflicts in Israeli society concerning the status of refugees, asylum seekers, and work immigrants. It resonated with similar dialectics as the instant olive groves, implying the convergence of power and mobility of people and plants.

In the summer of 2011, the installation Water Lilies Gardens To Go #2 was displayed at the Inga Gallery in Tel Aviv, adjacent to its previous location in Shapira neighborhood. The gallery is located within a rough setting of industrial buildings of medium-small factories, workshops, and warehouses. It gradually became repopulated with artists' studios and galleries in the process of gentrification that pushed out the original residents but also the foreign new ones. At the gallery's inner court, the work further unfolded, performing an act of reterritorialization of its fragments. The deconstructed garden's core formed a hybrid garden that conveyed the conflicts of its surroundings with reflection on Monet's Water Lilies paintings. It also resonated with the dialectics of deterritorialization and trauma, temporality and instantaneous, and the ambiguous performance of power relations in landscapes and gardens (Meishar, 2017).

The installation Water Lilies Garden o Go #1 in Shapira neighborhood, Tel Aviv, Photo: Efrat Hildesheim, 2011.

The installation Water Lilies Garden To Go #2 in Inga Gallery, Tel Aviv, Photo: Efrat Hildesheim, 2011.

Lemnaceae is a garden installation that was displayed in the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art at the exhibition Other People’s Problems: Conflicts and Paradoxes, curated by Doreet Levitte Harten and Dalia Levin in the fall of 2013. The work was composed of eight metal water ponds (110-120 cm. Diameter / 15 cm. height), Duckweed/water lenses (Lemnaceae), Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), and pieces of waste and garbage (cigarette butts, cans, snacks' wrappers, bottle caps). It was situated in a sunken, narrow courtyard that the public could not reach, between the museum and the street above. The spectators, viewing the work from behind great glass windows along a steep staircases hallway, could not fully perceive the work as a whole because of the changing viewpoint along the staircase.

The name of the work – Lemnaceae – refers to the aquatic plants, a species that is either rootless or has simple rootlets and thus floats on the surface of freshwater bodies. The floating Lemnaceae is the antipode of the olive grove. Its performance alluded to the paradox of (im)mobile garden. This third version of Gardens To Go pertains to power and deterritorialization not only through the dialectics of the temporal and (im)mobile, but also through the notions of desire, the anamorphic view, and the mode of the diorama. These leads of discussion suggest that power may be indirect, ambiguous, and elusive yet inherent to the idea of the garden. Taken together, they unfolded the idea of a nomadic garden – a garden without a territory – thus defying the idea of territoriality and power.

In Lemnaceae, positioning the ponds in the empty concrete courtyard next to an existing Elm tree (Ulmus) enhanced the tensions of the temporal and the (im)mobile discussed earlier in the article. It is even more noticeable considering the spatial proportions: the courtyard level is higher than the level inside the museum. As a result, the ponds are situated within the viewer's eye level, appearing as if floating and unconnected to the ground.

This location within the open court between the museum and the street means that it is concurrently part of the museum and outside its main building, allowing a close yet detached parted view of the ponds. It evokes the discussion on desire, the anamorphic view, and the dioramic mode that relate to the spectator's experience, its changing point of view, and its relation to movement and desire that motivate that view.

When viewing the work while in movement, it either gradually disappeared when one was on his way downstairs or reappeared and was revealed on the way upstairs, amplifying the sense of floating, uncertainty, and disequilibrium. The natural movement and vision that generally occurs within a 'normal' garden were converted in this case by a vector of descending/ascending the stairs, producing a reversal of momentum and therefore an inevitable disappearance/reappearance of the garden's sight. This momentum operated as an anamorphic mechanism of space in which perception depends on movement, and therefore the sight of the garden was perceived from an enhanced perspective. The anamorphic vector of sight constituted through movement is motivated by the desire to capture the whole work in one sight (Žižek 1991; Weiss 1995: 39; Hildesheim 2020). In Lemnaceae, the level differences, the vector of movement, and the wide thick glass restricted the spectators from capturing the work as a whole, making them walk up and down the stairs and along the window, thus manipulating their move and gaze. The anamorphic mechanism prevented the spectators from achieving it hence the partially satisfied desire to see
Observing the garden through the large window glass brings to mind the experience of looking at a scene displayed in a habitat dioramas exhibition, typical to museums of natural history. The viewers acquiesce to the illusion that the dioramas provide through the three-dimensional scene built within the narrow space of the displayed scene. The dioramas offer a reterritorialization of nature and landscape. Repositioned behind a window and heavily illuminated, nature and landscapes are then objectified and dramatized in the service of science. The habitat dioramas regulate the power relations between the viewers and the scene. In museums of natural history, they not only order the spectators' view but also relate to power relations in the landscape by manifesting anthropocentric perception of nature and often also reveal a colonialist approach towards the displayed theme.

The work Lemnaceae undertakes a similar convergence of art, gardens, and science. The dioramic modus in Lemnaceae evokes these power relations and a theatrical view of the garden's performance, a distanced perception of 'nature'/landscape. While performing a reterritorialization of (eight) ecosystems, it recalls the garden's origin as a cabinet of curiosities and its resonance in natural history museums, archeological museums, and botanical gardens (Graham 1993: 286-307; Garcia and Normand 2019: 141-150). The Dioramic gaze provokes the spectators' idea of the garden and its perception of the concealed subtle conflicts and dialectics it conveys.

The installation Lemnaceae in the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo: Efrat Hildesheim, 2013.

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