Jerusalem — Take II | By Jack Persekian

Jerusalem’s landscape is a palimpsest of competing ideologies, where each layer of stone and soil bears witness to the violence of curation. This project reveals that preservation is never neutral; it is an act of power, privileging certain histories while silencing others. Visual archaeology, as practiced here, becomes a form of counter-mapping, challenging the colonial gaze by resurrecting absences and interrogating the politics of visibility. Ultimately, the project compels us to ask: Who is permitted to belong in a "holy" city?The answer lies not in the stones but in the stories they obscure. By layering past and present, the project rejects the colonial nostalgia that freezes Jerusalem in a mythical past, instead insisting on its lived, dynamic present. The city’s tragedy is not its holiness but the relentless weaponisation of that holiness to justify erasure. In this light, visual archaeology becomes an act of ethical remembrance, a refusal to let the violence of curation have the final word. Jerusalem’s true sanctity lies not in its monuments but in the enduring sumud (steadfastness) of its people, whose roots, like those of the uprooted olive trees, persist beneath the asphalt, waiting to break through.