“Face to Face with the Ancestors of Civilization”: Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas's Archive of the Copy

In Palestinian artists Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas’s And Yet My Mask, the artists use virtual tours and other artifacts (digital and otherwise) to document acts of return to destroyed Palestinian villages in a deliberate attempt to “excavate the future.” While the ruins are a sign of destruction, the artists suggest they may also become the site from where to rethink destruction and reimagine the possibility of revival—of becoming. Mobilizing several key conceptual features of modern archaeology (“ruins,” but also “the artifact” and the idea of “ancient civilizations”), the work revisits the Israeli national archaeological archive, questioning the state’s monopoly over archaeological findings. Whereas Israel’s broader vision is to render the potentiality of Palestine as an impossible and visually unimaginable future, Abou-Rahme and Abbas offer an alternative archival imagining for the future.