The Orangerie presents a collection of video works that fuse documentary and fiction in an attempt to observe and understand complex entanglements. Emerging from sedimented political and social environments, the artists explore various image-making tools to break through the seen world. Appearing along a circular path in Grüneburgpark through Augmented Reality, the videos virtually inhabit the physical space together, without separability. 

What powers do images have in processing composite realities and cultivating political imaginaries? As extreme winds blow, The Orangerie seeks to shelter and hold open possible spaces of encounter. Within the covered-up wound-space of the Grüneburgpark, the video works coexist, different yet inseparable, bound by ceaseless storms of histories and the continuously generated trauma of displacement and loss.

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The Grüneburgpark is the largest park in Frankfurt. For almost a century, it belonged to the Rothschild family, who had built an Orangerie on its grounds. In 1935, the park was seized by the Nazi city administration and opened to the public the following year. Albert von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, the last resident of the estate, fled to Switzerland and took his own life in 1941.

Appearing in their contemporary form around the mid-16th century, Orangeries function as winter housing for citrus and other detached southern plants that were not made to survive the northern climate. Being almost entirely inter-fertile, citrus plants have entangled histories of becoming, from East Asia to Sevilla via the Arab Agriculture Revolution. A well-known composite is the Jaffa orange. First cultivated by Arab farmers in the mid-19th century, the orange named after the city in whose markets it first appeared became an agricultural focus for the growing Jewish settlement. For some time, ties between Arab and Jewish farmers and exporters proved strong even amidst the growing tensions. Then, what was an image of return for some became a symbol of disaster for others. 

Hinda Weiss’s Frankfurt Notes (2019) was filmed in Frankfurt, intricately weaving the city’s monuments, landmarks, and public sculptures into the Grüneburgpark, with the memorial rose garden as its base. By interlacing fragments of Frankfurt’s sedimented Jewish history of loss and displacement, she crafts a portrait of the city that bridges past and present into a serene space of contemplation, much like the park itself. In Epiphany (2023), Muhammad Toukhy's video work presents an image reminiscent of neorealistic cinema combined with the jaggedness and eerieness of a drone camera. Toukhy's video explores the custom of retrieving a cross thrown into the water at St. Peter's Church in Jaffa, known for its unusual westward orientation. This orientation prompts reflections on Jaffa's deep connection to the sea and the West, as well as the distinctive Palestinian identity in this enclave surrounded by Israeli neighbourhoods—a constant invocation of nostalgia and grief.

Trembling Time (2001) by Yael Bartana captures and moulds a moment of silence during Israel's Memorial Day from a bridge overlooking traffic. As the commemorative siren sounds, driving cars slow to a halt, and passengers step out and stand still before resuming their journey. Bartana uses slow motion, repetition, and cross-fading to create a layered, critical reflection on the ritual, exposing the ghostly omnipresence of collective trauma. Bidoon Enwan (Untitled, 2009), in Arabic بِدون عنوان, means both "without an address" and "untitled." In the video, the artist Raafat Hattab tends to an olive tree, connecting with the memory and yearning for a return to a place that was. As the camera zooms out, the space around is revealed, anchoring the old tree in Rabin Square in the middle of paved contemporary Tel Aviv––exposing the state of being detached while remaining rooted in place. 

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