Ofri Cnaani | Minor Inscriptions

Ofri Cnaani’s practice spans media, performance art, and critical theory, exploring the correlations and associations between knowledge, body, technology, and space.
In this work, Cnaani uses archival documents, maps, testimonies, and video footage to trace a border that has ceased to exist physically but still resonates in the urban memory and social infrastructure: the invisible border of the military administration that governed Jaffa in 1948–1950. The work focuses on “bureaucratic violence”: a system of control based on the administrative regulation of movement and access, where every passage through the city requires permits. How can violence operate through administrative practices like numbered lists and statistical databases?
The work takes place on a desk and filmed from above – the overhead view often associated with a position of authority. Documents, maps, physical objects, and mobile screens are arranged across the desk. A multilayered editing of photos, videos, and images creates a dynamic and timeless map of Jaffa/Yafa, where freedom of movement is managed capriciously and the physical and symbolical borders remain palpable, even if they are invisible. The permits, checkpoints, and detainments did not go anywhere, they only took on a different shape.