Stateless Nation is a long-term research project and an exhibition on the frontiers of citizenship. The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are the place where to investigate and to observe the new relations between territory, state and population, and to reflect on the new meanings and implications of the physical and social spaces. What is Palestine today and where are its borders? Who are the Palestinians and which kind of citizenship do they possess? Why are so many people forced to live outside Palestine, in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, in the Gulf States, in Europe and the United States? What dreams do they share, no matter where they are? The exhibition is composed of four models: passports, the room of dreams, on the border, and the book.

1. Passports
The Palestinians are people who find themselves simultaneously under military occupation and exile and are strangers in their own land. People who are rooted in the absence of the place. The path of this absence is evident in the documents which represent them: Lebanese, Egyptian and Syrian travel documents for Palestinian refugees, travel documents by the Palestinian Authority, Jerusalem’s special identity cards, stateless passports, Jordanian, European or American passports, and some who have no documents at all. The installation is composed of ten huge travel documents and passports (2,20 x 3 metres in size) that are the singe, the trace of the negation of the Palestinian state.

2. The Room of Dreams
“What is your dream?" is the question asked to more than fifty Palestinians interviewed in the OPT, Israel and in some of the Diaspora countries. The result is a frontal attack on stereotypes and simplified categories, which often minimize the complexity and variety of the human experience, especially in the case of Palestinians. Stories, evidences and thoughts collected not only to focus on a tragedy but, most of all, to draw attention to the great cultural ferment that these tragic events have created. The room of dreams is the physical space where all dreams are collected.

3. On the Border
It is in the transformation of the territory, more than any other political, religious and economic field, that the different strategies and tools of the Israeli occupation appear clear. The places, their conquest and their conservation are the theatre of daily conflict. The installation presents the metropolitan territory of Jerusalem through a new topography that uses three different points of observation: daily life practices, mental maps and a satellite photo. The attempt is to represent the territorial transformation through a multidimensional approach.

4. The Book
Stateless Nation is a book that seeks answers to a very simple question: “Who are the Palestinians?" and attempts to familiarize the reader with the Palestinians’ point of view, often almost unknown and mystified by stereotypes, ignorance and incorrect information, even in recent years when Palestine and the Palestinians are a daily topic. Through direct contributions from intellectuals, artists, doctors, sociologists, architects, workers and poets, the book tries to articulate a message, a point of view, an attitude and a philosophy spoken through the voices of the protagonists.

SPECIAL PROJECTS
Travel Document This is a project undertaken jointly by Stateless Nation, Officina Plug In and Nahed Awwad. The documentary is the story of the trip of a container of goods that was sent from Venice to Bethlehem on the occasion of the Stateless Nation exhibition, and it includes a series of stories on the right of return that is negated to more than four million Palestinians. The container with the installation Passports travelled from Venice on a ship across the Mediterranean to Palestine. The trip of the container is juxtaposed with the stories of the refugees who do not have the right to return to Palestine.

Road Map
The installation Road Map is the result of an experiment in the territories of the West Bank undertaken by members of Multiplicity, travelling on Palestinian and Israeli taxis, to measure the density of border controls in the territories: a muddle of walls, barbed wire, road blocks, and checkpoints that cut and subdivide the West Bank. The installation was presented throughout 2003 in Palestine; at the Kunst-Werke, Berlin; the Witte de With, Rotterdam; the Venice Biennale; the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; in Geneva and Bruxelles; and at the Konstahall, Malmo in 2004. The members of Multiplicity are Stefano Boeri, Maddalena Bregani, Maki Gherzi, Matteo Ghidoni, Isabella Inti, Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, Salvatore Porcaro, Francesca Recchia, Anniina Koivu, and Eduardo Staszowski. The fieldwork research was realized by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Salvatore Porcaro. Stateless Nation is a project co-produced by the Regione Toscana - Progetto Porto Franco and the Venice Biennale, and with the support of the Bethlehem Municipality, the Bethlehem Peace Centre, the Venice Municipality - Centro Pace, the A.M. Qattan Foundation and Birzeit University. It is an on-going project that was first presented in June 2003 at the Venice Biennale. Upcoming exhibitions will be on August 8th at the Bethlehem Peace Centre in Bethlehem; between October and December at Birzeit University and the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah; and in Hebron, Jenin and Gaza in 2005. The exhibition will be accompanied by seminars, lectures and publications. Sandi Hilal was born in Bethlehem in 1973. She is an architect and researcher in “transborder policies for daily life" at the University of Trieste, Italy. Alessandro Petti was born in Pescara in 1973. He is an architect and researcher in urban studies at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice, Italy. To learn more about the project visit www.statelessnation.org or write to info@statelessnation.org