Best City in the World—Looking after Belfast (Raymond’s Loss) 2010–14
HD Video | 19'36"
In early April 2010, the artist placed an advertisement in several Northern Irish newspapers: “Israeli woman visiting Belfast would like to meet people for advice about sharing a country.” One respondent was Raymond McCord, a Protestant, whose son was murdered by members of a Protestant militia during the conflict in Northern Ireland. A year after their initial meetings, McCord took the artist in his car to see the locations where his story is played out. The video was shot by the artist with a handheld camera from the passenger seat.
Having placed several adverts in both Protestant and Catholic newspapers, I went to visit Belfast on a week-long stay and met some of the 15 people who had answered my adverts. I recorded our conversations on a voice recorder and took
photos. One of them was Raymond McCord, a Protestant whose son was murdered by Protestant paramilitaries. Raymond’s story and the way he moved and occupied
his city felt like it deserved a standalone work, and I believed that I could understand some of the complexity of a conflict through his personal story. When back in Belfast a year later, it took a week of chasing after Raymond to get him to agree to take me for a ride in his car again once he saw that I was heavily pregnant. It was about two years from when I came back from Belfast that I was able to look at the footage and start editing.
