Hadas Hay
© 2025 Hadas Hay
The Immovable Ladder, 2024
The video incorporated archival materials, found footage, 3D animation and Various AI techniques. displayes on a 10' digital picture frame.
In voluntary exile on a couch in New York, we go on an odyssey to try and grasp what Jerusalem means to us. Using animation, found footage, and Google Earth, we arrive at the Immovable Ladder — a mute relic perched above the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Known also as the Status Quo Ladder, untouched since 1750, it embodies the unresolved rivalries of six Christian sects who share overlapping claims to this sacred site.
The work is in a digital photo frame, like a family slideshow — memorabilia from Jerusalem’s surreal inventory.
Beyond the territorial strife and violent status quo-ism that shapes historical and contemporary Jerusalem, this spectacle embodies the essence of the city: permanence, defiance, and a paradoxical immovability. Jerusalem seems forever plagued by stuckedness, a ladder rooted between heaven and earth, yet leading to (n)either.
The work was exhibited at the Photography Gallery as part of the exhibition "Kabin — Measures of Beauty,” curated by David Adika and Ilanit Konopny, in Jerusalem, Israel. Created in collaboration with Alicia Kamian Kazhdan.