Oriental Arch, a nineteen-minute video completed in 2009, roams Jerusalem’s Seven Arches Hotel during a typical day. Its static shots, ranging from a few seconds to nearly a minute in length, begin at dawn and end well into the night. The video moves slowly; the first significant activity occurs only after five minutes have passed. During this opening sequence, the artist treats his video camera like an architectural photographer or draftsman, offering fixed views that locate the building on its grounds and explain the horizontal sprawl of its wings. Shots are unpeopled or sparsely populated: a man peers into a computer screen at the front desk, another paints a wall, and a third replaces a light bulb in the ceiling. Eventually we see what appear to be hotel guests, and the camera occasionally ventures into backstage spaces like the laundry room and kitchen. It is never busy.

It’s obvious that the hotel, which rests atop the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, was once glamorous and has recently lost some of its luster. Today, tourists complain on travel websites about its outdated furnishings but extol its extraordinary views. Despite this attribute, Evron rarely captures the vista beyond the hotel grounds; in one brief scene, the city garlands the hills outside its restaurant’s East-facing windows. Instead, the hotel’s antiquated modernity and its negligible number of guests, are Evron’s subjects, and they result from specific historical circumstances—and mark the site with tension.

The Jordanian government built the hotel during the early 1960s on land owned by the Al-Alami family, prominent Arabs involved in politics. (It’s worth noting that this is an outsider’s understanding of its development; Israel claims the Jordanian government expropriated public land to build the hotel.) The building’s American architect, William B. Tabler, specialized in designing large-scale hotels in a recognizably cosmopolitan style. Originally named the Jerusalem InterContinental, the building’s sleek modern design symbolized an international outlook and the aspirations of a particular class of Jordanians. This ambition manifested itself in the building’s early history: in May 1964 the hotel played host to the founding conference of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which resulted in the first Palestinian National Charter.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, when East Jerusalem—and the hotel’s site—came under Israeli rule, the property was placed under the control of the Custodian of Absentee Property. It now rests in a limbo of competing claims. As a December 2010 article in Haaretz relates, any plans to renovate or expand the Seven Arches requires the collaboration of the Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Jordanian government. A redesign, or a new wing of rooms, is a matter of international concern.

Evron’s video, then, reflects not only upon the faded grandeur of the Seven Arches, with its midcentury aspirations toward cosmopolitan modernity. By capturing the hotel’s particular stasis and ennui, it also reminds viewers how such dreams are interrupted by human fallibility and discord. The disagreements that arise from such scenarios lead to behavior at once irrational and inescapable.

Text by Brian Sholis, from exhibition catalogue of Masad, Nir Evron’s solo show at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art 2016