B I G P R I S O N
Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen 2013
For the exhibition FREIHEIT! at Kunstpalais Erlangen (2013), Ramberg created BIG PRISON, a mixed media work about whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu. It consists of two films, two stone sculptures, and a letter.
Vanunu worked at the Dimona Nuclear Research Center, officially a power plant but in fact producing nuclear weapons. In 1986, he revealed Israel’s arsenal of 200 atomic and 20 hydrogen bombs to The Sunday Times. Before publication, he was kidnapped in Rome by Israeli intelligence, returned to Tel Aviv, and sentenced for treason. He spent 18 years in prison – 11 in total isolation in a 2 × 3 m cell – later noted in the Guinness Book of Records. Released in 2004, he expected freedom. Instead, he was placed under state arrest: forbidden to leave Israel, meet foreigners, or use the internet. Renewed every six months, these restrictions led him to call Jerusalem his “big prison.”
Ramberg met him in 2005. On a hotel rooftop, Vanunu spoke of freedom and press liberty. Shortly after, he was arrested again – punished for the conversation. In 2013, Ramberg returned disguised as a tourist and filmed Vanunu from a distance along his daily routes in East Jerusalem. The images place viewers in the role of surveillance. Vanunu described himself as “a tiger in a cage.” His smuggled voice appears through short mobile recordings left in restaurants he frequented, later used as voice-over.
German author Günter Grass wrote a poem about Vanunu and was declared persona non grata in Israel. Ramberg later smuggled out Vanunu’s thank-you letter and delivered it to Grass before his death in 2015.
BIG PRISON points to the ongoing absence of basic rights. Vanunu’s fate becomes a universal image of democracy’s paradox: the illusion of freedom – walls gone, but invisible prisons growing.
Norway once considered asylum but withdrew under Israeli pressure – despite having supplied 20 tons of heavy water to Israel’s nuclear program in 1959. Vanunu has since been nominated nine times for the Nobel Peace Prize, but never received it. He still lives under house arrest.
