Roee Rosen’s video presents Hillel, a 9-year old boy, standing at the center of a green room against changing backdrops, looking into the camera and presenting a monologue in English – a language which he neither speaks nor understands. The linguistic performance is made possible by means of a teleprompter from which he reads a transliteration of the English text into Hebrew letters.
Hillel, Rosen’s son, is featured in a single shot from the film’s beginning to its end. The text dictates not only his pronunciation of the words, but also his silences, and even controls his facial expressions and bodily gestures on occasion (an asterisk in the text indicated to Hillel that he must look at his father on the other side of the camera, and imitate his gestures). The speech act is odd and unique: Hillel does not speak for himself, but he is not an actor either. He is dubbed as a beautiful, naןve child, possessed under the father’s mastery, functioning as an obedient conduit for the realization of Rosen’s whims. He is exploited in this way to promote a forthcoming film, bringing a promise for a trailblazing cinematic work. Confessions Coming Soon is a trailer for the ambitious future film, ’ The Confessions of Roee Rosen ’ wherein not a single frame of the actual film is seen, but the principle mechanism is demonstrated, in which the artist will impose himself on three foreign workers who speak no Hebrew, in order to voice sensational confessions from the artist’s life.
The work is also found on a volume of ASPECT, which once again explores new territory, entering a region so culturally conflicted that the very term "Middle East" is disputed as a holdover from colonialism. This issue presents nine artist’s perspectives from both inside and outside of the region. Not only focused on the political, religious, and social dissent, these works ruminate on language, food, ritual, media, power, humor, and beauty. ASPECT; The Chronicle of New Media Art (Volume 14: Middle East). Also on this disc (#1450), see the work with commentary by Bill Arning. In April, 2009 Bill Arning became director of the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas, after having been the curator at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center for nine years.
Catalogue no. 1025
File: R
Catalogue no. 1382
File: Catalogues World
Catalogue no. 1450
File: Compilations
Cinema Communication Language Performance Power Puppet Youth
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