While the film and video work, “Punishments” was created in the context of an installation and performance exhibition, it was ultimately put together as a film that stands on its own. It engages Michael Druks’ 1973 exhibition in Tel Aviv’s Gordon Gallery, at the center of which is the rewriting of the same verse, “school punishment.” In a letter that he sent to the British Arts Council about a year before making the piece, Druks noted his intention to make a film that was all one close shot, which would give a subjective description of the process of writing as if “over the writer’s shoulder1.” The film was indeed taken from a single vantage point and documented the dynamics of the writing: the educational punishment undergoes a change throughout and the process is reflected in the nature of the writing and the script itself.
The Gordon Gallery exhibition opened on Friday, April 10th, 1973, only two days before the Yom Kippur war broke out, such that Druks’ childhood memories were loaded with the murmurs of current affairs. Photographs of Druks were presented, wearing a yarmulke and standing facing the wall, standing in the “corner” in several of the institutions that represent Israeli society - the Bilu school that he attended, the Western Wall, the Knesset, the Israel Museum.
Another “school” punishment shown was the repeated copying out of the verses “Army and priesthood shall receive honors high as their valuable functions deserve. But they must not interfere in the administration of the State which confers distinction upon them, else they will conjure up difficulties without and within,” (Herzl, The Jewish State) and “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother; thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land,” (Deuteronomy 23:8).
Apart from photographs of Druks standing in the corner, the work included the placement of old school desks, etched with decades old graffiti. On sheets of paper, Druks copies bible passages over and over, and these are set on the table in the center of the gallery. On the wall is projected Druks’ film ‘Punishments,’ in the process of copying the sentence over and over again, from the vantage point over the shoulder of the punished student. Meanwhile, recitation of portions of Herzl’s “Jewish State” were played from a recording device.
In presenting his execution of the punishment, Druks says, he sought to demonstrate “a process of things slipping away from life.” The punishment - a supposedly positive thing - makes for the gradual control of another consciousness as it is carried out - and not that which the educators intended: “the participant is heard sighing, already by the halfway point he has had enough, he lets out vigorous curses, he thinks about something else, and I transcribed the entire text, straight from the recording, in English and Hebrew.”
At the exhibition the original text was displayed, along with the recording device and the transcription of the text: 12 lines that turned into 12 pages. In the corners of the gallery, Druks wrote down the names of individuals who, in his opinion, deserved educational punishment, among them (two days before the war broke out) Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Arik Sharon.
In conversation with Idith Zertal at the opening of the exhibition, Druks explained:
“For me Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Arik Sharon are symbolic, and if I could, I really would stand them in the corner. As I see it, they represent professional businessmen and politicians. I see myself as a political creature, but politics as a career is corrupting. It’s a profession that gives people power, and power is corrupting.” 2
Two days later, when the war broke out, the exhibition was closed - but resumed afterwards. The feelings of rage agains the political and military establishment, the frustration and self-flagellation following the Yom Kippur War, were well-integrated into the exhibition’s political context. Zartel wrote: “One of the few who could have prophesied the war along the lines of ‘I told you so’ and did not do so, is Michael Druks - painter, sculptor, conceptual artist, or whatever you want to call it. I am willing to testify that he told us so and how, in his art, his words and his actions.”
“Punishments” was one among further works in which Druks addressed his childhood memories. But in this case the disorienting events of the time prevented ignoring the work’s actual message. This was actually his first body work, and in retrospect it created a dramatic link between the individual and the national body.
Text by Galia Bar Or
1 Michael Druks, letter to the British Arts Council, London 1973, estimated date. Later, during the exhibition of “Punishments” in Gordon Gallery, the letter was also sent to the Israeli Ministry of Education in a request for aid in producing the film. Neither letter was dated.
2 Idith Zertal, “Local Distress and Advanced Art,” Dvar, 11 January, 1974.
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