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Guy Ben-Ner’s Moby Dick features himself and his 6-year-old daughter play-acting in their home kitchen in ways that take to absurd extremes the aesthetic of family home videos. Using minimal props (a rope and a pole) Ben-Ner transforms the space into a make-believe ship – a playground for the reenactment of the classic tale. 

As highlights from the great epos are brought into the intimacy of the home, the battle between the larger-than-life Captain Ahab and the great whale are ironically reduced to a power play within the domestic environment. Using the camera tricks of early classical cinema as a constant referent, Ben-Ner intercuts his video with Buster-Keaton-like slapsticks, funny and borderline sadistic, which convey a sense of the potency of – and constant threat of impotency inherent in – family affairs. 
Ben-Ner has found a way to balance his roles as artist and father by creating video works that star his own children. In doing so, he implies, as critic Richard O Jones put it, that parenting can contribute to artistic creation as much as artistic creation can contribute to creative parenting.

 

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 The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
 

Moby Dick

Guy Ben-Ner’s Moby Dick features himself and his 6-year-old daughter play-acting in their home kitchen in ways that take to absurd extremes the aesthetic of family home videos. Using minimal props (a rope and a pole) Ben-Ner transforms the space into a make-believe ship – a playground for the reenactment of the classic tale. 

As highlights from the great epos are brought into the intimacy of the home, the battle between the larger-than-life Captain Ahab and the great whale are ironically reduced to a power play within the domestic environment. Using the camera tricks of early classical cinema as a constant referent, Ben-Ner intercuts his video with Buster-Keaton-like slapsticks, funny and borderline sadistic, which convey a sense of the potency of – and constant threat of impotency inherent in – family affairs. 
Ben-Ner has found a way to balance his roles as artist and father by creating video works that star his own children. In doing so, he implies, as critic Richard O Jones put it, that parenting can contribute to artistic creation as much as artistic creation can contribute to creative parenting.

 

 The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
 

 The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis