Yael Bartana’s video and sound works address friendship and naturalization ceremonies as well as social symbols and rituals. This exhibition of hers deals with variables existing within the social mold whereby the characters filmed in her works appear to be programmed within a monotonous set of actions which empty the ceremony/ritual of its cultural and social context.
“Trembling Time” is a video work filmed in Tel Aviv above a main traffic artery during the sounding of the siren on Remembrance Day. The sounds of braking, vehicles stopping in succession, people slowly getting out of their cars and standing in front of us - the spectators - while a river of light floods the road and the bystanders and gives the picture a hallucinatory dimension. The video is based on layers of the same image gathered together with slight variations in speed and exposure, until they come to a full stop. The sounds of screeching brakes and the sound of the siren accompany the images and intensify the sense of suspended time until the moment when everything comes to a halt.
The exhibit deals with social ritual and the individual’s role in the simulation derived from geopolitical relationships. The video, “Profile” traces four minutes in a shooting range for women soldiers. The visitor is invited to put on earplugs and watch a young woman soldier holding a weapon and completing the routine of approaching the target. The exhibit is based on the choreography composed of standing, kneeling, holding, lifting, waiting, shooting and resuming the standby position for another round.
Minimal shifts in the video editing and sound as well as stretching out the action time as in a sports replay intensify the sense of simulation reflecting reality. The spectator with the earplugs watches (through the camera lens) the soldier with the earplugs who is observing, through the gun’s sight, a target hidden from our view, which is only revealed once the watching is over.
In “Tuning,” a video exhibit features a young woman dressed in a suit and saluting while in the background, the music of a national anthem is playing. The screened image is reflected twice and the young, saluting woman salutes to herself as a confirmation or self-salute, either that or she is saluting us who are taking part in the rituals and ceremonial games.
And lastly a work in which the national army tune is disembodied, whereby an interactive object composed of a public address system megaphone is connected to a flagpole and plays the sounds of a familiar military march while a spectator draws near.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
