Participating artists: Effie Weis & Amir Bornstein, Yael Bartana, Galit Eilat & Mosh Kainer, Maria Pomianski, Issac Layish, Irit Garty
The works that have been proposed to the Gwangju Biennale reflect a new lively Israeli realm of creation. All the works were created in the Center for Digital Art, Holon and were exhibited or will be exhibited in the Center during the next few months.
Israeli society, most critics would agree, is surrounded and permeated with a rich world of images and a controversial perception of its character, borders (social as well as political), residents (including those who lives abroad) and its political and cultural orientations. Thus, for example, in political dialogue, Israel is represented as the sole democracy in the Middle East – a refuge country, a melting point, an armed ghetto, a dual national, a country of Crusaders, a Levantine society, a Western island in an oriental sea, a little America.
Those images and the world of meanings and experiences that are ingrained in them, have influence on all levels of Israeli life: they shape not only the central issues regarding public agenda, but also penetrate deeper into the hidden processes of the definition and representation of individuals and different groups. In these conditions, most of the participants in cultural life – and in every day life in general – deal in an intensive manner (not to say obsessive), in trying to understand, explain and protest the differences aspects of their cultural environment.
Entrance Gallery Space – Space A;
A monitor will be positioned showing the TV program ARTATTACK, the work of four young artists.
Irit Garty, Isaac Layish, Amir Boronstein, and Effie Weiss.
“Artattack,” unlike other culture programs on television, is an art program. It is neither a talk show nor a visit to an exhibition. It presents emerging artists, with an emphasis on works for which the TV medium is most suitable, such as video art, experimental shorts, documentaries, animation, computer art, etc. The program features complete works, alongside interviews with the artists, discussions, and documentation of other art events.
The program is always open to suggestions from the viewers, artists and others, who are interested in displaying their work in this context. The aim is to create, by means of the program, a different state of art that is more involved, more accessible, more available to broader audiences, who are not necessarily gallery-goers, to encourage artists’ interaction through a common interest, to open a new channel for conversation and discussion among these artists, to expose as many artists and art works as possible, and offer additional and alternative possibilities for display – a commodity which the Israeli art world is sadly lacking.
Large Exhibition Room – Space B;
Installation ”All My Sons,” by Amir Bornstein, Effie Weiss.
The center of Amir and Effie’s work is the meeting of two individuals in a dual cell, and the interaction of the cell with society, the self-definition in the cell, of each other, and of the dual artistic activity against society. Their work raises various questions about self-definition, and self-definition facing society, when the questions asked are questions concerning life and the art world.
In their work, the artists are the main actors, though they use the representations of heroes: the athlete, the star, in order to relate to the artist and to raise questions of role and social status, pathos, control, vulnerability, mission, creation, etc.
”All My Sons” is a documentary film – a fantastic, absorbing experiment, on the border of amusement, to predict the history of the future family of Effie and Amir. The 8 Heroes of the film are their future children that were selected out of 40 images that were built up, similar to the faces of the couple, resembling the method whereby identikits are made.
The film meets the 8 children and their parents (Effie and Amir) in different times in their estimated lives. It touches on visual and social stereotypes and in the common relationships of Israeli society to family as a supreme value, as opposed to the abstention of having a family which is read as a socially immoral declaration. Repetitive motifs in their work include common creation, identity, resemblance, vision, and social and cultural position. The project includes, besides the film itself, other options that are left in the hands of the public, for creating other identities for their children, with the internet site with police identikits accompanied by a biographic questionnaire for each character, and a program for assembling additional kids out of Amir’s and Effie’s faces.
Exhibition Room – Space C;
Installation – “The Future Sound of Holon” by Maria Pomianski;
Maria Pomianski is a young artist who came to Israel 10 years ago from Russia. Maria invites her friends to be photographed in her works; in all new video art projects of Maria’s participants are given another mission; washing their heads, splashing water, holding ping-pong balls in their mouthes...
In this video work her friends were asked to sit on sprinklers in the center of a yard in poses taken from allegorical classical sculptures. The background for the human sculptures is taken from her gardens, pieces of urban nature, scattered in a short distance from the center-point.
Maria becomes, as time passes by, the unofficial documenter of the maturity of the group of young Russian artists and their friends.
During the exhibition, “Urban Myths,” grass was planted in Exhibition Space C (enclosed please find sketch) for 6 weeks. The grass was replaced once every10 days in order to keep the fresh look of the work.
Exhibition Space – Space D;
Installation “Rain of Meteorites” by Adam Berg and Daniel Meir
“Rain of Meteorites” is a video-sound installation by Adam Berg in cooperating with musician, Daniel Meir.
It is a political installation that emphasizes the tense relations between electronic media broadcasts and the state of the nation, that breaks down like a rain of meteorites.
The installation is located in between the actual and virtual. Not a relation between reality and its simulation, but rather two parallel realities: the one is actual and the other is virtual. ”Rain of Meteorites” is a work, which presents what seems like a documentary reportage that informs us about the fall of meteorites on the Tel-Aviv/Jaffa Road.
This hallucinatory documentary exemplifies the paradoxical relationship to catastrophe, which combines violence and indifference in equal measures. In interview, an eye-witness from the street states; “When I heard the bang I was sure it is a bomb, but then I heard more noise and it looked like rain of rocks, there was no place to run. In the first place I got scared, there was also a sort of shake and noise but I got used to it right away.”
Galit Eilat
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
