Dream and Trauma

Is music a means of dealing with the reality of life in Israel? And can it foster understanding between the different peoples? Or does it, on the contrary, deepen the feelings of hatred? Four films and a talk with Melissa Logan, from Chicks on Speed, Björn Döring, the artistic director of the popdeurope music festival, and Julien Salemkour, conductor and assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin.

In the Foyer

Guy Ben-Ner (Israel) Tree House Kit

Installation and video on plasma screens, 2005

An instructor - half IKEA salesman and half Robinson Crusoe - shows how to build a home, bit by bit, from a tree, and a country out of an island. It all starts with a unique object, a tree (a work of art). In the end we are left with a few uninteresting pieces of furniture. An Israeli contribution to the Venice Biennale 2005.

In the Exhibition Hall

Yael Bartana (Holland/Israel) Wild Seeds

Video 2005, 6.40 min

‘I look at Israel and ask myself: What kind of a place is this where I grew up?’

Ori Gersht (Great Britain/Israel) Neither Black Nor White

Video 2001, 4.52 min

A fast-motion video condensing eight hours of film of the Arab village of Iksal. It was taken from a hill in the Jewish part of Nazareth. As day breaks, the star-like constellation of lights disappears and the outlines of the village buildings gradually take shape. As the camera is set to stop-motion, the picture fades to white in the light of the rising sun.

Talia Keinan (Israel) Tea

Video 2004, 5.30min

'Tel Aviv seen through a glass of tea. [The sinking tea leaves] awaken associations of a desert that is being bombarded. A picture captured between the commonplace and the dramatic, between reality and fantasy.'

Sigalit Landau (Israel) Standing on a Water Melon in the Dead Sea

Video 2004, 5.21 min

An attempt to keep one’s balance while ‘standing on a melon on the Dead Sea’ surrounded by salt water. It is a parable of a victory over the earth’s gravitational force. Here, under water and at the lowest point on earth a drama unfolds: a drama of floating and, indeed, of almost rising into the air. (from Sigalit Landau / the endless solution, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2005, p. 36)

Sharone Lifschitz (Great Britain/Israel) Untitled (self portrait No 3+4)

Video 2004, 59 min

A two screen installation. The first shows the artist with her face turned toward the sunset; in the other she sits with her back to the sunrise. A study of the emotional spectrum between still-life and the moving image.

Rashid Masharawi (Palestine) Checkpoint

Video 2002, 50 min (part of the installation From/To by Fareed Armaly for the Documenta11)

For fifty minutes, the camera moves slowly through a group of people waiting at a checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem. From a detached perspective, it portrays a situation that is completely normal for the Palestinians.

Rosalind Nashashibi (Great Britain) Hreash House

Video 2004, 20 min

A day in the life of a Palesinian family. With its precise observations, unusual images and accentuated background noises, the film focuses the viewer’s attention on the distinctive features of everyday life.

Hadas Ophrat (Israel) Cradle-Model

An overhead projector, Plexiglas, metal and an electric motor, 2004

An object reminiscent of a slowly rocking cradle is projected onto the wall. In the middle of the sculpture we see an electric motor and a long metal object that resembles a blade or the hand - moving anticlockwise - of a clock. The dark shadows of the heavy metal object float, as it were, above the light, transparent work.

Nira Pereg (Germany/Israel) Canicule

Video 2003, 29.07 min

‘The pictures show people in Paris who are trying to escape the terrible pall of haze generated by a summer heat wave. Film material is contrasted with digital imagery – a veil of red rain.’

DigiWounds

Video 2003, 0.30 min.

‘Digitally amputating one’s own body. While the human model remains almost entirely motionless, the digital wound bleeds incessantly, leaving no traces at all: an impossible reality.’

Karen Russo (Great Britain/Israel) Candy House

Video 2004, 8 min.

Everyday objects and toys are manipulated in such a way that a home environment changes from offering a protective atmosphere into a place of constant mortal danger for the children.

Battles under the Sea of Ice

Video 2004, 3 min.

Ever since he was fired at and wounded by the army, Rotem (22) has been suffering from aphasia. Sounds, images and linguistic meaning are dissociated in his interpretation of a story about a search for the remains of polar explorer Roald Amundsen.

Spontaneous Human Combustion

Video 2000, 40 min.

Spontaneous human combustion is a mysterious phenomenon in which bodies burn from within. The extremities remain undamaged. There is no sign of whatever it was that ignited the fire.

Economy of Excess

Video 2005, 9 min.

Subterranean water pipes, recorded by a camera robot: a wonderful world full of impressionistic colours and lights appears, oscillating between the sublime and the mundane.

Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir (Israel) Beyond Guilt, Atonement I + Beyond Guilt II

Video 2003, 9 min + Video 2004, 18 min

Brief encounters in front of the camera: in hotel rooms and in bars. Only in the most intimate moments does it become apparent that sexual and political-military identity in Israel are indivisibly linked to one another. (see also Film Programme 13 Dec.).

Doron Solomons (Israel/Great Britain) Exquisite Corpse

Video 1999, 2.36 min

Heads composed of three unmatching parts. The forehead and eyes belong to one person, the nose to another, the mouth and neck to someone else. The voices are superimposed on one another. All that on can hear distinctly are the names of politicians.

Tanya Ury (Germany) Promised Land 2005

DVD projection

"Promised Land" encompasses art works and biographies that scrutinise Israel's history: 2 perspectives from 2 generations of different eras, the contemporary view and the biblical with creative license.

Inventory

In this section videos, documentations and short films can be seen on ten screens - an inventory of Israel and the occupied territories.

Aldo Anselmino: Al Jidar Suha Araj: I am Palestine / Ayelet Dekel: Sumud/ Dan Geva: Think Popcorn/ Dana Goldberg: Masha/ Johan Grimonprez: Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y/ Tomer Heymann: It Kinda Scares Me/ Jennifer Jajeh: Fruition/ Thomas Kilpper: Al Hissan - The Jenin Horse

In the Glaskino

Guy Ben-Ner Wild Boy

Video 2005, 17 min, Loop