[spectre] CAC Vilnius/Lithuania: Tel Aviv video

[Contemporary Art Centre]

[Contemporary Art Centre]- [HEREAFTER: A TIME FOR TRANSITION. Tel
Aviv video] - [05 21 - 06 15 2003]:

Artists: Rotem Balva, Adina Bar-On, Eliasaf Kowner, Nira Pereg, Ilana
Salama-Ortar, Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein, Ariel Yannay
Curator: Stephanie Benzaquen

The lecture on Israeli contemporary art will be held by Stephanie
Benzaquen: 21st May, Wednesday at 4pm.
The opening of the exhibition: 21st May, Wednesday at 6pm.
The performance dedicated to the opening will be played by Adina
Bar-On: the same day at 6.30 pm


"Hereafter": what will occur, here... in the coming minute or in an
improbable future. This "Hereafter" could be as well the silence of a
moment, the moment, which precedes the event. A tension. An
in-between whose image would not reveal anything to the eye of the
one who ignores, without sign, without clue... A passage. A
transition.

Israel: an area of conflicts. On its boundaries since its
establishment in 1948. And, since almost three years, a country stuck
within the violent and endless conflict with the Palestinians. Inside
its frontiers too because of its social complexity. Israel is built
on the immigration - each flow having brought its own claims and
pains, and its history. The cultural plurality displays within
dichotomies and tensions. At last, a country which is continuously
seeking for its identity, oscillating between the exile inheritance
and the territorial pragmatism. A country torn between the protection
of the elements that built its specificity and the desire for
normalization, or the integration within a larger whole: difficult
adjustment of the particularism and the globalization.

The nostalgic temptation is strong in the Israeli contemporary art.
Nostalgia for better days, when the conflict was not so present in
the daily life. Nostalgia deeply rooted within a particular
historical vision, related to things that don't exist anymore and
that will never come back, whatever they are, the pre-war Jewish
world, Israel in the effervescence of its construction, the myth of
solidarity and of the Zionist home. And nostalgia for an artistic
practice that did not have, by that time, to untangle the muddled
skein of more and more complicated political positions: then, the
commitment was clear.

Between this intangible past, somewhat inexistent and imaginary, and
the overshadowed future, as carrying too many questions and fears,
what is left is the present: such a hard present which is the mark of
a country locked up in its traumatisms and hardly able to deal with
them. Somehow, a present without actual mediation.

The artists of the exhibition share the willingness to inscribe their
creativity within new perspectives, as a necessary step of the
mediation. Each one copes with the task to decipher differently the
reality, to imagine other visibilities for the present and to bring
them to awareness and larger interpretations. It is the complicated
representation of a country going through continuous changes.  By
setting in motion the process of questioning, and not through the
call to a massive reaction, the presented works aim at reflecting the
"transitory" component as an essential element of the Israeli reality
and thinking the possibilities of transition. Like an attempt at
drawing right now the topography of a possible future without
forgetting that this future, heavy of contradictory schemes, remains
in the hands of those who act within the present. A time of wait,
beforehand...

In the video works by Adina Bar-On, "View" and "Motherland", the
body, the movement and the word redraw the landscape, endowing it
with new meanings. The artist rebuilds the relation to the territory,
the earth as well as to the memory and the history impregnating the
Israeli landscape and turns them into vectors of universal feelings
and understandings. The reconfiguration of the environment goes too
through the articulation of the context with other situations and
through the creation of parallels in time and space. The documentary
by Ilana Salama-Ortar, "The Camp of the Jews", through the personal
witnesses about the transit camp of the Grand Arénas in Marseille
(France) - where the artist stayed when she was a child - opens to
connections to multiple stories of exile, displacement, loss and
tearing and to the wider reflection regarding the structure of the
camp, whatever it is, wherever it is, whenever it is.

The exhibited works give neither solution nor answer: they present a
situation in its unfinished and potential aspects. There is a certain
dialogue between the works by Nira Pereg, "Guest", and Ariel Yannay,
"Surroundings", who both show building sites, zones of
transformation. For Pereg, the human element, the artist herself, is
a determining presence. Feelings and fears of the female character
combine with the chaotic and dubious urban landscape, which is
actually one of the central streets of Tel Aviv. It creates the
oscillating perception of the inside/outside relationship. Text and
voice of Louise Bourgeois intensify this oscillating subjective
perception and move away from the documentation. For Yannay, the
locations, the surroundings, are empty: building areas, of Tel Aviv
and Jaffa, whose ephemeral aspect has been definitely fixed. The
immobilized space and time reflect a context, which is first the
daily one facing the artist, then the paradoxical view of the
permanence developed within the temporary. The building sites are the
translation of the paradigm of the transitory.

The contradictory juxtaposition of permanence and temporary, or the
continuous passage, gets another translation with the work by Effi
Weiss and Amir Borenstein. "Vil-Nor" is the fictionalized version of
the mythic story of the "Genius of Vilnius" (the "Gaon of Vilna"). In
this subtly ironic work on the endless exile, which is also a never
began exile, resound the personal perception of two Israeli artists
living abroad since a few years as well as the essential dimension of
the movement in the Israeli culture.

Eliasaf Kowner also uses the stories of others - the passer-by, the
accidental encounter - to depict the reality, from a totally
different point of view. He projects his own questioning towards and
through the words and attitudes of the people which he meets and
films during his walks in Tel Aviv. Sensitive gaze posed on two women
sitting in a bar, "In the Centre" creates empathy and moments of
identification.

Rotem Balva acts through minimal displacement and shifting in order
to reach areas where codes and boundaries get confused. The
intermediary and filtering space, where the rules of the game fade
away and the interpretations collide, brings, through a controlled
aesthetic process, her daily intimate feelings towards the public
view. "Op-Allah" invites the viewer to enter the private experience
built as an installation for communication.


Contemporary Art Centre
Vokieciu 2, 2001 Vilnius, Lithuania
Tel: +370 5 2121954, Fax: +370 5 2623954
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