Exhibitions, Russia, Moscow, 17 February 2010
New Video From Israel, Curated by Vardit Gross
With works by Sigalit Landau, Yael Bartana, Gal Weinstein, Roee Rosen, Erez Israeli, Ori Gersht, Nira Pereg, Nelly Agassi, Uri Gershuni, Ori Nir, Tom Pnini, Einat Amir, Doron Solomons and Shahar Marcus.
The images have been broadcast again and again – the quiet streets of Haiti seconds before the earth starts to shake, the relaxed beaches of Thailand minutes before it was hit by the Tsunami - was there anything in the moments preceding the disasters that could have warned people? Is there anything on the sunny streets of Tel Aviv that foreshadows the storm that seems to hang perpetually on the horizon?
Natural disasters send last minute, subtle signs in advance - dark clouds, strong winds, snakes crawling out of the ground. We were trained to read the catastrophe signs: Albert Camus’s dead rats all over town in “The Plague”; Hitchcock’s birds covering the sky. But in a place where the storm is almost always present does the calm before still carry the same kind of tension? How does one live in a state of active vigilance and a never-ending state of alert?
Israel seems to have been on the edge of storm for all sixty years of its existence; on the edge of war or peace; on the edge of change or a nervous breakdown. “The Calm Before the Storm” examines those moments of quiet expectation that usually precede periods of self-analysis, it portrays the ongoing loop of silent danger, storms, and grief.
Video artists in the last decade have provided a lens in which to contemplate the extreme visions of Israel that are both in conflict and co-existence - from the world media’s portrayal of the war zones, to the hedonistic beach and night life, to a flourishing cultural city, to the struggle to honor the various ethnicities and religions within its own borders and exist amongst its neighbors in the middle east. Behind any Israeli smile there seems to be a potential tear, a wariness and anticipation of the potential for explosion. Like a car alarm that penetrates the street early on a Saturday morning, and continues endlessly until the ear doesn’t hear it anymore, so is the buzz of danger, the ongoing whisper of the unseen but unavoidable storm to come, muffled into daily life, present and non-present at the same time.
While French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson talked about capturing “the defining moment”, catching the very essence of the scene, the artists in “The Calm Before the Storm” are attempting to take that moment and stretch it – to check what happens before it, see what happens after it. They are not trying to catch the moment of the kiss, nor the moment of explosion, but to understand the process leading up to that scene and the way we are preparing ourselves to it. Video allows them not to be limited to a single moment, but to capture a longer sequence. The storm is inseparable from the calm that precedes it and from the results that would follow. This endless loop is the story of a state that lives in a higher level of tension, that listens to news updates every 30 minutes, that is always curious, and suspicious, about its future.
Tired of waiting for the next storm to come, many of the artists in the show are trying to call it out, to control it, try to stir it up faster. But it is in the storm’s nature to arrive when least expected. And so we live, as so many people do in places of conflict in a perpetual state of waiting, denial, resignation, and hope.
With works by Sigalit Landau, Yael Bartana, Gal Weinstein, Roee Rosen, Erez Israeli, Ori Gersht, Nira Pereg, Nelly Agassi, Uri Gershuni, Ori Nir, Tom Pnini, Einat Amir, Doron Solomons and Shahar Marcus.
The images have been broadcast again and again – the quiet streets of Haiti seconds before the earth starts to shake, the relaxed beaches of Thailand minutes before it was hit by the Tsunami - was there anything in the moments preceding the disasters that could have warned people? Is there anything on the sunny streets of Tel Aviv that foreshadows the storm that seems to hang perpetually on the horizon?
Natural disasters send last minute, subtle signs in advance - dark clouds, strong winds, snakes crawling out of the ground. We were trained to read the catastrophe signs: Albert Camus’s dead rats all over town in “The Plague”; Hitchcock’s birds covering the sky. But in a place where the storm is almost always present does the calm before still carry the same kind of tension? How does one live in a state of active vigilance and a never-ending state of alert?
Israel seems to have been on the edge of storm for all sixty years of its existence; on the edge of war or peace; on the edge of change or a nervous breakdown. “The Calm Before the Storm” examines those moments of quiet expectation that usually precede periods of self-analysis, it portrays the ongoing loop of silent danger, storms, and grief.
Video artists in the last decade have provided a lens in which to contemplate the extreme visions of Israel that are both in conflict and co-existence - from the world media’s portrayal of the war zones, to the hedonistic beach and night life, to a flourishing cultural city, to the struggle to honor the various ethnicities and religions within its own borders and exist amongst its neighbors in the middle east. Behind any Israeli smile there seems to be a potential tear, a wariness and anticipation of the potential for explosion. Like a car alarm that penetrates the street early on a Saturday morning, and continues endlessly until the ear doesn’t hear it anymore, so is the buzz of danger, the ongoing whisper of the unseen but unavoidable storm to come, muffled into daily life, present and non-present at the same time.
While French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson talked about capturing “the defining moment”, catching the very essence of the scene, the artists in “The Calm Before the Storm” are attempting to take that moment and stretch it – to check what happens before it, see what happens after it. They are not trying to catch the moment of the kiss, nor the moment of explosion, but to understand the process leading up to that scene and the way we are preparing ourselves to it. Video allows them not to be limited to a single moment, but to capture a longer sequence. The storm is inseparable from the calm that precedes it and from the results that would follow. This endless loop is the story of a state that lives in a higher level of tension, that listens to news updates every 30 minutes, that is always curious, and suspicious, about its future.
Tired of waiting for the next storm to come, many of the artists in the show are trying to call it out, to control it, try to stir it up faster. But it is in the storm’s nature to arrive when least expected. And so we live, as so many people do in places of conflict in a perpetual state of waiting, denial, resignation, and hope.
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