Depressing Video Art from Israel #3

The series will be screened all through Musrara Mix (28-30.5 from 19:30-23:00 PM )

The third installment of the video art series Depressing Video Art from Israel, featuring works by Israel-based video artists. Wishing to create a snapshot of the local reality using the tools offered by the medium of video, this installment focuses on modest video actions, home video improvisations, handheld cameras, and screenshots. These serve as the platform for various looking practices: diverting one’s eyes, shutting them, looking longingly at the past or with dread at the future. The focus on the physiological aspect of the directions of our gaze and the technical procedure of directing our pupils at a specific space at a given time, produces a plethora of viewpoints, which ultimately enhances the possibility to look directly at reality.

In the 2000s, the video art scene in Israel blew up and started attracting many curators and collectors from all over the world. The complex human experience of living in a state of emergency, reality in the shadow of conflict, and making art on the backdrop of a perpetual crisis have been hot topics in the global video arena. The title of the series offers a touch of humor rooted in a dismal premise – video art from Israel is a depressing matter. Even when it is weird, thrilling, surprising, impulsive, or funny, it is always surrounded by the aura of the local existential struggle. At the same time, it is also a play on the generic titles of survey exhibitions, which could hypothetically be displayed at an international European or American museum: a geopolitical or socioeconomic themed exhibition that aims to frame a “snapshot”.

However, contrary to the outward-facing call implied by title: “Come and see the wonder of Israeli video art as an esoteric exotic commodity,” this installment is displayed the first time in Israel and not abroad. The presentation of a video compilation under this title to Israelis is like “selling ice to the Eskimos.” And yet, it gains added validity in light of the boycott of Israeli art by curators, artists, and directors of many international cultural institutions. In this face of this constraint, the gaze cast by the video compilation is turned inward, to internal affairs. The works outline a fragile local image. Hallmarks change and send the viewer to look for a new logic in realms of peace and security, love and mysticism, illusion and death. You have to see it to believe it.