JAWZ (2006)
Reprehensible acts of insubordination are the fiercely beautiful beginnings of a work of art.
(Jean Genet, Querelle of Brest)
Installation in space, music and movement – reflecting personal relations - little else is needed to embody a distilled capsule of emotion. In order to detect a story of some kind, there is no need for detailed causality. The force of circumstance or determinist ritualized form suffice to
understand that the story's elementary building blocks are those of power and control relations.
One must be handed over from parental control to the hands of the Princess, and from there on
to domain of The Gaze. Thus it proceeds: on to the power of order, composition, concepts,
language, and the language of art. Is the director, at his vantage point, subjected to the princess of language? Is it possible to unfold her? Will breaking the order forever result in another order? How sadistic is the organizing order? How masochistic is the individual, hurled against the brim?
understand that the story's elementary building blocks are those of power and control relations.
One must be handed over from parental control to the hands of the Princess, and from there on
to domain of The Gaze. Thus it proceeds: on to the power of order, composition, concepts,
language, and the language of art. Is the director, at his vantage point, subjected to the princess of language? Is it possible to unfold her? Will breaking the order forever result in another order? How sadistic is the organizing order? How masochistic is the individual, hurled against the brim?
(Text by Dr. Daphna Ben Shaul)
A composition by Ariel Efraim Ashbel
Featuring texts by Marquis de Sade, Samuel Beckett
Music: Maya Dunietz
With: Osnat Kelner, Tami Lebovits & Yoni Silver
Set: Kim Teitelbaum & Gaya Weinberg
LIght: Yair Vardi
Costumes: Alona Rodeh
Costumes: Alona Rodeh
JAWZ was my final roject at the School of Visual Theater and it premiered officially at the Akko festival 2006. what we tried to do there was to make something colorful, obnoxious, offensive. to step away from minimal formalism (it was very fashionable at the school of visual theater at the time) and interrupt the protocols of well-made, visually "clean" performance. The piece started with a very clear notion of a story, that gradually dissembled and diffused into something else, constantly shifting and reframing the performative situation.
Here's a little clip:
And this is "Hatikva", a vocal piece that Maya wrote and we performed at the end of JAWZ:
