Egyptism - an update

This was in the U-Bahn a few days ago.

Meanwhile in NJ

Israel is experiencing the biggest civil protest in its history, and in Demarest NJ we fly plastic helicopters in the rain wearing high heels, getting tattooed and experiencing the suburban lives of proper New Jerseyian housewives. Here are some images from our lazy August in the united states of america, so far.

View from living room window

Is that a wheel in your eyes or you're just happy to see me?

My dear friend Osnat "yos" Kelner is here visiting. We took this picture in the Luna Park today as we were doing some preparations

short visit to Londres

So we just got back from 4 adventurous days in Landan town, where we went to celebrate two occasions: Romm's Birthday and the last concert in Maya's series "Hit & Run" in Dalston's Experimental music venue Cafe Oto. The gig was a proper free-form impro featuring some musicians that Maya invited, including the sweet, brazilian born amsterdam based Saxophonist Yedo Gibson and my dear beloved friend Keren Rosenbaum, who just came back with Maya from Amsterdam where they performed Keren's new composition, as part of the Notations 21 festival, exhibition and book launch. Check it out:

At the Barbican, there is a historical, retrospective-ish exhibition featuring three pioneers of the NY 70's scene: Gordon Matta Clarck, Trisha Brown (they love her in London - last year there was a huge tribute in Dance Umbrella Festival - probably because the UK's dance scene is somewhat dull, not to say lame) and one of my all time favorites, Laurie Anderson. Some of the works that ms. Anderson made in the 70's remained beautifully relevant, and also some of them bear funny resemblance to stuff that Maya, Reshef and me did recently, when we worked on "Chikos" and "Friday". And actually this makes me think it's a good opportunity to put some of these stuff here in the blog.
So here is a short clip from Chikos:


And here's a little moment from Friday (also Spartacus Chetwynd's performance which I'm mentioning down here reminded me how much I actually enjoyed that thing we did last year in the CCA in Kalisher and made me realize we should definitely explore it more):

"The way you moved through me" is the text that Anderson assigned to the installation, which consists of a table that upon placing one's elbows on plays music through the wood up the hands to the ears

the schub listening to the table

And here is a later thing by Anderson, from her seminal "Home of the Brave" (1984):



Continuing the line of sound-art, one morning Dus showed me this amazing video:


Another dear friend I was very happy to meet again was the lovely James Unsworth, artist whose responsible, among many other scandals, to the initiation of the world's first Ninja Turtle Sex Museum:


James invited us to join him to the opening of Spartacus Chetwynd's exhibition @ Sadie Coles Gallery. Chetwynd makes very cool performances and this was definitely one of them. A clearly cool factor was the fact that the gallery's smoke detectives couldn't really deal with the smoke machines she brought in and the opening was accompanied by the alarm. This and the huge rubber slide you could use to get to the lower level were the highlights. And the free beer.

Here are images and vids from other performances by Chetwynd, made in recent years and selected randomly:

A Tax Haven Run by Women from Charlottenborg on Vimeo.

The BFI at Southbank is having a Russian season this year, and we were there as they screened Eisenstein's "The Old and The New", a very weird, almost surrealist in style and approach, epic about the collectivization and mechanization of agriculture in Russian Villages in the 1920's. Filmed in various villages around Moscow from 1927, the work on the film was interrupted when Eisenstein was called to shoot his well known "October" that marked the 10th anniversary of the revolution. Being aware of the new sound technologies introduced during the 20's talking era, Eisentsein wrote instructions to what he thought would be a suitable soundtrack for his film, but he couldn't find the funding to record this score. The BFI gave these instructions to two british composers and commissioned the score from them. So far so good, only thing that went wrong is that these guys are slightly too boring and their music was way behind of this exceptional film. Here you have the entire thing, next time you have free 120 min. I especially liked the bride-cow scene.


And here's just a nice pic, showing Romm, Omer and Iris performing their signature personas:



All in all it was fun, and it's also very nice to be back "home". Funny this word is.

Some more pix I like from the Warsaw album

the palace of culture

Wasrzawa Diary

So we're back home in Berlin, after five days as members of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, and the entertainment committee of the union of the extras in Yael Bartnana's films.

Here's (some of) the story in pictures:

The city is kind of a disneyland, trashed completely by the Nazis and then reconstructed to look exactly the same. Walking the street where our hotel was really felt like strolling in a film set. In general, the whole experience was a funny mixture of fiction and "reality".

We love the pope

Our hotel, where the sauna is steaming and the breakfast warms your heart. Yes it is good to be Jewish

Some pix from the set:

The Schub in uniform

Nadia Borboletta Volkov Dunietz

Yael

Giori & Hadar

Sofitel - probably the most beautiful building in Warsaw

Anat is interested

The Tomb of the unknown soldier, dedicated to Polish soldiers that died in WW1. Next to the eternal flame there is a 24/7 honor guard of two soldiers:

One of the days we were filming in the Palace of Culture, Stalin's imposed gift to the people of Warsaw and one of the most shameless buildings I've ever seen. It wasn't, however, merely the impossible size or the weird, gotham-city-sque appearance of it that was so appealing (huge Batman fan here); The crazy theater inside was just unbelievable. Huge stage with a beautiful grey curtains, ridiculous ceiling, and the best feature by far: every one of the thousands seats in the house has it's own personal mono speaker! You gotta love those fucked up dictators

A speaker for every worker!

  

Impressions from a movement (and a movie) in the making

So im in Warsawa. Weird city (will post some more soon). Anyway, this is an image from the first day of shooting here. Of course, quality is iphone shitty, but i like this frame very much. It shows some extras on the set of Yael's new video, the third in the trilogy about the "jewish renaissance movement in poland", which will be presented at the Venice biennale. These guys, dressed like very well equipped cops, were on set all day and being around them wasn't nice at all. Besides the fact that the clothes does make the man, which is always good to remember, it was a nice reminder of another fact, which Althusser wrote about very simply and cleverly: even when "real" cops are wearing these costumes, it's us who give them the relevance to act as if they had some authority. We imagine them and they imagine themselves just like the three guys having fun in this picture.