18 SHORT CEREMONIES FOR A BUILDING OF EMPTIED ROOMS
Gross Gliencke Military Installation, Potsdam, Germany 2000
Along with four other Israeli and five German artists, I was invited to create a work on the grounds of an old military installation on the outskirts of Berlin, built in the 1920’s and run by the German and then East German government. Over the course of a week, I perform a series of private rituals in different rooms of a large weapons production building in the process of being dismantled.
Documentation of the performances and photos of the rooms were exhibited in the Panzerhalle, an exhibition space in one of the buildings.
From text accompanying exhibition installation:
“I wander through the building after the workers have left for the day. I am confronted by an eerie silence, an odor of decay; an oppressive sense of the harsh regimes once served hangs in the air.
It is like a descent into hell, yet also holds the beauty of an empty cathedral… With materials from the building and from the surrounding woods, I perform actions that try to delicately balance between the private and the collective, between memory and celebration of the present.” (from text accompanying exhibition installation.)
For Memory and Vision, a joint German-Israeli artists’ event at the Gross Gliencke Military Installation, Potsdam, Germany.
(The symposium continued one year later, when the German artists came to Israel for a two week stay, ending in a joint show at the gallery of the Herzeliya Artists’ Residence.)
