Morendo, 2018, 2-channel video installation, 6:45 min
A video installation consist of two projections on cinema-size walls, played in a loop. The videos present a testimony of a random and accidental encounter that took place about 2 years ago between a former couple, the divorced parents of the artist. The couple, who had been married for twenty years, met at a gas station in the city of Tel Aviv, after they had not spoken or seen each other for six years. What first appears as a nostalgic description of their initial romantic acquaintance turns out, towards the end of the film, to be a painful, unplanned, and unexpected encounter. The very short moment of the hasty meeting, which took about 30 seconds in reality, has been intensified, extended to a six-minute film.
The entrance to the space (Photo: Or Kaplan)
The space is divided equally and symmetrically into two parts, and is crossed by a sculpture of two frozen cymbals, which are about to clash. Each screen is placed on one side of the space and the viewer has to choose between both sides. In one of the videos, the artist’s mother is located on a stage and being used as a one woman band. Every time she produces sound by playing an instrument - the scene changes on the opposite screen, which displays the father. He is photographed at a unique solar power station that is currently under construction, located in the south of Israel. This station produces a complex mechanism that enables the generation of electricity by means of encounter between solar mirrors and sun rays.
Detail from Morendo (Photo: Or Strom)
Installation view (Photo: Or Strom)
Split Screen Version (Video)
One dominant aspect of the parents' detailed testimony is the description of the sound they have heard in the described moments. They both emphasize the mother's honk in the car, which remains as an echo in the memory of the event. In that sense, the repetitive honk can be heard again and again in different variations through the mother's playing.
The installation deals with the concepts of separation, time, and memory, using visual and sensual elements – changes of sound, light, and reflections. While the ex-couple continues to maintain detachment in real life, they keep finding themselves together in different art constellations and installations that function as sound machines in space.
