Sample from the “Guide for the disappearing Artist”:

The A.I.D will be presented from the 7th April 2011 in the “Shafdan” exhibition. For more information, questions or complaints, please contact us at:

aidfordisappearing@gmail.com

The exhibition “MY GHETTO ” by artist Itay Ziv arouses an assortment of contemplations in various subjects such as the image-history-memory relations, the identity construction of the subject and the personal experience and implementation of the Holocaust in today’s Israeli/ Jewish society among others. In this review I chose to use aspects of those topics mentioned above and to focus in the work’s implications on the construction of the remembering subject of the Holocaust in the Israeli society.

Description of the work: The main feature of the exhibition is a 15 minutes video work which displays the artist while delivering a detailed report on a supposed visit in an unnamed European destination. The moment this work reaches its end another video begins (on a different screen). This second video displays the artist listening to a recording of a Hebrew song named “My Ghetto” and, facing the camera, providing the viewers with a simultaneous English translation to the song. The third feature in “MY GHETTO” is the decoration of the studio walls with countless intensely colored prints of flowers of many shapes and colors. A printer and a computer screen (which accompanied sometimes by a seating and printing flash & blood Itay Ziv) implies that the assignment is yet to be completed.

The different elements of “MY GHETTO”

The Reconstruction of Paranoia: Social Construction • If there is any core idea of social constructionism, it is that some object or objects are caused or controlled by social or cultural factors rather than natural factors, and if there is any core motivation of such research, it is the aim of showing that such objects are or were under our control: they could be, or might have been, otherwise. (From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Paranoia:

• An extreme and unreasonable feeling that other people do not like you or are going to harm or criticize you. (Definition of paranoia noun from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) • Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The major goal of this review will be to analyze “MY GHETTO” as reflecting the social construction of paranoia as an inherent part of the memory of the Holocaust in Israeli society. To put it simply, my argument is that “MY GHETTO” works as carefully placed lens which reflects the construction of the paranoia as an artifact of the accepted narrative of the memory of the Holocaust in Israeli society. Along this review I will suggest the meanings I find in this work and try to show by which methods the work generates these meanings. The construction of memory The thing that most viewers of “MY GHETTO” probably notice first about the descriptions they hear is their familiarity. By this I don’t mean that they know those things from their own physical experience but from their experience with other descriptions/ stories/ films/ pictures from and about the Holocaust. The huge intimidating communist blocks, the old women with the baskets, the swastikas everywhere and the grey hostile atmosphere are all reused images from our collective memory of the Holocaust. Most people will probably describe Eastern Europe’s towns just like that without even being there (actually it’s likely that they won’t describe them like that if they would actually visit there). The chickens and thin cats that walk around, the smell of urine and the poor crime neighborhoods are all part of a cliché that seem to be taken out straight from the naturalistic literature and especially from its incarnation in the Jewish literature of the turn of the century. The experiences of fear, of grey and hard faces and of panic (“How am I going to run away from this country?” says the reporter at one spot) are too, experiences that we are all familiar with in descriptions of those hostile places. It seems that the things which the reporter saw and experienced where all reconstruction of images and experiences he was raised and learned to attach a priori to the Holocaust and to the countries where it took place; and so when he finally got there he just had to unload this bag of clichés over wherever it is the imaging of reality To make this point even stronger the reporter continues his description with his entrance to a museum, but since entering the museum the description stays pretty much the same. The description of the pictures is identical to the description of the reality he was experiencing outside the museum, the same kind of stories, the same faces, the same atmosphere and the same descriptions of never ending walls occupy his experience with reality on one hand and with recorded images on the other. This is a powerful statement about the imaging of reality in the construction of the collective memory. The brilliant idea of never taking the reporter out of the museum creates a non-knowledge effect in the level of the viewer who, as the description goes on and on, cannot tell if this is still the description of the museum or the streets of reality again. This operation of dissolving the division between the experience of reality and the experience of images of reality is probably the high point and the core of this work as it’s a perfect depiction of the control of the constructed memory over experience.
Non-Knowledge The idea of incomplete knowledge and lack of certainty is very common along the main feature and has an important function in this work. The main feature begins with an explanation for the visit: “It was an automatic decision {…} since I came here to live in Europe” says the reporter. The idea of going “there” seems to be as the natural thing to do for national reasons i.e. to explore the history of the nation you are a part of, to understand better who you are by understanding better the past of your people. But as the video goes along it becomes clear that the reporter has not understood anything. This is emphasized by the mastery of non-knowledge over this piece. Non-knowledge is expressed by several means. It is mainly conveyed through formal methods such as the cut of a large percentage of the sentences before they can provide meaning; or the fact that all 8 “Reporters” talk, act and reports exactly the same, and on the exact same objects (i.e. the many perspectives are only seemingly giving a better chance for understanding while actually they don’t provide any advantage over a single, or even none, reporter as they are all as void). Other non-knowledge mechanisms, in addition to these formal methods, are the irrational emotionality of the reporter and the fading of certainty operation, common in many of the descriptions . At some points the non-knowledge becomes so extreme that the description becomes pure nonsense . A final confirmation for the mastery of non-knowledge comes in the conclusive fact that the reporter has not understood anything from this trip (except maybe for the fact that he is a very frightened and panicked subject). This becomes clear if we should consider the sentence that begins this video (cited above) with the one that ends it. The latter being “I was looking for signs, but it was nothing, there was nothing”.
The Paranoia effect Paranoia, anxiety and general unsettledness are present all along the main video. This affect is achieved by several media and idiomatic tools. The overuse of Jump-cuts, the never concluding sentences, the non-knowledge and uncertainty effects are all creating cognitive anxiety regardless of the subject matter of the work. In addition the ascending paranoia and emotionality of the reporter as the video goes on, his disgust, fear and growing claustrophobia are all adding to these formal effects a very unsettling content. The result is a clear Paranoia affect both in judging the reporter and in the emotional and cognitive state of the viewer. The Israeli factor Just like the words “Holocaust”, “Nazis” or “Poland” are never articulated during the work so are the words “Jews” or “Israel”. Nevertheless it is clear that the reporter is Israeli. This appears mainly by the way he speaks. His English is “Israelised” not only by his clear accent but also by both the use of Hebrew grammar over the English language and the use of direct translation of Hebrew terms and sayings into English. Examples of this can be found in the sentences “Outside from the shops” or “Smelly out of cars”. This compulsion of one language over another reaches a climax when the reporter starts using the Hebrew word “Beton” (concrete) in order to make his audience understand the massive existence of concrete in the place. The Israeli factor is thus two-fold in this work and operates on one level as a focal device to narrow the focus of the “Holocaust reaction” on the Israeli subject (as opposed to a Universal subject) and on the other level as a symbolic action that uses language as an arena of struggle and oppression, and actually, as a “Ghetto” of self expression. This symbolic use of language reflects the never successful - yet obliged need of the Holocaust and its affects to be explained. This Idea will return explicitly on the second video.
The reconstruction of Paranoia The main point I wanted to state about this exhibition in this review is the in-authenticity of the collective memory of the Holocaust and its effects on the constructed paranoid identity of the Israeli subject. The reporter wanted to go “there” because it was important for him to see and experience this place but, as I tried to show, the things he saw and experienced where all reconstruction of images and experiences he was raised and learned to attach a priori to the Holocaust. What I tried to show in my analysis of the main video is that this work articulates the notion of the social construction of Paranoia that is imbedded in the Israeli collective memory of the Holocaust. It does that with the revelation of the imaging of reality, the non-knowledge effect, the creation of paranoia, the symbolic use of language and mainly the exposure of the reuse of elements from the collective memory.

The additional parts of the exhibition As I see it, although the main video is the main statement of the exhibition, the two other components of “MY GHETTO” reveal a twist and add a punch to the entire exhibition, and naturally this review cannot claim to be complete without addressing those elements. I suffer, therefore I am The second video uses the song “My Ghetto” taken from the satire Bathtub Queen. This song refers to the turbulence of a paranoid subject who’s “Ghetto” is mainly his imaginary bodily disfigurations. His Ghetto begins in the womb of his mother (being upside down) continues with the body disfigurations (a weird nose and a tail). Then, after many years he realizes that his nose is fine and he has no tail but his ghetto still stays, and finally his death will be his ghetto, a ghetto which he already has learned to like. The song clearly shows the ghetto as something that is there before birth and stays after death, as some inherent absolute quality and an essential part of the being of the Israeli subject. But it has other two important meanings. One is the emptiness of the ghetto – as the things that occupy it are fake, void notions. The other is it’s the liking of the ghetto . In these three senses the second video only ads conscience exclamations for ideas raised before, in a less specific form, in the first video. But there is more to just exclamations in the second video. This song carries another meaning, this meaning emphasize the “MY” in the title of the exhibition. The ghetto is seen as a very personal object; it exceeds any communal, national or historical sense and becomes, according to the song, the very essence of being, to the degree of a substitute for the concept of the soul. This idea gives ground to the implementation of the ghetto concept in everyday life. After all, most people, even in Israel, don’t live the Holocaust consciously each and every day, thus the motivation of the song to make the connection between this consciousness and everyday life. It weaves a thread between the collective memory of the holocaust and the paranoid existence of the usual subject. Another character of the second video (the first being the lyrical content of the song) is of course the simultaneous Hebrew-English translation. The translation operation puts us back again in to the realm of language, and the inaccuracy of the translation (sometimes skipping entire parts of sentences) brings us back again to the problem of communication, of articulating and explaining the Holocaust, and yet the anxious need to do so, to show it to the world. At a certain point (3rd chorus) the translator stops translating for a while and just enjoys singing and moving to the beat. I see it as a manifestation of the liking of the ghetto. The ghetto becomes such a basic part of life that it stops being all bad, and the subject learns to enjoy it and finds the small places of comfort in it. The impact of this element is again, the omnipresence and yet privacy of the ghetto concept.
Flowers The third feature of “MY GHETTO” is the prints of flowers that feel the walls of the studio. The prints are countless and the colors are bright in an exaggerated manner. Their impact is firstly the concept of “Fake”. An important aspect of that concept is that the “flowers” are not flowers but images of flowers, and those images are there for decoration i.e. they operate as real flowers. This idea brings me back to the imaging of reality. The same idea that was raised with the sameness of the description of reality and museum is now augmented with the choice of “cure”, or means of repression, of the impact of the images of the holocaust with images of flowers. This statement displays an existence made of images, memory and images of memory. Nor the cause of paranoia and neither the way to deal with it have roots in naïve reality; they are all anchored in the realm of image. They all have none but the simulacrum (if I may use a phrase coined by Jean baudrillard) existence.
The Image is the Ghetto: The flowers represent the compulsive repression of the ghetto life. The flowers aim is to block the ghetto from the self, to overcome it with calm and cheerful images. But this effort is in vain because the ghetto, as we’ve seen, is not out there but in here, in the very core of the subject, and the flowers fetish only stress that the ultimate ghetto is the ghetto of the image, the one that the subject’s efforts to escape from, are made of the same matter (or anti-matter) as the ghetto itself; and in a typical Kafkaesque manner those efforts of escape only bury the subject deeper and deeper in his tragic, impossible situation – In the Ghetto of the image.

Ido Lewit Dec.2009 Amsterdam.

Detail from the work: