{"id":256,"date":"2009-08-04T15:30:48","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T15:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maarav.org.il\/english\/?p=256"},"modified":"2017-08-31T16:45:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T16:45:57","slug":"whose-voice-is-this-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maarav.org.il\/english\/2009\/08\/04\/whose-voice-is-this-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Voice is This Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New Ma\u2019arav Supplement:<\/em><\/p>\n

About a year ago, a story broke out <\/a>that ruffled quite a few feathers within art academia: Kamal Boullata, a Palestinian artist and researcher living in France blamed Professor Ganit Ankori, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, of having copied several of his ideas and using them in her book Palestinian Art (published by Reaktion Books). Besides Boullata\u2019s specific academic and legal claims \u2013 his suit was later rejected by the court and it forced magazines which published his allegations against Ankori to pay her severances \u2013 the story conjured up a debate<\/a> in different fora concerning the moral right, and lack thereof, of researchers of one group to publish analyses of a rival group\u2019s cultural activity. In other words, those who took part in the debate were wondering out loud whether Ankori, an Israeli researcher and member of Israeli academia (and hence representative of the Occupation) has the moral right to analyze the work of Palestinian (i.e., occupied) artists. Many claimed that her work was in itself a kind of cultural occupation, going on to blame Israeli researchers of adding insult to injury in denying Palestinians their own voices after having stripped them of their land. Similar accusations, though of a lower frequency, have been leveled at Ashkenazi curator Tal Ben Zvi, who organized Mother Tongue<\/a> (pdf), an exhibition of art by Mizrahi artists, and against researchers from many disciplines from around the world. On the other hand, there are arguments in favor academic freedom, of research as common grounds for working out politically transgressive questions, the power of institutional work as a basis for change, etc.<\/p>\n

Whose Voice is This Anyway?<\/strong>, a new supplement in Ma\u2019arav, brings these questions to the fore, dealing with questions such as who \u2018owns\u2019 the voice of the other, if anyone can \u2018own\u2019 a voice anyway, and what is the character of the moral right to employ it, as well as with the cultural repercussions of these question on contemporary culture and art. Showcasing and debating artworks, curatorial work, film and activism, the supplement evaluates the different questions that arise from creation by and research of the other. Who has the right to speak for the other, create in the name of the other and analyze the culture and art of others? How relevant is the researcher\u2019s identity to his work, and might it qualify or disqualify him or her from undertaking it? Might artists\u2019 ethnic, economic, national and\/or gendered backgrounds blind them to the struggles of other groups, disqualify them from taking up their causes and\/or criticize them? And do corporate Globalization and the culture of the net obfuscate or rather highlight these questions\u2019 validity? Since the research and analysis of groups always entails confrontation with a foreign culture, we try to ascertain whether the foreign gaze must be a violent and\/or fascinated one, or is it also able to be sober and critical; does this gaze have the power to reveal or just conceal; and are art creation, research, curatorial work and simple observation necessarily domineering, or might they be able to express attempts at bridge- and intimacy-building, perhaps even aiding the higher moral act of using privilege to strengthen the voices of the disempowered.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Michal Heiman, Father not Uncle (Freud \/ Katharina), 2008, video, color, sound (26 min.), detail<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

The essays<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The supplement opens with Noa Roei\u2019s essay The Politics of Aesthetics Between Bil\u2019in and Tel Aviv<\/a>, which deals with the creation of objects and performances for demonstrations against the construction of the Separation Wall in the Palestinian village of Bil\u2019in, and their subsequent relocation from the realm of protest to the one of gallery exhibition in Tel-Aviv. The artistic means they employ, claims Roei, align the protesters with members of the international contemporary activist-art community, allowing them to sound off not as oppressed but as active partners in this scene.<\/p>\n

Ari Joskowicz offer another angle on the local conflict with Curatorial Responsibility and the Exhibition of Israeli and Palestinian Political Art in Europe<\/a>, originally published in an Israeli and Palestinian art show exhibited last year in Vienna. Joskowicz makes use of the exhibition\u2019s complex makeup and loaded historical and national contexts to debate the possibilities and limitations confronting curators seeking to endow the shows they curate with a historical, ethical and social context, as well as the relations between art, education, activism and history.<\/p>\n

Rotem Ruff deals, in A Participant Observer: Dealing with Political Voice in William Kentridge\u2019s \u201cDrawings for Projection\u201d<\/a>, with the work of this Jewish-South-African artist, whose art relates to the apartheid regime through a set of artistic tricks meant primarily at illuminating \u2013 rather than solving \u2013 the double (moral) standard of an artist who both observes and takes part in the tragedy of a segregated society.<\/p>\n

Ralf Homann, an artist and activist active in Germany, uses his essay SLOT MOBILITY!<\/a> to showcase the work of schleuser.net, an artistic association and communal working platform for activists, artists and professional experts. The project, originally set up to fill the need for wider presentation of issues of mobility and migration and present the interests of free passage in the economic and human-rights fields, deals with borders, migration and people\u2019s \u201cillegal\u201d status. Presenting the project, the artist also raises important questions concerning artists belonging to the dominant power allegedly speaking out for oppressed immigrants as well as supplying ideas of how to avoid this impasse.<\/p>\n

In Facing Klone: The Address of a Voice in Tel-Aviv\u2019s Street Art,<\/a> Philosopher Hagi Kenaan responds to\u00a0the images of the Tel Aviv based street artist, Klone, offering a new perspective for thinking about the Image’s Voice and its reverberation in the urban space.<\/p>\n

Using the work of French film maker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, Israeli film makers such as Avi Mograbi and July Gerstel Cohen and the writings of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, Adam Aboulafia tries (Whose Cinema?)<\/a> to work out whether documentary film can represent an otherness which overcomes the allegedly distinct identities of filmmaker, subject and viewer \u2013 and if so, what the nature of that otherness might be.<\/p>\n

The English supplement ends with an excerpt of Ariella Azoulay\u2019s book Act of State<\/a>, which accompanied a 2007 exhibition by the same name at the Gallery of the Minshar Art School (Tel-Aviv), in which Azoulay attempted to read local history through its photographic images. In the essay, she deals with whom the photographs belong to, ascertaining what information can be dredged out of them.<\/p>\n

The essays were translated on the occasion of the launching of Ma\u2019arav\u2019s English edition. This edition includes two essays written especially and published in English alone.<\/p>\n

The first is Nat Muller\u2019s critique of In the Middle of the Middle<\/em><\/a>, an exhibition curated by Catherine David during the last winter in Beirut. She criticizes the work of David \u2013 a Western curator who has shown the work of Arab artists in the heart of Beirut \u2013 in light of the recent vogue for Middle-Eastern art in the contemporary art world. The second essay, Any Women in the Directors\u2019 Room?<\/a> by Shira Richter, deals with the identity of those who would still speak for women, wondering how a women\u2019s voices can be uttered without giving up its uniqueness.<\/p>\n

In addition, in the Hebrew version we publish the essays abstracted below.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jewish art scholar David Sperber seeks to point out fissures and new connections between contemporary Israeli art and curatorial work and the Jewish Tradition. He claims, in The Appropriation of the Jewish Voice in the Local Art Discourse,<\/a> that an analysis of the field uncovers a contradictory process of hybridization\/purging, with Jewish elements seeping into secular art on the one hand, and the art field renouncing these elements for the upkeep of Modernist divisions between High Art and \u201creligious art\u201d\u2019, on the other.<\/p>\n

Japanese art scholar Oshrat Dotan showcases the work of young Japanese artist Miwa Yanagi, whose work is now being exhibited at the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennial, in her essay The Silent Struggle of Young Women<\/a>. Dotan presents Yanagi\u2019s work on Japanese women\u2019s status and female identity, and describes how her work criticizes women\u2019s social roles in Japan as well as stereotypes of young and old women.<\/p>\n

Seemingly about the Congo, a state defined as a humanitarian disaster area, it comes as no surprise that Renzo Martens\u2019s film Enjoy Poverty would include difficult sights. However as Efi Weiss demonstrates in her essay Inverted Horror<\/a>, these sights center on the Western aid organizations deployed to the area and their cynicism, oppression and decadence.<\/p>\n

In his essay Soundtracks as Identity-Splitters<\/a>, Omri Greenberg claims that the soundtracks of Wes Anderson\u2019s films (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou etc.) act to undermine the director\u2019s unified point-of-view and achieve polyphonic, reflexive films. He claims that the songs and music that feature in the films problematize the films\u2019 narrative structure and act as a distinct voice.<\/p>\n

Rotem Rosenthal analyzes the work of Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska, whose work was exhibited in a show at Bat yam Museum earlier this year. Eye in a Light Box deals <\/a>with the context in which her work was shown in Israel \u2013 the Year of Polish Culture in Israel. Rosenthal highlights this aspect, using philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy\u2019s aesthetic theories to analyze the power interplay between artist, work and viewer as these are manifest in Grzeszykowska\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

On the supplement\u2019s cover: Michal Heiman, Father not Uncle (Freud \/ Katharina), 2008, video, color, sound (26 min.), detail<\/em><\/p>\n

Epilogue<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This supplement, which deals exclusively with the voice of the other and the debate over it, should have included the voices of Palestinians and the citizens of neighboring states such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. But the ongoing Occupation means that creators and researchers from the world in general and the Middle East in particular are reluctant to collaborate with Israeli bodies. Since we thought it was inappropriate to use our voices alone to speak of the cultures of our neighbors, and in light of the IDF\u2019s attack on Gaza (which has strengthened calls for boycott), we publish this supplement without these voices, which are sorely missed.<\/p>\n

Yonatan Amir and Ronen Eidelman<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whose Voice is This Anyway?, a new supplement in Ma\u2019arav, deals with questions such as who \u2018owns\u2019 the voice of the other, if anyone can \u2018own\u2019 a voice anyway, and what is the character of the moral right to employ it, as well as with the cultural repercussions of these question on contemporary culture and art. Showcasing and debating artworks, curatorial work, film and activism, the supplement evaluates the different questions that arise from creation by and research of the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n