Sahki Sahki
video loop of 1:31 minutes.
2020
This name of this video is two words in Hebrew (שחקי, שחקי) which are the opening words of this famous song by Shaul Tchernichovsky. Several proposals have been made to make the song the anthem of the State of Israel, alongside or in the place of "Hatikva". The important proposal was made by Muhammad Bracha and Avraham Burg. For the song has a universal message and is therefore better in their eyes than the "hope" of a distinctly Jewish character. The melody of this song originates from a Russian folk song about the Don River. As like many folklore songs in Israel the russien folk songs are routed deep in the melodies and words. the soundtrack of this video is an opposite direction processing of one of the performances of this song.
I Believe (Sahki, Sahki שחקי, שחקי)
Shaul Tchernichovsky
Rejoice, rejoice now in the dreams
I the dreamer am he who speaks
Rejoice, for I’ll have faith in mankind
For in mankind I believe.
For my soul still yearns for freedom
I’ve not sold it to a calf of gold
For I shall yet have faith in mankind
In its spirit great and bold
That will cast off binding chains
Raise us up, hold high our heads
Workers will not die of hunger
For souls – release, for poor folk – bread.
Rejoice for I have faith in friendship
I’ll find a heart – in this I’ve faith –
A heart that shares in all my hopes,
A heart that feels both joy and pain.
And I shall keep faith in the future,
Though the day be yet unseen
Surely it will come when nations
All live in blessed peace.
Then my people too will flourish
And a generation shall arise
In the land, shake off its chains
And see light in every eye.
It shall live, love, accomplish, labor
In the land it is alive
Not in the future, not in heaven –
And its spirit shall henceforth thrive.
A poet shall sing a new anthem,
His heart aware of beauty sublime
For him, that young man, above my tomb
Blossoms in a wreath shall twine.
Written in Odessa in 1892. Translated from Hebrew
by Vivian Eden.
From Aomori
video loop of 1:11 minutes.
2020-2021
The Japanese folk song From Aomori is all about the changing seasons and it's affect on the mud lark and the singing frog. Summer and Spring being times that are playful where they are happy and free. Winter being cold and full of ice takes a toll on their 'heaven' or environment.
When summer comes,
The paddy pools grow warm
The mud lark and the singing frog
Are happy, are happy
Thinking they're in bath.
When winter comes,
The paddy pools are filmed with ice,
The mud lark and the singing frog
Must think their heaven has stretched
Has stretched and grown above.
When spring comes
There's water in the paddy pools
The mud lark and the singing frog
Are happy, are happy
Thinking they're in the sea.
When autumn comes,
The hills and dales turn red
The mud lark and the singing frog
Craning their necks above,
Must think of the hills are on fire.
FLYBLACKS
This work was born in the winter of 2015 after the general elections in Israel. As a response to the raise of racism and fascism in my country, I raised a black flag on the balcony of my apartment. The flag is still hanging there. This video is a contemplative continuation of this act.
Flyblacks is a video that combines low-tech animation techniques with 3D animation. The film describes a world of surrealistic black bodies, made from fabric, floating in a modernist architectural environments located in Tel-Aviv. The movement of the bodies, in its long and slow gestures, resembles the moves of the Japanese Butoh dance. While the objects are flying into the architectural scape shown in the photos, they create symbols such as the Star of David, cross, or a moon that disappears into the slow motion pace. The black bodies fall apart and come together as they gather, thus create a sense of a broken world, dismantled of any known rules.
The fragmented soundtrack, played mostly with a children’s xylophone intensifies the dreamy, almost fantasy-like atmosphere in the film. There is an apocalyptic aura in the scenes proposing the mourning of the Zionistic dream, in particular in its current
fascist term.
In a manner, the subject of the film is “time” and more specifically the “historical time”. The movement of the black triangle bodies is inspired by Bergson’s term Duration (French: la durée). Bergson became aware that the moment one attempted to measure a moment, it would be gone. Duration is ineffable and can only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture. It can only be grasped through a simple intuition of the imagination.
The film is in B&W, an element that highlights the sharpness of the objects, their geometry and keen movement. In addition, this aspect makes it difficult for the viewer to understand when the film was created, as it contains both tributes from the surreal movies emerging from the beginning of the 20th century, and elements from the modern sci-fi animation world.
