GROUND LEVEL
Gallery Director:
Kazuhide Miyashita
Shown first at:
LOKO Gallery: 17/2 - 17/3 Tokyo, Japan, 2018.
Yebisu International Festival
for Art & Alternative Visions 2018 “Mapping the Invisible”
The partnership program “Displace” vol.2
Cooperation: Embassy of Israel in Japan |
Artist in Residence Program for Israeli Artists 2018
Year:
2018
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The key word for Segal’ s work is ‘place’. Here memory, history, human activities, and the traces of particular places are epically drawn on the screen. Furthermore, his video projects are composed and positioned such that they mutually influence each other, creating a sublimated site-specific installation in which the exhibition space itself forms an element of the work. His solid video images feel as if they are three-dimensional objects, and the artist’ s own body appears on the screen and transforms the space as a heavy bronze sculpture would.
The title of the exhibition, ‘GROUND LEVEL’ (Ground State) refers to the state in quantum mechanics with the lowest energy that an atom or molecule can have. There is the least motion in that state. However, in this exhibition, movement can be found in the videos. These are not only physical displacements, such as vertical and horizontal movements and rotation, but the flow of history, circulation of images, and exchanges of life and death. Segal creates ‘GROUND LEVEL’ by balancing the energies of different vectors in the multi-layered space of the gallery. The last piece of the exhibition puzzle, which will be completed during the residency period in Tokyo, has as motifs two stories of history involving life and death in the two cultures, Judea and Japan. Focusing on the place as a trace that continues to exist even after many years have gone by, Segal will show the shapes of lost characters in the stories, and in ourselves; who exist in the same historical line as them.
TURGOR, 2014
HD-Video Performance, 3’09”
(Filmed in Münster, Germany, 2014)
Filmed as a single continuous shot on the promenade in front of the Zwinger building, in ‘the city of water’, Münster (The artist’s grandmother was born and spent her childhood there). The ‹Zwinger›(The dog house) is an old city fortification, which once served as both a Nazi gaol and a Gestapo place of execution. The artist’s inverted entrance into the water and the indefinite pause in his breathing, while people ride by behind him on their bicycles, seemingly unaware to the act of exertion taking place within eyeshot. Turgor is a pressure that inflates vegetal cells that helps the plant maintain its rigidity, facilitating the outward growth of young stems and leaves. But while vital for vegetal cells, Turgor pressure can be lethal to animal cells that don’t have a cell wall. By referencing the history of water torture, this work reads both like a physical metaphor and psychological trauma, dealing with fear of memory and human struggle for survival.
SAND STORM & LAWRENCE TREE, 2013
HD-Video, 2’28”
Original Score: Isaac Shushan
(Filmed in, Wadi Rum, Jordan, 2012)
Wadi Ram is a transit area and nomadic as the Bedouin tribes living there. Known as The valley of the moon by its local inhabitants for the resemblance to the lunar surface. The desert as a space; physical, symbolic and mental of exile and wandering of characters lost in time. A single acacia tree appears in the red and sandy desert landscape with a sandstorm shaking its branches. In the distant background, the mountainous landscape of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, known mainly from the books of Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as the mythical ”Lawrence of Arabia” operated in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The combination of the moving image and the oriental soundtrack makes the work, Segal says,
“a sculpture of time and place”.
Sand Timer, 2018
HD-Video, 60’00”
DoP: Gal Hamo
(Filmed in Jaffa, Israel, 2015)
Filmed in Jaffa, Tel Aviv. The place has a long history of appearing in the Bible, and contains different kinds of communities with diverse cultures and social hierarchies. Today it is in rapid economical gentrification, slated to become a new prime real estate area. This performance was shot in the construction site of a condominium, from noon till sundown. Throwing around 700 bricks down into a massive hole in the ground and then building a kind of “home” hearing the Muezzin (indicating the time of prayer) from the neighboring mosque. The duration of the video is exactly 60 minutes. Unlike most other methods of measuring time, the sand timer (hourglass) concretely represents the present as being between the past and the future, and it is a symbol of the time itself. Sand timer changes its format from an object to an action and to realism. The time as a concept is relative. It could be longer and shorter dependant on which point of view you have. This work shows us different points of view of what the artist describes as ‘social gravity’, and emphasises the human pursuit for “home”.
DoP & Editing: Gal Hamo
‘DREAMS OF LE CORBUSIER’, 2015
HD-Video, 2’26”
(Filmed in, ‘Unité d’habitation’, Marseille, France, 2015)
Filmed on the roof of the ‘Unité d’habitation’,
in Marseille. Modernist residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier. It was built between 1947 and 1952. It proved enormously influential to architectural style and philosophy.
The old lady seems as inhabitant on the wheel chair goes around on the roof top of the building. How long has she living there? Sound of waves from the Mediterranean accompanied the her movement.
This mystical loop movement brings the viewers on the thin line between reality and dreams, pain and the absurd, between Utopianism to the Existential situation.
One Thousand & Seven, 2018
[1007]
Two Channel HD-Video, 14’27”
Sound: Sengakuji Temple
Additional Sounds: Isaac Shushan
(Filmed in Masada, Israel & in Sengakuji Temple, Tokyo, Japan, 2018)
Filmed in two separate locations, Israel and Japan, this is the final piece for the Exhibition; GROUND LEVEL. The artist chose to deal with two locations which both contain motifs stories of history involving life and death in the two cultures, Judea and Japan. Focusing on the place as a trace that continues to exist even after many years have gone by, Segal shows the shapes of 1007 characters in lost time and us, ourselves, who exist in the same historical line as them. The diptych could be a meeting point between east and west and raises questions about human nature, morality, life and death, shame and dignity.
