Your Actions Have Consequences.
And sometimes, you learn the hard way
Trial and error.
In this piece, the artist takes part as gardener and as performer.
The artist performs in a garden she has planted.
This becomes a dreamy, post-apocalyptic world, in which is depicted a human-woman-bug in a fantastical garden. This is a poetic, metaphorical piece, about a future humanity, reaping what they have sown. Using science-fictionesque, surreal language, the artist talks about the human condition today, and what consequences may come in the future.
Tension builds as the human-woman bug-body-landscape, wrapped in a suit made of plant-protecting net and five-toe shoes, searches for her meaning in life in the garden. She immerses herself in the life and death, in the cycle, like a puppeteer she tries to urgently impregnate the earth with tomato juice. She tries to sow seeds out of fruits she is wasting.
I invented this character very intuitively. I wanted to bring the women’s body in an unsexualized way, naked as nature intended. Wrapped in a protective net it is protected like a plant, not like a human body. The face is skewed and cropped, morphing the facial features almost like the “elephant man”, or some creature that is human and non-human at the same time, purposely trying to bring out something monstrous. I wanted this creature to be unable to eat, to be frustrated, lost, searching for what to do in a situation that her ancestors had created for her, where she may not be able to survive in, or doesn’t belong to anymore.
We have been separated from earth-terra. When we touch the earth with our bare feet we use them as eyes, feeling the ground, the textures, recognizing places. Wearing shoes makes us blind to certain things, disconnected. But this tool can give us freedom to skip, to climb, and to move faster. The bare footed walker is more attentive, but must also be more cautious, there is a possibility of being hurt.
These specific pair of shoes were found abandoned in a community garden. I picked them up, excited by the serendipitous moment: I had been intrigued for months by this object. I noticed that this strange item had migrated from the feet of nature lovers to those of edgy fashionistas. I wanted to use this shift as a symbolic moment in culture, a shift in aesthetics, perhaps reflecting a need to “go back to nature”. I imagined them for this character, a hybrid human-bug.
This is an example of the current human condition. We have separated ourselves from certain cycles and attentiveness, to survive. Now, this exact loss is bringing us closer to destruction. The earth is dry, urgently the giantess-bug tries planting and pushing to build new life, trying to have control over a thing that may be uncontrollable by her and must be, let be.
The music for this video is created in collaboration with musician Ron Dahan, combining recorded sounds of her surroundings. Animals, plants, actions, words, steps, with electronic sound mix, come together, bringing our human past-present-future warp of soundscape. A cat’s purr sounds almost like an engine, a whispered word mixes with the wind and plants, footsteps become a knife slashing the air.
The words in Hebrew, appearing as a word game : אדמה הבאת, עד המוות Adama Hevet- Ad Hamavet. You Have Brought Earth, Until Death, are present, almost disappearing as echoes in the sound, giving another layer of meaning.
This video, and garden, were made as a deep therapeutic act in uncertain times,
time of death and pain, a time that has changed my perspective of myself and
of the world greatly. This film is a deep act of being, looking,
seeing and becoming. Experiencing deeply the dualities of this world.