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Memory of maybe tomorrow, 2022-Present, length currently undetermined
This video installation will give artistic expression to the beginnings of Zionism before the founding of the state, and to Zionism in Israel today. Zionism is embodied as a character, with approximately 8 episodic videos beginning with it’s birth. The videos will use biblical and folkloric references to show the utopian sentiments with which Zionism began, and then look at the elements of Zionism today.
No Words of Warmth / Keine wärmenden Worte, 2020-2022
189 Pages, with audio in English and German
Click here to order the book @spectorbooks
To hear the audio in English, click here (58:20 min)
To hear the audio in German, click here (1:10:16 hrs)
No Words of Warmth / Keine wärmende Worte is a multifaceted and hybrid art book—combining text, sound, and images—that provides a glimpse of a young Jewish woman’s life as an artist in Germany. Associations relating to the roles of sister, daughter, mother, and grandmother are woven together through the eyes of the protagonist to create a cohesive feminist voice that explores the past and its influence on the present. Reality blurs with fantasy in a form of stream-of-consciousness writing that is as true as memory or remembered history. Energized by a process of critical selfreflection, this book can be seen as a stand against dehumanization, and a reflection of Jewish life in Germany today.
The book No Words of Warmth / Keine wärmende Worte can be exhibited in audio form, together with collages related to the material of the book, as can be seen with the installation views.
Photo credits from left to right: Sarai Meyron, Boushra Adi, Amloud Alamir, Sarai Meyron
In the video installation breathing archive; body as heritage, photos from the Sarai Meyron family archive are shown. The photos fade in and out of the video, activated by various sounds. The photographs were taken between 1930-60 in Germany and Switzerland. The sound of the breath mixes with the Israeli air raid siren, consisting of a continuous ascending and descending tone, urging citizens to seek shelter. In Israel, there is a second siren called the “all clear siren” a constant single tone that notifies citizens that they can leave the shelter. This signal is used three times a year to observe a minute’s silence on Holocaust Day and twice on Memorial Day for fallen Israeli soldiers. The combination of sounds and images critically questions the politicization of Holocaust commemoration.
✍️ Text by Münzenberg Forum Berlin
In the video “Woher kommen Sie?” (Where are you from?), I present the observer with a series of small talk questions, I have compiled based on my personal experiences in my work as a waitress and also otherwise in everyday life. I act in front of the camera focused on my memories while remembering the questions themselves and how I perceived them. Some questions have a strange aftertaste. Why are they asking me this, and what are the racist undertones in these questions? In what way are these people interested in me? When does a question become an invasion of my privacy?
The familiar domestic backgrounds contrast with the absurd as the protagonists slip in and out of their roles, questioning the familial nature that is inextricably linked to patriarchal values in today’s society. So are questions about gender and the body and Otherness as we move along a vague social line. In exploring these roles, the everyday home and “norm” as a backdrop becomes a character.
Sarai Meyron 