Salon 17
Oreet Ashery
'7 Acts of Love'
23 November 2001 @ 8pm.
Why do you think I left ? (excerpt
from 20min video)
It's too late Baby (excerpt
from 20min video)
Say Cheese
A provocative and deeply reflective performance which combined two
newly
commissioned films made in Israel, with a live one-to-one interaction with
Oreet's alter ego, Marcus Fischer, an Hassidic cross-gender Jew.
Two new films made in direct relation to the home
context include;
'Why do you think I left ?'
A video piece in which Oreet asks each member of her family in turn why
they think she left Israel at the age of 19. The responses expose
not only a
specific familydynamic, but also common Israeli attitudes towards
immigration, shaped according to the different generations.
'Its too late Baby'
Filmed mainly on Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, an historical battle site
which
later turned into a memorial site. The video offers a meditation on
this public
site, whilst exposing an internal landscape haunted with low-tech
constructed flashbacks.
Live Interaction with Marcus Fisher;
'Say Cheese'
The orthodox Jew Marcus Fisher, Oreet's alter ego, was in the bedroom
at
home whilst participants came in one at a time to actively
explore an
intimate moment together. Instant fictional fantasies of love, death
or maybe
just a 'Cheesy Smile' were acted for a still camera. The photographs
were
then sent to the participants.
Oreet Ashery is a London based artist. Her interdisciplinary practice
encourages a dialogue between Live art, interventions, video, sound,
photography
and text. Her work is site-specific and mutates according to
the location
and event; live art/film festivals, site specific locations, the
streets,
clubs and domestic settings. Oreet is interested in the slippage
between
art and life, the status of small rituals, further mutations of current
art practices, and notions of the site-specific event with audience
participants.
Her work uses politics of the body in relation to culture and
location.
