Bodies of work

The 'Serendipity Experiment' has blurred the boundaries between living and working. All daily actions - walking, sleeping, eating, taking a shower, doing laundry - are entwined in the making of art. There is no separation, no buffer, no pause, no protection. Geography, social life, health, finances, all the way to bowel movements - life and art affect each other constantly, to the point of becoming one and the same. As a result, the artistic process has become fluid and reactionary, almost like breathing - in and out, input-output. As the barriers are removed, making the private public and vice versa, the artists submit themselves to be a blank canvas, ready to be marked by the ever-changing reality, becoming just another element in the greater composition of the work.

Shelter

Crescent City, California, 2020

Covid19 caught us in India, doing preliminary work for a project. We got out after one month of lockdown, by boarding an evacuation flight to Israel. It took two more months of lockdown there, before we could return to the U.S. and continue to social distancing in the van. This work was done during that time of isolation.

From the ashes

Ojai, California, 2018

May 2018
In 2016, back in Israel, a fire raged across the streets of our city. Red tongues wildly licked wood and concrete alike, while we prepared an emergency bag, ready to evacuate. Not much went into this bag and what didn’t was a lifetime of memories that’ll be left behind. Thanks to the firefighters and Lady luck, the fire was extinguished before reaching our home. Still, it made us think, choose. We chose life and not much more. Six months after the Thomas Fire devastation, the Ojai Foundation left us alone for a weekend on their ravaged mountain, where they had lost homes and property. We can only hope that our works and rituals can be a tiny step in the process of healing for people and land, alike.

The land remembers, forgets

Witch Dance, Natchez Trace Parkway, Mississippi, 2018

January 25, 2018
Heading from Alabama to Mississippi, we took the marvel that is the Natchez Trace Parkway – a road that is a national park that is a journey through history. While still essentially just an asphalt road crossing beautiful landscape, of which there are thousands across the continent, the experience on the Trace is very much different. The intent and the care invested here are felt the second you get on. The acoustics, even the air itself, change. There is quiet, there is peace. And as you slowly pass through this wonderland, you encounter scores of historical markers, progressively accumulating to tell the tale of how this land was won and who had won it. It’s a complex and dichotomous experience – a sense of awe of the enterprise of mankind and heartache from the atrociousness and self-centered hubris that historically accompany it, almost by default. One of our stops was named Witch Dance (see photo below). An almost unintentional spotlight to an ever-present parallel road through human history, one on which powerful and independent women were demonized and prosecuted and burnt at the stake. Yet, progress has been constant throughout the centuries. Like waves licking the shores, slowly turning stones to sand, turning hard unmovable axiom to an infinity of shifting possibilities. Regardless, no matter the atrocities, the spirit cannot be quenched. We will eventually be gone, a mere blip on this earth, and it will shrug off and move on. And for women and for men, for whom time is briefer, we shall carry the stories and lessons of the past within us, from generation to generation, from wave to pounding wave, and eventually shift the tides.

Shed your skins

Page, Arizona, 2018

Channeling the magic

Aransas Pass, Texas, 2018

February 2018
In the wake of the storms, from eastern Florida and throughout the Gulf, nowhere did we encounter the totality and finality of devastation like we did on the southern shores of Texas.
Areas where not a single home or business had survived and where, unlike in the Keys, we could see no signs of rebuilding. Places and lives that had to simply be left behind.
In the face of this, as artists and as humans, we asked ourselves: What can we possibly do? What difference does it make? But all we can do is simply do and do it with full intention. To tap in to the great river that connects everything and all of us; to channel it to create our art; and with our art, to hopefully mark reference points for others to connect to and do with it whatever they may.

In finite, infinite

Mustang Island, Texas, 2018

February 2018
Our artistic process has become very fluid and reactionary, almost like breathing - in and out, input-output. It is essentially a performance - the art is in the act itself and we are the blank canvas or litmus paper, absorbing the rapidly changing reality and reacting to it in real time.
It all stems from a single decision - to remove all the barriers between life and art, between work and the artistic process. The daily movements - walking, sleeping, taking a shower, eating - all are completely entwined in the making of art. There is no separation, no buffer, no pause, no protection. Geography, social life, health, finances, all the way to bowel movements - life and art affect each other constantly, are one and the same.

So many shapes that i'm losing mine

Gulfport, Mississippi, 2018

January 12, 2018
Our daily movements – waking, sleeping, taking a shower, eating and most importantly, walking – all are completely entwined in the making of art. There is no more separation, no buffer, no pause. We work where we stop to eat, sleep where we worked and discover new roads to travel in search of a new “canvas”. Geography, social life, health, finances, all the way to bowel movements – life and art affect each other constantly, are one and the same. This symbiotic relationship makes us somewhat unraveled at the edges. It exposes our nerve endings and blends us into the habitats we explore. There are days that we feel stretched, in the words of Bilbo: “like butter scraped over too much bread”. This piece – the first of a new series called Body of Work – was done at a coin laundromat in Gulfport, just outside Biloxi. It was conceived, prepared, put up, documented and taken down by the time our clothes were dry. We had just passed through Biloxi, a beach city defined by its casino-hotels. This whole stretch of shore felt like a ghost town this time of year. Its wind swept boardwalk was deserted, its huge blocks of hotels on top of shiny casinos were dark. All-you-can-eat seafood restaurants – painted in bubble gum pink and green and with doors shaped like a massive shark and alligator – opened their maws to admit the crowds that simply weren’t there. The striking contrast of it all, on the pale cold backdrop of the sea, was haunting. This city was programmed to have the high tide flowing through its arteries and now, in the low tide, it was struggling to find meaning amongst the empty shells revealed. Us two – who were used to walking slowly upon the sand and admire the shells and driftwood – now, adrift in the flood, we are struggling to find a root to hang on to. We moved on.