Why don’t you say it? | Experimental film project
Participating artists: Aya Ben Ron, Dana Gilerman, Rona Yefman, Yael Bartana, Glad Ratman, Boaz Arad, Ariela Plotkin, Michal Rothschild, Karen Russo, Ariella Azoulay, Elyasaf Kowner
“Most people fall sick because they don’t know how to say what they see and what they think.”
From “The Book Of Disquiet“ by Fernando Pessoa, Babel publishing house, Translated by Ioram Melcer
Spaces without Witnesses
Two years have passed since the project was launched, and now that the eleven films have been completed, together they seem to constitute an intricate exploration of notions such as silence and silencing, articulation, thinking, testimonies, diversion, false speech/dubbing, penetration, humiliation, substitution, humor, effacement, implantation, etc. The recurring attempts in all the films to enter what I would term “spaces without witnesses” seem to enable the introduction of voices and non-voices into the realms of film material. (It is not always clear whether we are indeed witnessing the emergence of memories without witnesses, or whether we are viewing the formation of screen memories, namely memories that remind and mask, attest and deny at one and the same time. Is there really a way to make the voices of “unknown others” heard?)
Michal Heiman, July 2005