Jews, fewllow countrymen, people, you think the old woman who still sleeps under Rifke's quilt doesn't want to see you? has forgotten about you?
You are wrong, she dreams about you every night, dreams and trembles with fear, since the night you were gone and her mother reached for your quilt, she has had nightmares, bad dreams. Only you can chase them away. Let the three milion jews, that Poland has missed, stand by her bed and chase away the demons,return to Poland, to your country [Slawomir Sierakowski gives a speech at the Warsaw Stadium - Mary Koszmary, 2007]
with one religion we cannot listen,
with one color we cannot see,
with one culture we cannot feel,
without you we can't even remeber,
Join us, and Europe will be stunned!
[JRMIP Manifesto]
Yael Bartana, Zamach [Assassination], 2011, ph. Marcin Kalinski
What you are going to listen to is a doble interwined interview to the two of them. It is the first time in the history of the Polish Pavillion that an artist of a nationality other than Polish is representing the country.
Not so unexpectedly though, Galit Eliat got a phone call from Israel just in the middle of our interview, just a few minutes before the official opening of the pavillion. It was a journalist. She was told that the Israel Minister of Culture - who would have visited the Biennale shortly after - would have boycotted the Polish Pavillion. Galit Eliat was not surprised, if you are curious to know why, listen to the interview!
Playing at the ambiguous threshold between fiction and reality, adopting the imaginary and rhetoric of the populistic propaganda, Yael Bartana - whose practice investigates national consciousness and identity - raises questions about the ideas of homeland and return, about the sense of belonging to a nation or even better to a community.
By exploring the dinamics of geo-political conflicts in the Middle East - as in the video A Declaration, 2006 - or dissentangling cultural symbols and ritual of socializing - as in Kings of the Hill, 2003 - Yael Bartana's works often dealt with the Israeli politics and culture but it is not stuck within the Israel borders.
Yael Bartana, Mary Koszmary, one channel super 16 mm transferred to video, 2007.
Throughout the Polish Trilogy - started in 2006 and ended up in Assassination, 2011, the last video premiered at the Venice Biennial where she represents Poland - she widens the spectrum of her investigation landing in Europe, proposing the return of 3.300.000 Jews in Poland, which may be an utopia but also a way to solve the local Israeli-Palestinian dispute about the Land.
Before the Polish historical anti-Semitism and the Israeli political aggressiviness in the area and the Holocaust, the conceptual and also emotional field which she decided to work on starting from Nightmares, 2007, is slippery and confusing. When Slawomir Sierakowski - who's the fictional main carachter in the first video but also the founder of the Krytyka Polityczna circle- asks for the return of 3.300.000 Jews back in Poland who's a nightmare for? for the Poles or for the Jews? Is this program real?
Much further than the trhee stages of the series, Yael Bartana recently founded a movement, called JRMIP - The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland. Further than fiction and identity constraits, she invites people to join its political program that aims to rewrite history not only from the jewish perspective but with a multicultural approach.
Lorenzo Fusi met Yael Bartana and Galit Eliat, one of the curators of the Polish Pavillion at the Giardini, in Venice. What you are going to listen to is a doble interwined interview to the two of them. It is the first time in the history of the Polish Pavillion that an artist of a nationality other than Polish is representing the country.
Not so unexpectedly though, Galit Eliat got a phone call from Israel just in the middle of our interview, just a few minutes before the official opening of the pavillion. It was a journalist. She was told that the Israel Minister of Culture - who would have visited the Biennale shortly after - would have boycotted the Polish Pavillion. Galit Eliat was not surprised, if you are curious to know why, listen to the interview!
Yael Bartana, Mur i wie [wall and tower], RED transferred to HD, 2009, ph. Magda Wunsche & Samsel.
You might be interested to:
• The Jewish Renaissance Movement Manifesto
• Leni Riefenstahl
• (italian) Luigi Fassi intervista Yael Bartana - Klat Magazine
• Krytyka Polityczna - Poland’s largest left-wing circle of intellectuals and activists founded in 2002 by Slawomir Sierakowski