overlapping voices
By Schneider • 10:16 AM • Category: Projects, Projects - curated by Ritesinstitute
© parrhesia/foto:thomas_freiler/essl_museum
OVERLAPPING VOICES
Israeli and Palestinian Artists
16/05/2008 – 26/10/2008
Essl Museum, Exhibition Hall
Curators: Karin Schneider, Friedemann Derschmidt, Tal Adler, Amal Murkus
Accompanying Events: Parrhesia – action in public space / Vienna (from 11/05/2008)
Symposium with artists at the EsslMuseum (18/05/2008)
This exhibition of Israeli and Palestinian artists offers a rare and interesting opportunity to discuss different artistic practices from a conflicted area.Both Israeli and Palestinian societies contain a vast range of people, cultures and positions with rich and intertwined histories. This exhibition tries to bring together some of these voices, which overlap and sometimes contradict the more common and clearer positions usually heard.Some of the 22 art projects that include all artistic media are shown for the first time.
Many of them are based on civil society structures, as many of the artists in this show are themselves social and cultural activists. Four of the projects created for the exhibition are a result of artistic collaboration between some of the artists and civil society organizations, Israeli and Palestinian, who present interesting visions for understanding of the region and its challenges.
An information lounge with maps, glossaries and books will give visitors the possibility to better understand the complexity of this region and its connections with Austrian history – in particular the displacement and annihilation of Europe’s Jews during the Nazi-regime.
The curators are Karin Schneider and Friedemann Derschmidt (Rites-institute), Vienna, Tal Adler (Israeli artist) and Amal Murkus (Palestinian singer), Israel.
Artists
Tal Adler, Shalom Amira, Anisa Ashkar, Asad Azi, Raed Bawayah, Eyal Ben-Dov, Zoya Cherkassky und Avdey Ter-Oganian, Ronen Eidelman, Shula Keshet, Jumana Manna, Parrhesia, Friedemann Derschmidt und Karin Schneider – ritesinstitute, Yoav Weiss, Osama Zatar, Manar Zuabi, Masha Zusman
Projects
Tal Adler & Beduinenvertreter / Bedouin representatives: “unrecognized”
Shula Keshet & “Achoti” (”Schwester” / “sister”): “Beehive and Archive”
Jumana Manna: “Song of Ascents”
Parrhesia & Zochrot (”Erinnern” / “remembering”): “Through Language”
Blog accompanying the exhibition by the ritesinstitute
www.ritesinstitute.org/ritesblog
Press (Essl Museum)
Anja Reisch: +43 (0)2243 – 370 50 60, reisch@essl.museum , www.essl.museum
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Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
Wir erlauben uns, einige Bemerkungen zu Ihrer gegenwärtige Ausstellung “Overlapping Voices” zu machen.
Während wir die Motivation für die Ausstellung und deren Qualität sehr beeindruckend finden ist uns die Auswahl der Bücher die Sie vorstellen völlig unverständlich. Wir fragen uns nämlich was diese Ausstellung über palästinensische und israelische Künstler mit Antisemitismus zu tun hat, ein Thema dem zahlreiche Bücher gewidmet sind.
Weiters: in Ihrer Dokumentation befindet sich ein Blatt über “Terrorismus”. Wir finden natürlich Terroranschläge gegen Zivilisten verwerflich. Da aber der Titel “Overlapping Voices” heisst dürfte nicht der Staatsterrorismus der von der israelischen Armee gegen die Palästinenser ausgeübt wird wie zum Beispiel gezielte Tötungen, durch Flugzeuge, Zerstörung von Häusern, Enteignung von Land, usw. erwähnt werden, unerwähnt bleiben?
Wir verstehen sehr gut, dass Sie mit Letzterem ein Problem haben könnten. Daher wäre es besser gewesen vom Terrorismus Abstand zu nehmen und bei den “Overlapping Voices” zu bleiben.
mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Peter Melvyn
Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (EJJP-Österreich)
http://www.nahostfriede.at
Paula Abrams-Hourani
Frauen in Schwarz (Wien)
http://www.fraueninschwarz.at
Dear ladies and gentleman! Dear Paula Abrams-Hourani and dear Peter Melvyn!
First of all we want to thank you for visiting the exhibition ‘Overlapping Voices’ and for your compliments. We wish to thank you as well for studying it very closely and for spending time in the information room, and for sending us a statement. As we, Friedemann Derschmidt and Karin Schneider, the curators from Vienna were responsible for the information room, we will answer your questions. We do it in Engish to keep the curators from Israel in the discussion.
1) About the selection of the books: As you could have read on the wall of the information-lounge, these books represent a part of our library: books that accompanied us during the last years – we came into these books because we inherit them, we found them or bought them. We lived, struggled and worked with them. We decided to tell also a story about who we are and where we are – to make our own background and the one of the place we all live in open to the public. Information is never “objective”. As non-Jewish White-Austrians we are a part of the Austrian and the European history and if we are looking at the Middle East, we do this always out of Austria/Europe. This history is the history of colonialism (we also have Edward Said as a reference) and the history of National Socialism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust – this means the extermination of the European Jewry and the impossibility for many of them to survive or live in Europe, even if they might have wanted to. You ask what an exhibition about Israeli and Palestinian artists have to do with anti-Semitism? We think you will be able to answer this question yourselves, especially as one of your organisations is named “Jewish voice for a just peace in the Middle East” and not only “voice for…”. This is of course no coincidence. A name like that suggests that also Jews do not appreciate what is done in the name of a Jewish state and so it is very clear that this issue is linked with Jewry in the past and the present and as a result, with anti-Semitism as well.
From our point of view, it won’t be possible to understand the situation in Israel/Palestine without analysing the past and current anti-Semitism as a cultural code in Europe’s societies. We think there are enough books and homepages that inform us about the connection between the complexity of our history and the complexity of the history/situation in the Middle East. Of course this is not an exhibition about this topic and most of the artists in the exhibition do not deal with it directly. So we put it in the info-room as one of the personal contributions of the Austrian curators. For us all the critical activities about Israel in Austria need a framing to prevent misunderstandings based on simplistic resentments. If the activities for the just peace in the Middle East are misused to distract from or excuse our own history (as it is common here in Austria) it doesn’t help anybody (or it helps anti-Semitism).
2) Regarding the glossary entry about “terrorism”: There is no term like this in our glossary. On our weblog (www.ritesinstitute.org) you can read what we asked people to write about. The glossary is an open and ongoing project; it started in the info-room in the exhibition and will go on in the weblog. It is and will become a collection of different sensitive and somehow very personal entries.
With best regards,
Friedemann Derschmidt and Karin Schneider
ritesinstitute, Vienna
*Gesendet:* Samstag, 25. Oktober 2008 21:06
*An:*Essl Museum
*Betreff:* OVERLAPPING VOICES – Israeli and Palestinian Artists
für diese ausstellung möchte ich sehr herzlich gratulieren!
sie ist sicherlich ein ganz wichtiger beitrag zur aufklärung im sinne
einer differenzierteren wahrnehmung der politischen verhältnisse im
zusammenhang mit den lebensverhältnissen im nahen osten!
ein -sehr die unmittelbaren lebensverhältnisse darstellender und
zugleich still zurückhaltender- beitrag im dienste der so notwendigen
befriedung… ja, so hab’ ich jedenfalls die ausstellung erlebt…
dass ein museum ganz unspektakulär auch politisch wirksam werden kann
ist dem kuratorium nicht hoch genug anzurechnen.
danke für diesen im eigentlichen sinn kultivierenden beitrag.
michael jeitler
(kunsterzieher in linz)
Ihr Lieben,
ich habe es kurzfristig geschafft, die Ausstellung am 25. Oktober zu besuchen und war sehr beeindruckt.
Habe Unterlagen mitgenommen vor allem über das “unsichtbare und unbekannte Leben der Beduinen, unglaublich was da läuft. Weiterhin viel Mut und Ausdauer.
Evelyn
thank you,
wish i could go.
i’ll send to friends instead.
tamar.