FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Press Release - The Jewish Museum will present Food for Thought: A Video Sampler from October 31, 2006 through February 28, 2006 in the Museum’s Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center. Food for Thought features four videos from two generations of video artists – Martha Rosler, Laura Kronenberg (Cavestani), Jessica Shokrian, and Boaz Arad – in which food serves as a resource for memory, a way of connecting or disconnecting with family, and of understanding identity. A handout with recipes from the participating artists will be available to visitors.In Semiotics of the Kitchen (6 min., 1975), Martha Rosler parodies a cooking show in which, Rosler states, "An anti-Julia Child replaces the domesticated ‘meaning’ of tools with a lexicon of rage and frustration." With deadpan delivery, Rosler inventories a collection of utensils and transforms them into absurd objects or violent weapons. Semiotics of the Kitchen is a critique of both the commodification of food and traditional women’s roles, and a caustic commentary on the artist’s Orthodox upbringing. As a young yeshiva girl, Rosler rebelled against the presumption that the only secure domain for a Jewish woman of her generation was the kitchen. She states, “Judaism represented the secondary status of women, Judaism was the source or symbol of the world I wished to reject or reform.”Jessica Shokrian has a radically different relationship to food and family as a post-feminist artist and as a woman of Iranian-Jewish descent. In 1998 Shokrian began documenting the life of her Aunt Aziz, a seventy-something woman living in “Tehrangeles”—the nickname for the California metropolis that holds the largest Persian population outside of Iran. In Ameh Jhan (“Dear Aunt”) (11 min., 2001), Shokrian transforms a trip to the market and the preparation of koofteh (meatballs) into a melancholy portrait of the immigrant experience. Boaz Arad approaches food and heritage with ironic humor and critical distance. His video Gefilte Fish (11 min., 2005), a hybrid of documentary and performance, addresses Ashkenazi identity within a post-Holocaust, multicultural Israeli society. The video includes an interview with Arad’s mother as she prepares fish in her kitchen, footage of Arad himself lip-synching to his mother’s voice as she responds to questions that range from the banal to the provocative, and a talking-head puppet resembling the artist who pronounces with great authority that gefilte fish may be the last link to Eastern European traditions in contemporary Israel. A pet bird, resting on Arad’s shoulder, ultimately subverts the artist’s attempt to parrot his mother and his critique of ethnic traditions.Abbie Making Gefilte Fish (4 min., excerpt, 1973) is a video produced by early video artists Laura Kronenberg (Cavestani), David Schweitzer, and Frank Cavestani. On Christmas Eve in the Chelsea Hotel, social and political activist Abbie Hoffman prepares homemade gefilte fish. He recounts the story of an awkward dinner hosted by Dr. Benjamin Spock to which Hoffman brought gefilte fish. Kronenberg initiated the idea to tape Hoffman for posterity in anticipation that he might disappear for evading drug charges. The video was exhibited as a component of The Fun House (1974), an installation at the New York Avant-Garde Festival produced by Charlotte Moorman at Shea Stadium. By this time Hoffman had gone underground. Martha Rosler (b. 1942) lives and works in New York. Her videos, photo-texts, installations, and performances have been presented in documenta (Kassel, Germany), several Whitney Biennials, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Dia Center for the Arts in New York. In 2000 a retrospective of her work was shown in five European cities and in New York at The New Museum of Contemporary Art and The International Center of Photography. In Fall 2006 she is participating in the Hannah Arendt Denkraum, an Berlin exhibition commemorating the life and work of the German political theorist. Her work will also be on view at Saigon Open City, the first biennial in Vietnam.Jessica Shokrian (b. 1968) lives and works in Los Angeles. Her photography has been shown at The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, The Center for Photography in Woodstock, and MAK Center for Art and Architecture L.A. Her videos are featured in The Jewish Museum’s traveling exhibition The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography, currently on view at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. At present Shokrian is developing a documentary about her son Hunter’s connection to Judaism as he prepares to become a bar mitzvah.Boaz Arad (b. 1956) lives and works in Israel. His video Hebrew Lesson was exhibited at The Jewish Museum in Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art (2002). His work has been shown in the Venice Biennale, The Jerusalem Film Festival, and the Barbican Centre in London, and Art in General in New York.Laura Kronenberg (Cavestani) lives and works in New York. As an early pioneer of video in the 1970s, Kronenberg collaborated with various collectives including TVTV and Videofreex, as well as with experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the animator and film title designer Pablo Ferro. With Frank Cavestani, Kronenberg produced numerous documentaries, including the award-winning documentary Operation Last Patrol (1972). Her work has been exhibited at The Kitchen, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Museum of Modern Art in Caracas, Venezuela. Located on the third floor of The Jewish Museum, the Goodkind Media Center houses a digital library of radio and television programs from the Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). It also features a changing exhibition space dedicated to video and new media. Using computer workstations, visitors are able to search material by keyword and by categories such as art, comedy, drama, news, music, kids, Israel, and the Holocaust. The National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, founded in 1981 in association with the Charles H. Revson Foundation, is the largest and most comprehensive body of broadcast materials on 20th century Jewish culture in the United States. With a mission to collect, preserve and exhibit television and radio programs related to the Jewish experience, the NJAB is an important educational resource for critical examination of how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves, and how the mass media has addressed issues of ethnicity and diversity. Its collection is comprised of 4,300 broadcast and cable television and radio programs. About The Jewish MuseumThe Jewish Museum was established on January 20, 1904 when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, The Jewish Museum maintains an important collection of 25,000 objects – paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media. Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture.General InformationMuseum hours are Saturday through Wednesday, 11am to 5:45pm; and Thursday, 11am to 8pm. Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members. Admission is free on Saturdays. For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum’s Web site at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200. The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.
# # #
No comments:
Post a Comment