chaja, thanks a lot for taking your time.welcome! can you tell us a bit about the booth and what you are showing here.this is a collaboration? exactly, it's a collaboration of sommer contemporary art from tel aviv, and bolte lang, we are bolte lang from zã¼rich, and we collaboratewith a gallery with which we don't share any artists, so it's a collaborationregarding the booth, and gregor hildebrandt, an artist represented by sommer contemporary art,has designed the booth, created the booth's architecture, and thus the setting for the other artists which we are showing here. the wall is a work by gregor and thepartition wall that further defines the
booth, or provides the booth withan exhibition architecture, as well. the other two artists are patrick hari and benjamin senior, both are artists the bolte langrepresents. and they basically had had to adapt to this experiment, to this kind of situation, they hadto show their work in this context, which was beyond their control.and to this is based on a lot of trust, and good-naturedness, and in factthat is the essence of a collaboration, it's based on trust and mutualgood will. and that's how this booth was created and i have to say,we are super happy that we came and
realized that it works. everything fit together perfectly, which youcan't necessarily expect. the artworks go together in a beautiful way,not only visually, but also regarding the content. we selected artists who are in a certain sense political, michal helfman is a good example for that. she is an artist,an israeli artist represented by sommer. her piece here is a game, that youcan play here. it's inspired by a kind of israeli backgammon, which is very popular in the mediterranean region.
how does it work? here it works as follows: i think irit would be better explaining it, but i'll try. so, the artist is interestedich versuche es, euch zu erzã¤hlen:die kã¼nstlerin, die interessiert sich so borderline situations, and forthe inversion of situations. here she made friends with a smugglerwho smuggles 3d printers into syria, so that they can build prostheses there, and other everyday objects the people need there. then they wondered if they could create
a product that somehow could contributeto create peace, an art product that could make a difference, and came up with this game. there are two dices that are printed in syria, with a 3d printer, with the words written on it: we will forgive, but we will not forget. a sentence or quote that is used bythe jewish people regarding germany. and you play that by sitting down facing each other, and there's always two different words, that can be formedinto a sentence, and so there's an exchange,
communication happening, all that whatis also important in collaborating. this is a weaving work, also typicalfor the region, the stools are also designed like that. do forgive and don't forget. so it's really a very pacifist mission. and that connects very well with patrick hari. we just talked about context. that was thecontext in israel, here we have the context in switzerland, there's probably no context that's more different in the westernworld like that.
in switzerland there's an absoluteperception of safety, that we as swiss are not always aware of, but whenyou travel, you realize, how safe one feels in switzerland, and in israel thesituation is quite different. this is an artwork that's called gz,it relates to the swiss gz, gz for gemeinschaftszentrum (community center),where you meet as young family with the children, and adolescents get drunk for the firsttime, so new rules are set for living together, that are then carried otinto the world, and that's something that very much interests patrick hari: these rules that are set up and
then are never questioned again. and he is an artist who likes to question such social norms, things that we accept without questioning, that's where he asks us to think about again. this wall, these are video tapes fromvideo cassettes. the film that's on it is called “silver liningâ€, and he attaches the video tapes to the wall and partly pulls off the image and sound material
and that results in this pattern. it's a very labor intensive work, a very delicate job, and it's funny that from further away it looks like a concrete wall, but it's actually very delicate. that's typical for the workof gregor hildebrandt, he often works with this material. these are audio carriersas well, these are laserdiscs that he colorized, to create this wall. the artwork there, these are also cassette tapes.
to create the drawing, he strips awaythe sound that he uses for another picture so there's always a positive and a negative in the same work. where he stripped awayblack, the sound, that's used for a different picture, the negative. does this make sense? yes, now i understand, because it looks great, but i didn't knowexactly what it is. yes, i think some explanation helps, but for us this concept of collaboration andsteht wirklich dieser gedanke derkollaboration und und des gegenseitigen mutual trust is the most important aspectof this presentation. for me the great thing
about your booth is that it's got an aesthetic value, so even it you don't know the details, it's impressive, so it has both, and i think that's great. often, you see something but itdoesn't touch you until you understand the underlying concept, but this is great even if you don't know the context, and it get's even more impressive, if you know more about it. so, thank you very much!