YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING
Neue Jüdische Kunst
Performed by Neue Jüdische Kunst just outside of the Latvian and Ukrainian National Pavilions in Arsenale on April 23, 2022, YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING was a gestural, provocative intervention in the proper regimated art viewing experience of the Biennale visitors. Enacted in the style of Jerusalem syndrome (a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions, or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem) and howling loudly the text of the performance in Russian, Neue Jüdische Kunsts delivered a fictional testimony in court by the person on trial – a fictional character named David Magin – keeping the biennale audience that had gathered around in suspense.
While shouting at the top of their lungs the text of the performance, Neue Jüdische Kunst began to cut out with scissors from a red banner squares with printed portraits of historical personalities, including the 17th century Jewish mystic Sabbatai Zevi, the classic of the Odesian conceptual art Leonid Voizekhov, Russian poet of Jewish origin Joseph Brodsky, and Jewish-Greek performer Roza Eskenazi and lay them down on the ground in a circular arrangement. According to the narrative of the performance, these individuals were the jurors of the fictional court hearing enacted by Neue Jüdische Kunst.
The testimony that David Magin/Neue Jüdische Kunst clamored was full of self-accusations as if David Magin/Neue Jüdische Kunst were testifying against themselves and thus self incriminating and self-victimizing. David Magin was testifying against David Magin and Neue Jüdische Kunst was testifying against Neue Jüdische Kunst in a permanent court trial without an end. This was a court testimony as a form of political speech, in which ideological positions of the speaker were constantly and quite radically shifting.
In their signature-style post-historical and post-ideological practice, Neue Jüdische Kunst weave together the YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING out of bits and pieces of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, records of the Nuremberg trials, and the fellow Odesian Ze'ev Jabotinskiy’s “Jewish Legion”, while presenting these elements and influences in the manner ranging from direct citations to parody and satire. In the practice of Neue Jüdische Kunst, the Jerusalem Syndrome achieves the dimension of an aesthetic category that appears authentic for the fragmented, obsessive, and traumatized 21st century “Jüdische Kunst.”
Performed by Neue Jüdische Kunst just outside of the Latvian and Ukrainian National Pavilions in Arsenale on April 23, 2022, YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING was a gestural, provocative intervention in the proper regimated art viewing experience of the Biennale visitors. Enacted in the style of Jerusalem syndrome (a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions, or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem) and howling loudly the text of the performance in Russian, Neue Jüdische Kunsts delivered a fictional testimony in court by the person on trial – a fictional character named David Magin – keeping the biennale audience that had gathered around in suspense.
While shouting at the top of their lungs the text of the performance, Neue Jüdische Kunst began to cut out with scissors from a red banner squares with printed portraits of historical personalities, including the 17th century Jewish mystic Sabbatai Zevi, the classic of the Odesian conceptual art Leonid Voizekhov, Russian poet of Jewish origin Joseph Brodsky, and Jewish-Greek performer Roza Eskenazi and lay them down on the ground in a circular arrangement. According to the narrative of the performance, these individuals were the jurors of the fictional court hearing enacted by Neue Jüdische Kunst.
The testimony that David Magin/Neue Jüdische Kunst clamored was full of self-accusations as if David Magin/Neue Jüdische Kunst were testifying against themselves and thus self incriminating and self-victimizing. David Magin was testifying against David Magin and Neue Jüdische Kunst was testifying against Neue Jüdische Kunst in a permanent court trial without an end. This was a court testimony as a form of political speech, in which ideological positions of the speaker were constantly and quite radically shifting.
In their signature-style post-historical and post-ideological practice, Neue Jüdische Kunst weave together the YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING out of bits and pieces of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, records of the Nuremberg trials, and the fellow Odesian Ze'ev Jabotinskiy’s “Jewish Legion”, while presenting these elements and influences in the manner ranging from direct citations to parody and satire. In the practice of Neue Jüdische Kunst, the Jerusalem Syndrome achieves the dimension of an aesthetic category that appears authentic for the fragmented, obsessive, and traumatized 21st century “Jüdische Kunst.”
