Soundtrack design:
Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson
Background sound source: "Mayn Rue Platz / My Resting Place” (1911) by Morris Rosenfeld, performed by The Pennywhistlers.
Voiceover: Arnd Beck
"A Nesia / A Journey" (2012) by Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim.
“Pseudo-territory” is created with the help of
Arhead, a community-driven platform to create content, spaces and events for the Companies that push forward their brand and engage audiences in the Metaverse.
The new collaborative augmented reality project "Pseudo-territory" by Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson and Anna Elena Torres is inspired by the concept of "Quasi-Territory" (כּמו-טעריטאָריע). The term kmoy-teritorye was coined by the Yiddish literary critic and editor Boruch Rivkin (1883-1945). Rivkin - an anarchist who viewed imagination and creativity as spiritual processes - also coined the term 'Yiddishland,' which this pavilion references.
A collective meta-space in the virtual worlds may function as mazes in the subconsciousness, so the virtual pseudo-territory as a collective subconsciousness hovers beyond definitions. It is unbound by territory and uncontrolled by establishment.
The object is a hybrid that is based on three languages - Yiddish, English and Proto-Canaanite Alphabet dating to about the 17th century BC and is the origin of the Alphabetic writing system. Therefore it aspires to embody all the numerous writing systems that have developed from it till this day. The languages are bound to each other, they revolve around each other, shifting and morphing between times and geographical spaces instantly - thus representing a constantly alive pseudo-territory.
Although the work can be experienced anywhere in the world just by accessing the qr-code from the Yiddishland pavilion website, it was created as a soft intervention in the German Pavilion – as a reminder about Yiddishland in Germany and Jewish presence manifested through language, culture, music, people, architecture, etc, that had existed for many centuries in dialogue and exchange with German culture until the Holocaust – and that experience revival today, also through growing interest to Yiddish. The German pavilion was initially built as the Bavarian pavilion in 1909, renamed in 1912 and redesigned in 1938 to reflect fascist aesthetics and architectural principles. Artist Maria Eichhorn stripped its architectural layers to unveil the political transformations of the both the building, the German society and its representation at the biennale. The emptiness of the German pavilion alongside its architectural history serves as a platform and a background for the pseudo-territory colourful sonic sculpture that slowly floats into the building and seamlessly flows through its spaces. One can see the drifting pseudo-territory but cannot enter it or cannot stop it as it is uncontrolled and moves according to its own rules and choices.
"Pseudo-territory" is commissioned by Yiddishland Pavilion