GOG / MAGOG 3: Israel

Israel

Tribal land. Holy land. Who has a right to it? Whose temples open God‘s eye above it? Who names it? Who is telling its story, his story, in which language, and how? The trail of the dead in water and sand is a holy scripture, and war is the machine writing and reading it.

At our third stage we bump into past and current borders, border violations. Yes and No, Right and Wrong, Freedom and Force, High and Low Tech switch sides and drag us along. Stop, checkpoint, says GOG. Who here dares saying „we“?

GOG / MAGOG 3 transforms the venue into a white cube gallery space, above which an installation of fluorescent tubes can create the archetypical cool arts atmosphere as well as the lightning of an upcoming storm. The evening develops from re-enacting the opening of an exhibition by the non-governmental Israeli initiative Breaking the Silence, charging through propaganda mash-ups and clashes into a fierce improvised discussion about responsibility and solidarity between the performers at the end. Silicone objects, 3D avatars reciting from the Book and songs structuring the performance are framed as art objects by movable podiums.

The evening pursues the objective of projecting binary representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onto the audience and thus mediating the moral pressure of taking a position within it. With its eventual immediacy, the performance also serves as a counterpart to the aesthetical sublation of the previous part of the GOG / MAGOG series.