This Succot performance artist Guy Briller uses Kabbala motifs as he bridges between the 'sacred' and 'profane,' Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
By DAVID STROMBERGclay(photo credit: Courtesy)
As Yom Kippur nears, many Jews - both those who are obviously observant and those who lead a seemingly secular life - prepare for the yearly judgment through a variety of rituals, from the predawn slihot prayers to throwing bread or pebbles into flowing waters to turning their pockets inside-out.
For visual and performance artist Guy Briller, this year means enacting an intense set of ritual actions as part of an expansive project he calls Ha-Sulam. Briller will incorporate these ritual actions into a multicentric exhibition that will span two cities and three Jewish holidays.
"It will be a leap for me," says Briller, a Jerusalemite who studied briefly at the School of Visual Theater in 1995. In 1996, he moved to Tanzania, where he started painting and first exhibited his work at the Goethe Institute. The next year, he returned to Israel and started exhibiting as a painter, and in the following few years as a performance and mixed media artist. Since then, he has been working and exhibiting regularly here and abroad.
"With Ha-Sulam I will create actions, document them and exhibit them - all in one gesture." Ha-Sulam (the ladder) refers to a kabbalistic idea in which 10 sefirot (literally "enumerations," also called the ladder's rungs) represent the 10 attributes created by God to constitute the physical and metaphysical world. The 10 rungs connect the lowly physical world with the realm of God as the or ein sof (light without end).
Ten is considered the number of divine perfection and is reflected in the 10 Days of Awe between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. On each of those days, Briller performed and videotaped an action related to one of these 10 sefirot in several locations in each of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The project takes its root in performances undertaken in 1998 under the title "Listen." It began with a small clay ear. Briller took an outline of this ear and traced it over the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nahlaot. During that year's Days of Awe, he went out into the neighborhood and affixed a clay ear wherever the outline of the drawing crossed a street on the map. By the end, he had affixed over 70 clay ears all over the area.
Briller explains that he wanted to quietly but noticeably snap people out of their daily obliviousness and make them more aware of their surroundings. "Listen, walk around, see this small thing that'll make you switch, shift," he says. "When you go somewhere, you don't just walk from point A to B, you're in a situation."
That same year, on November 4, the memorial day of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, he repeated the previous action - only this time, instead of using the plain outline of the ear, he used an acupuncture diagram, placing a ceramic ear at each designated pressure point. Briller explains: "You could say it was a mystical way of trying to treat the pain." He repeated this action a year later in Tel Aviv, centering the ear's acupuncture pressure points around Kikar Rabin.
"Over the past 10 years, I've always thought about this project. When I'm in the area, I'm always conscious of whether I'm inside the ear or not. And I always told myself I'd continue one day."
FOR HA-SULAM, Briller is returning to these ear-neighborhoods that he instituted and is looking to deepen the effect beyond the "shift." This time he wants to "communicate" an aspect of life itself. To attempt to reach such depths, he has reflected his actions against the heritage of Jewish mysticism.
Channeling the kabbalistic angel-character Metatron, considered God's closest messenger, each of Briller's daily actions were directly connected to one of the sefirot. Though the project is fluid and the order could change along the way, his plan is to work top-down from the highest rung to the lowest.
Some of his actions include walking around and playing a Tibetan bowl, the golden sound-healing musical instrument, which he relates to keter (crown), or God's absoluteness; popping popcorn on a kerosene cooker as part of gevura (judgment/strength/determination); taking 10 eggs in each city and juggling with them in various spots until they all break, which relates to tiferet (balance); for netzah, which is both contemplation and persistence, Briller dances in some spots, or stands blindfolded in others; for hod (sincerity), he echoes the original action and affixes ceramic ears around each city; and for malchut (lower crown), which relates to both healing and realizing the divine plan, he returns to Kikar Rabin (which was previously called Kikar Malchei Israel) with a water purifier normally used for camping. There he will purify the water in the large fountain-pool that stands in front of Tel Aviv City Hall, the only action that might not be undertaken in Jerusalem.
"These are heavy subjects," says Briller, "and I don't want to feel that this is the only way to negotiate them. Though I'm not laughing at any of it, I want there to be a sense of humor."
One gets a sense of the absurd in the choice of items like eggs and popcorn.
Another interesting action involves walking around in what Briller calls a "sound suit," which is part of the yesod (foundation) action. He wears a small car battery, the amplifier and speakers of a car stereo, and an MP3 sound player. He projects city sounds that he had already recorded during the hochma (revelation) action, inserting sounds of Jerusalem into Tel Aviv and sounds of Tel Aviv into Jerusalem.
The relationship between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is an important sub-theme in this work. "I have a hunch that these actions will be reflected differently in these two environments. And there is no contemporary art that is talking about this difference."
THE DIFFERENCE and also the connection. Briller's project is split over two independent art galleries, Barbur in Jerusalem and Alfred in Tel Aviv. Each is run by a young group of artists who came together to create an exhibition space as well as a new kind of artistic community.
"Alfred is a sort of echo of Barbur," Briller explains. "They both opened about three years ago, and they were both created by young artists who studied together - Alfred by those from Hamidrasha, and Barbur by those from Bezalel."
After the 10 days of actions - which Briller will document using three cameras - he is going to create a rough cut of his footage and open an exhibition at Alfred on October 11. The edited footage will be screened on seven televisions stripped of their outer plastic bodies. On October 12, he will move into the community garden at Barbur, where he will build a succa. At the same time, he will prepare a mirror installation of stripped televisions for Barbur, and also edit a final cut of the sound and video that he had collected. The two galleries will be connected over the Internet, with one of the seven televisions in each gallery broadcasting live from the other gallery.
As if creating an unending hall of mirrors, the live feed from Barbur will also be sent to Shibuya, Tokyo, where the Barbur collective is currently in residence for an art fair. There, they will build a succa as an echo of the action in Jerusalem.
"The idea is to exhibit the very process of art making," says Briller, "a series of being, something dynamic rather than static. There's no way to see it all, to perceive the whole thing."
He says that for performance artists it's sometimes difficult to negotiate between their actions and the art institution. "The system is not always equipped mentally."
This is the first time he feels that he hasn't compromised in realizing or exhibiting his artwork, though he believes there's a good balance between the actions and what is traditionally considered a fine art exhibition. "I hope it will flow to others."
Together with its artistic ambition and complexity, the work is a uniquely Israeli and Jewish reflection on repentance and healing. "Religious Jews will connect with God in their way, and I want to do it in mine, hopefully while staying within the bounds of authenticity, of being genuine to myself, the environment and the subjects."
He points out that this is a fragmented installation - the ladder is not solid, the televisions are ripped apart, the intentions are private - all of which suggests the damaged world we live in. "But I'm not banging my head over it. I live my life as best as I can and I hope others do too."
To follow the actions and exhibitions, check out http://ha-sulam.blogspot.com
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