Transient Memories - a performance evening by Felix Meyer-Christian and Dan Allon / Circle 1 Gallery, Berlin, Germany and Alfred Institute of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Curator: Revital Michali.
""The performance evening of Felix Meyer-Christian and Dan Allon presents a dynamic composition of time-based art. Both artists are profoundly interested in the themes of memories, violence and its cultural and personal effect. They investigate different ways of a cultural and an emotional effect of power structures. Together they give a generous look on a wide variety of subjects while telling concrete stories.
While Meyer-Christian’s work is self-reflecting and meditative, Allon’s work is explosive and confrontational. Meyer-Christian’s work Transient Memory is offering a unique observation on the aesthetics of memory, methods of editing material and authorship through a “guided tour” in his personal stories. Allon’s work, The Bar Mitzva, recreates the sensation of being a 13-year-old boy going through a traumatic Moroccan-style Jewish ceremony, in a humoristic yet direct way. The performance consisted a video screening of edited material from Allon's Bar Mitzva video (obviously the most embarrassing ones), Moroccan cliche party music, with Allon hugging, kissing and smearing "Hena", a Moroccan good luck paste, on the visitor's hands. After the "guests" got used to the alcohol and the ear blasting music, suddenly they were rudely asked to leave the gallery, as the party is over.
In the Tel Aviv version of the performance, Allon performed a slightly different setting from the Berlin version, with his parents and aunt being a part of the work. While his parents, Shimon and Miryam, greeted the guests with kisses and handshakes, Rachel, the aunt, handed them her home-made Chebakia sweets. Dan gathered all the guests in a tiny room in a gallery, threw hard candies at them and made them all drink wine and Mahia."
Special thanks: Talya Raz, Avital Globerman, Revital Michali
Photos: Adi Levy and Dafna Gazit
