גַּן נָעוּל, אֲחֹתִי כַלָּה; גַּל נָעוּל, מַעְיָן חָתוּם
משְׁכֵנִי, אַחֲרֶיךָ נָּרוּצָה; הֱבִיאַנִי הַמֶּלֶךְ חֲדָרָיו, נָגִילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בָּךְ שְׁחוֹרָה אֲנִי וְנָאוָה, בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלִָם; כְּאָהֳלֵי קֵדָר, כִּירִיעוֹת שְׁלֹמֹה אַל-תִּרְאוּנִי שֶׁאֲנִי שְׁחַרְחֹרֶת, שֶׁשְּׁזָפַתְנִי הַשָּׁמֶשׁ; בְּנֵי אִמִּי נִחֲרוּ-בִי, שָׂמֻנִי נֹטֵרָה אֶת-הַכְּרָמִים--כַּרְמִי שֶׁלִּי, לֹא נָטָרְתִּי דּוֹמֶה דוֹדִי לִצְבִי, אוֹ לְעֹפֶר הָאַיָּלִים; הִנֵּה-זֶה עוֹמֵד, אַחַר כָּתְלֵנוּ--מַשְׁגִּיחַ מִן-הַחַלֹּנוֹת, מֵצִיץ מִן-הַחֲרַכִּים עַל-מִשְׁכָּבִי, בַּלֵּילוֹת, בִּקַּשְׁתִּי, אֵת שֶׁאָהֲבָה נַפְשִׁי; בִּקַּשְׁתִּיו, וְלֹא מְצָאתִיו. אָקוּמָה נָּא וַאֲסוֹבְבָה בָעִיר, בַּשְּׁוָקִים וּבָרְחֹבוֹת--אֲבַקְשָׁה, אֵת שֶׁאָהֲבָה נַפְשִׁי; בִּקַּשְׁתִּיו, וְלֹא מְצָאתִיו. כִּמְעַט, שֶׁעָבַרְתִּי מֵהֶם, עַד שֶׁמָּצָאתִי, אֵת שֶׁאָהֲבָה נַפְשִׁי; אֲחַזְתִּיו, וְלֹא אַרְפֶּנּוּ--עַד-שֶׁהֲבֵיאתִיו אֶל-בֵּית אִמִּי, וְאֶל-חֶדֶר הוֹרָתִי. בָּאתִי לְגַנִּי, אֲחֹתִי כַלָּה--אָרִיתִי מוֹרִי עִם-בְּשָׂמִי, אָכַלְתִּי יַעְרִי עִם-דִּבְשִׁי שָׁתִיתִי יֵינִי עִם-חֲלָבִי; אִכְלוּ רֵעִים, שְׁתוּ וְשִׁכְרוּ דּוֹדִים. אֲנִי יְשֵׁנָה, וְלִבִּי עֵר; קוֹל דּוֹדִי דוֹפֵק, פִּתְחִי-לִי אֲחֹתִי רַעְיָתִי יוֹנָתִי תַמָּתִי--שֶׁרֹּאשִׁי נִמְלָא-טָל, קְוֻצּוֹתַי רְסִיסֵי לָיְלָה. פָּשַׁטְתִּי, אֶת-כֻּתָּנְתִּי--אֵיכָכָה, אֶלְבָּשֶׁנָּה; רָחַצְתִּי אֶת-רַגְלַי, אֵיכָכָה אֲטַנְּפֵם. דּוֹדִי, שָׁלַח יָדוֹ מִן-הַחֹר, וּמֵעַי, הָמוּ עָלָיו. קַמְתִּי אֲנִי, לִפְתֹּחַ לְדוֹדִי; וְיָדַי נָטְפוּ-מוֹר, וְאֶצְבְּעֹתַי מוֹר עֹבֵר, עַל, כַּפּוֹת הַמַּנְעוּל. פָּתַחְתִּי אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי, וְדוֹדִי חָמַק עָבָר אָחוֹת לָנוּ קְטַנָּה, וְשָׁדַיִם אֵין לָהּ; מַה-נַּעֲשֶׂה לַאֲחֹתֵנוּ, בַּיּוֹם שֶׁיְּדֻבַּר-בָּהּ. אִם-חוֹמָה הִיא, נִבְנֶה עָלֶיהָ טִירַת כָּסֶף; וְאִם-דֶּלֶת הִיא, נָצוּר עָלֶיהָ לוּחַ אָרֶז. אֲנִי חוֹמָה, וְשָׁדַי כַּמִּגְדָּלוֹת גַּן נָעוּל, אֲחֹתִי כַלָּה; גַּל נָעוּל, מַעְיָן חָתוּם Project initiative - Cities of Refuge Joshua 20 Then the Lord said to Joshua: “Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses, so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there and find protection from the avenger of blood. When they flee to one of these cities, they are to stand in the entrance of the city gate and state their case before the elders of that city. Then the elders are to admit the fugitive into their city and provide a place to live among them. If the avenger of blood comes in pursuit, the elders must not surrender the fugitive, because the fugitive killed their neighbor unintentionally and without malice aforethought. They are to stay in that city until they have stood trial before the assembly and until the death of the high priest who is serving at that time. Then they may go back to their own home in the town from which they fled.” Hidden under floors, behind closets, in cellars and attics, each sound is a threat, being frightened even from the sound of one’s own breath. Speaking is prohibited. Longing to be outside; longing to stand by the window, to watch the streets beneath, the people walking, biking, shopping, working; to watch the seasons change the trees. Standing by the window, watching the outside world is deathly dangerous. One risks not only his own life but his protectors’ too. Of those thousands Asylum seekers, “onderduikers”, nothing much is left except their date of birth, the dae on which they were murdered and the address where they have sought refuge. Those houses are the still standing silent witnesses of those hidden lives of anguish and shame. Anguish and fear are understandable; but one may wonder: Why shame? The feeling of being sought after, the feeling depending for your life on the kindness of strangers, their charity, being deprived of all securities, makes one doubt himself, his own decisions, his sincerity. Don’t you know the feeling that when the train conductor comes to check the tickets, you feel guilty, although the tickets is safely kept in your wallet? Those refuge-houses are now the homes of other people, people who were born after the war. How do they relate to their home? What do those houses, those silent wall remember of their past, what can they tell? Being a Jewish -Israeli artist, preoccupied with the images which have Tsunamied the common consciousness after World War II, Ruth Bachrach have discovered that the home she have been living in for the last 17 years, in which her children have grown, was the home of a deported Jewish family. This was the seed from which her need for the project Cities of Refuge has sprouted. Being an immigrant herself, thus leading a life of ever-continuing-never-arriving, always not-being-at-home-anywhere, and being aware of the political climate in Europe, the refugees drowning at the borders of Europe, being enslaved by their “rescuers”, put in Asylum centres in the countries where they seek refuge, on the edges of society, she felt the urge, the need, to place herself in the role of the refuge, the asylum seeker. In this project Ruth Bachrach will approach the people who now live in those houses which served as shelters to Jewish “onderduikers” in Amsterdam, with the request to stay at their home for few days, to be granted their hospitality. She wants to feel with her own body and soul the existence those “onderduikers” have lead, to melt together with this experience, and to let her works sprout from it. Together with the current dwellers, for them, for their home, she will make art-objects and performance activities. which shall be left behind, as a gift for the house, for it’s dwellers. Possibly those works will lead a hidden life too, known only to the people who live there. To make this art project accessible to the broad public Bachrach would like to cooperate with the project Open Joodse Huizen (Open Joodse Huizen). Using your database for finding possible addresses and contact information of the current residents. Then she can approach them for participating in this project. Possibly during or around the dates of 4th and 5th of May a tour will be organised to visit these houses. Next to the artworks which will be left at these houses as a gift to them and to their current dweller, the main tangible “product” of this performance-work-in-process project will be a photographs book, documenting her stay, pictures of the spaces with and without her gift to them, the contacts and relations with the current residents. Cities of Refuge To the Dwellers of this House Protect me. Grant me your hospitality. Give me a shelter. To eat at your table, to live from your bread; Me, the Asylum seeking foreigner. My whole life I have been filling blanc notebooks, with a black cover and yellowish pages, with drawings and words. Diaries meant for nothing and no-one. I note the days, the shelves, the plants in my garden, my walled life. I seek asylum in my own life from my own life. Please let my life not find me. This apartment, those walls, those children – I refuse to recognise them as my own. This refusal proides no relief. Grant me your protection, your hospitality, your kindness. Let me see you; show your naked you to me What does my presence mean to you? What can I offer you (me, who has fled, the uprooted, the devoided) What does my friendschip means to you? May I see you? May I watch your life? May I watch you? Wherein do you want to be seen? May I show the unnameable? Unseeable? May I touch you? Upon leaving I leave a drawing, hiden in on a bookshelf On the inside of the cover of your diary; I write a poem on your toilet paper; I carve a sculpture out a wall, and fill it in again with plaster. I leave; I take you with me; carved out my soul; Your innermost you; your image; I have seen Ruth Bachrach - About me and my work I am a Jewish, Israeli artist, living in Amsterdam, which is next to New York the only city I know outside Israel with a definite Jewish identity. My work has alway been closely related to the exploration of my identity and its relation to the other. My work has always had the same few themes, which kept my fascination, obsession even, ever since I have started drawing as a jong puber. These themes are my “Identity”, weather I like them or not. I always have “spoken” and still am “speaking” about the same themes, even in works and periods when I did not realise that these themes were keeping me going. I actually have always avoided naming those themes, as I find that words always come short when trying to describe an artwork. The most important theme which occupies my heart and my eyes is the human body. The source of all beauty, the source of all suffering, the source of life, the source of joy, the subject and object of longing. The theme which has always captivated my soul is formed by the images which have reached us, since young childhood, as Israeli kids, over and over, again and again of the Holocaust, The Shoa. Thus forming a War traumatized second and a third generations. The images which have “tsunamied” the collective consciousness and unconscious when they were released after the War. The furnaces, the chimneys, the naked body’s. No building can be innocent anymore, each living, beautiful body is a potential victimized corps. And then of course sex, the creative and destructive power of it, longing which never gets fulfilled of sex, the need to become one with the other, the hate of the other, the need to destroy the other, to consume him/her. The impossibility NOT to be a Jew, not to be a Woman, the impossibility to have a different identity; to be preoccupied with themes I don’t wish to be preoccupied by. In indirect, circular movements I explore beauty and ugliness, love, evil, hatered, guilt, pornografy, longing, violence, humiliation. And then is the Space in which the body resides; a nearly abstract space, the schematic rectangular perspective space. The room is all empty, a large open window with white sunlight. The walls are white and barren. I like empty rooms. Floor, walls, windows; while the body is caged, surrenders itself to the illusion of being protected, the illusion of safety, where the soul can soar, can yearn freely. The multi-existence, the poliphony, of different layers of seeing, cognition, feeling. I see an image, I read a text, I see movement. They do not illustrate one another, they are independent of each other; together, they create a parallel space. Bathrooms, bathtubs, sinks. Places which hold the naked body, places of streaming life, of cleanness, of intimacy between one and his own self, one and the other, of death. In my last public performance Perfect Life I have closed myself with my three months old son in a simple Amsterdam “drawer”, a rectangular apartment, divided in two rooms. The back room, where I installed ourselves with a bed, desk, bathtub, was separated by a room-size window from the front room of the apartment. The front room was emptied, and few chairs were placed where the public could come in 24/7 during a whole week and watch us. In a way I can say now, that this was my farewell to the art, choosing to show Life as It Is, no editing, no medium, offering it to the public: Please watch. I did not realise that by disassociating myself form the Form, I have disassociated myself from Art itself. After the vision of Cities of Refuge has formed itself, I realised that by wanting to share the other’s living space, giving the other “a present” for our contact, in a way I want to re-associate myself with art and other people. |
RUTHLESS ! by Ruth
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