24 cone loudspeakers, 3 subwoofers, 3 automatons, 6 dolls, objects and soil

"Grades of Foreignness" exhibition, OSTRALE Biennial, Dresden, Germany, July 3 – September 1, 2019
Loop duration 1h 30 minutes

Lands v.2 is the evolution of Avital’s sound installation Lands, first presented at Fabbrica del Cioccolato Foundation, Switzerland (2017) as part of the artist’s solo show ‘Grades of Foreignness’.

A large quantity of local soil, shaped as an island, a mother, a pathway is contoured by a forest of loudspeakers reproducing a complex polyphony of natural sounds, agricultural machines and human voices, creating numerous musical episodes which become a fresco of sonic allegorical scenes around the listener.
Witnessing Lands one can feel immersed in nature with the chirping of birds, insects and winds filling the air.

But soon the perception changes: The bird songs are gradually replaced by uncanny imitations of mechanical eproductions of their voice; the word “Land” starts echoing in many languages through computer voicing of Google Translate; the wind becomes a distorted storm; and so it shifts backwards to nature and forward to the artificial, in a struggle to obtain a hint of lost pureness.

The public, while walking, sitting, lying down, creates individual paths of hearing and perception. Sonic animal-robots automatons, moving and producing evocative cries, the “Nation Dolls ” - grotesque and damaged, and various objects and small artworks nested to the installation mark an additional layer of meaning in which the artificial transform to a carrier of a strange hybrid beauty.

“Lands” is a kind of cultural perversion of the concept of ‘Earth’ in which the man startsdefining, owning, possessing and dividing parts of it. There is a big attraction from the man’spart to own and possess.In this work the visitors arrive and meet utopic soundscapes, animals, farmers chanting and soon. But soon it changes, the natural becomes digital, the winds becomes more and more syn-thetic, choirs of distorted tractors cross our imaginative field....There’s a poison that is rising up, and an estranged Man-Nature equation is been established - a hybrid tension which is reinforced by a series of automatons (some of the quite big) which are the abomination of natural, of lovely, like big defected toys. The Installation is also a home tovarious small artworks working as detailed components inside a mechanism, a bit like historical allegorical paintings. In a way this work is an antithesis to the pastoral perception of the rural nature, an anti-romantic immersive experience in which the center is element of listening (one can stay in this work also for hours) sitting or laying down, even closing the eyes from times to times.

AUTOMATONS

3 automaton animal like symbolizing the strange hybrid beauty of the artificial.

Killer Butterbug

Storkii

Totem RobotOwl

NATION DOLLS

5 grotesque dolls created by the artist, symbolizing the process of ‘hyper-nationalization’ and distorted identity brainwashed, imprinted and forced into children from their very first year

Dad doll Hero

Child Warrior doll

Wounded Slut of the Nation

The Union (Horse) doll

German doll

Nailed Pain doll

PERFORMANCE

‘Four Clowns of Armageddon’ for Lands v.2

In parallel to Lands v.2 opening a performance has been presented, guided by a written musical and behavioral score written in 2019 especially for the Opening of Dresden’s Ostrale Biennale performed byAuditivVokal  ensemble, one of today’s leading experimental and contemporary ensembles.

Four soloists carry a challenging role (both vocally as emotionally) of “Four Clowns of Armageddon”, 4 extreme allegories of conduction and dangerousness in contemporary humanity, very connected to terms such as ’Nation’ ‘Ownership’, ’denial’ and ‘memory’. The work starts with a choral based on the poem written in 1904 titled ‘Alle Montagne’ (‘to the mountains’) by Gabriele D’Annunzio, one of the most nationalist, patriot (and not a bit fascist) poets of Italy.