![\"shefi\"](\"http:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/shefi.jpg\")
<\/a>click to enlarge<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The artists Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman \u2013 the sole members of Sala-manca group \u2013 are
\ntwo of the most interesting artists working in Israel today. A series of actions they initiated
\nsince 2000 \u2013 including the publication of a magazine and a series of installation and performance\u00a0nights at different sites in Jerusalem \u2013 have contributed to the emergence of a vibrant
\nand independent art scene; independent, meaning one that is not dependent on the
\nmainstream institutions, either as a source of authority and recognition or in the organizational\u00a0and financial respect.
\nSince 2009 Sala-manca group, have been running Mamuta at the Daniela Passal art and
\nmedia center in Ein Karem. The center is situated in an arab house at the heart of the most
\ntouristic area of Ein Karem, (and) its entrance is located by the steps leading to the church
\nof visitation. the structure was considered absentee property the whitewashed term for
\nhouses whose owners escaped or were exiled in the turmoil of war and in the 1970s was
\npurchased from the Amidar company (Israeli Social Housing Company) by the artist Daniela\u00a0Passal. Before her death in 2005 she donated it to the foundation of an art center, and today\u00a0it is operated by the Sala-manca group, o!ers workrooms for artists from di!erent disciplines,\u00a0hosts artists who reside in it for extended period’s of time and functions as an alternative\u00a0exhibition space (holds exhibitions).
\nThe current exhibition is “The museum of the Contemporary” running parallel to an internet\u00a0project. It is a distinctly post-modern action containing di!erent thought provoking narratives\u00a0and addressing the disappearance of local realities. in that sense, it is associated with\u00a0the term simulacrum, the blurring between “real” and its representation.Mamuta’s previous actions \u2013 such as creating walking routes in Ein Karem; an audio guide,\u00a0founding of an historical images archive of the site \u2013representing the lives of the village\u00a0prior to the independence war (1948), the flight of Palestinian residents in its course, the\u00a0settlement of immigrants and holocaust refugees after the war including an agricultural\u00a0youth village for children holocaust survivors in the center of the village. In the museum of\u00a0the contemporary Mauas and Rotman related to the location of the center on the touristic\u00a0route and put up signs announcing the museum. The two greet visitors wearing museum\u00a0guards’ uniform (blue jackets over light blue shirts) and like guards in institutions worldwide,\u00a0also serve as voluntary guides of sort, according to the willingness of the visitors.\u00a0in the work “Urban Quote: The Skin I Live In” Mauas and Rotman have systematically numbered
\nthe stones of the building’s facade in black paint, akin to the marking of old buildings
\ndesignated for demolition. Such markings stood out, for instance, in the course of
\ntransforming Mamilla neighborhood in jerusalem into a glossy shopping mall. the connotations\u00a0evoked by the marking of the stones range \u2013 from holocaust associations, through a\u00a0fetishist-religious attitude towards building blocks to archaeologists’ working methods and\u00a0of course buildings conservation techniques.\u00a0Michal Rovner employed a similar method of marking stones in the series “Makom” – 2008.
\nRovner gathered stones from dismantled structures in Israel and the occupied territories
\nand took on matching them to each other to create cubical structures, which were numbered\u00a0and reassembled in di!erent locations. the numbering comprised the externalization\u00a0of the encrypted narrative as well as a proposal for a new narrative.
\nSala-manca’s work directly refers to real-estate threats looming over Ein Karem. The Mamuta\u00a0center building overlooks an extensive fenced construction site, which at the moment\u00a0has a giant pit, like a gash in the landscape. Adopting the title of pedro Almod\u00f3var’s film\u00a0for the work charges it with apocalyptic meaning: if in real-estate projects, as well as in\u00a0Rovner’s work, the marking enables a re-construction, then the link to Almod\u00f3var film\u00a0promises no successful metamorphoses but rather a blood bath, revenge and calamity.
\nThe “Church of Criticism”, also by Sala-manca, is an impressive installation. an inner space\u00a0in the building was designed as a northern-european protestant church, in which texts by\u00a0fictive figures composed by Sala-manca in conjunction with texts by Hanna Arendt, Jacques\u00a0Derrida and Slavoj \u017ei\u017eek are played.
\nThe installation addresses the proximity of “The Museum of the Contemporary” to the
\nChurch of Visitation, a popular tourist attraction in Ein Karem, but mainly to the “Church of\u00a0Fear”, an installation of baroque scope by the german artist Christoph Schlingensief, exhib-ited at the german pavilion in the last Venice Biennale (2011), which gained the national\u00a0pavilion award.
\nThe church-like installation is clustered with objects referring to post second world war
\ngermany, like a hare reminiscent of the hare used by Josef Beuys, (as well as the hare in
\nD\u00fcrer’s famous drawing), documentation of Fluxus group, a figure of a wounded bandaged
\nboy and horror films from the 1970s and 1980s. The recent past is tangled with a religious
\ntranscendental tone, thus generating doubt in the ability of the past to die, since it is resurrected\u00a0over and over again.
\nIn the “Church of Criticism” Mauas and Rotman touch upon questions of ownership of
\nmemory of the place in which they operate, the ability to hallow in it a “right” narrative,
\nwhile pointing at the frequent invention of new religious sites in the service of political
\nagendas. Since the church-like space is placed in an art center (currently assuming the
\nguise of a museum), their work joins the ongoing israeli discourse of the journeys of the
\nsecular pilgrim (a term coined by the author Yitshak Orpaz).
\n“Private Landscape” is a stroke of genius. Sala-manca has closed o! a balcony in the central
\nbuilding with standard plastic blinds. in the middle of the space they have placed a box
\nwhich brings to mind a candy or gum vending machine as well as the boxes placed below
\nartworks, which with the insertion of a coin switch on the work’s lighting for a short period
\nof time, like in churches that attract tourists. Here, for three israeli shekels that drop to the
\nbox with great noise, the blinds will open abruptly for ten seconds, and so, segmented by
\nshades, the beautiful landscape stretches before the viewer. The preoccupation with the
\ncontrol of the gaze and the transformation of the landscape into a commodity could not
\nhave been clearer. The surprise in the work and the aesthetic debate embodied in it, linger
\nit in the viewers’ memory.\u00a0An encounter that will not take place
\nIn addition to Sala-manca’s works, the exhibition also features Hadas Ophrat’s sound installation,\u00a0in which he recounts, in first person, the story of a former resident of Ein Karem\u00a0prior to 1948 who is visiting the village; and a work by Wanja Schaub, who grow plants from\u00a0local seeds in books placed under drippers at the center’s library.
\nBeyond the individual works, one may think of “The Museum of the Contemporary” as an
\ninclusive installation, which includes a souvenir shop that sells works by artists working at
\nthe center. The power of the entire exhibition lies in heightening awareness to each action
\nand part of viewing art and in creating a renewed examination of the means that became
\nset as the “correct” way for viewing it.
\nIn a diferent political situation, that at the moment seems utopian, it would have been fascinating\u00a0to bring together, or exhibit side by side, “The Museum of the Contemporary” and”The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind”, an important work by Khalil
\nRabah, a palestinian artist working in Ramallah and Jerusalem, which was exhibited for the\u00a0first time in the Istanbul Biennial in 2005. The fictive, traveling museum exhibits Palestinian\u00a0history via fossils, plants and objects. A meeting of the fictive museums could have given\u00a0an enriching perspective on the Israeli-Palestinean situation.
\n(translated from Hebrew)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Village They Live In, Smadar Shefi, Haaretz, \u00a020.1.12click to enlarge The artists Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman \u2013 the sole members of Sala-manca group \u2013 are two of the most interesting artists working in Israel today. A series of actions they initiated since 2000 \u2013 including the publication of a magazine and a … Continue reading The Village They Live In, Smadar Shefi, 20.1.12<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[151,152],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-and-articles","tag-smadar-shefi","tag-the-museum-of-the-contemporary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.sala-manca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}