The Jackal

On November 7 2014, Avera Mengistu crossed the border fence from Israel into Gaza. His walk along the waterline and climbing over the fence were documented by military cameras and observed by lookout soldiers. They witnessed an unusual event that remained without a clear explanation.

On February 1 2013, Elisa Lam disappeared from the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Her last moments, captured by the elevator’s surveillance camera, showed a confusing and context-less series of actions, which became a basis for speculation and anxiety.

These two cases, which carry unsolved mysteries, are the starting point for the work. Both leave behind a fragment of a story: existing documentation, but a missing understanding; absolute visibility of the image alongside its absence from the dominant public consciousness.

“The Jackal,” a performance which incorporates video, drawing, light, and sound, leans on deep fake algorithms alongside pictorial strategies of ancient cyclograms (painted scenes arranged in a circle) – with the intention of creating a capsule of consciousness, a reflection of a center of control and a lack of control, of logic and nonsense.

Efrat Galnoor engages in site-specific painting of the Israeli landscape. This landscape, which is constantly changing, carries with it questions of marking and control that continue to evolve to this day. In her works, she examines it through prisms of nostalgia, memory, stereotypes, cultural conventions, and fantasies.

Alona Friedberg operates in the field of art in the domains of new media, video, and sound. In her works, she deconstructs and reconstructs cultural images from the contemporary, historical, political, social, and popular tapestry, observing the tension between the private and local versus the global and virtual.

Their collaborative work “The Jackal” stems from the engagement with memory, fantasy, the power of imagery, and charged spaces. Each of them brings a unique perspective – Galnoor through large-scale painting and physical space, Friedberg through audio-visual language and contemporary technologies – and the combination of the two of them creates a multidisciplinary and multisensory experience, a powerful performance of painting, video, light, and sound within a stage space.

“The Jackal” premieres for a limited time as part of the Manofim Festival.

The work was created with the generous support of:

Fund for independent creators on behalf of the Ministry of Culture

Mifal Hapais

The Artists Residence Herzliya – Ran Kasmy Ilan

Research Authority Beit Berl College