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Oren Lavie
Oren Lavie I perceive art is a wormhole to the hidden, to underground currents that bubble up under the fine membrane of culture. A main subject for scrutiny in my work is the space formed between the viewer and the artwork, the energetic material that gathers between the surface of the porthole (the work of art) and the body and consciousness of the observer. Material that can be sensed, manipulated, that has a subconscious and physical effect. In my work I fluctuate between practices of documentation and fiction, between performance and video, and combine within the language of art genres that are not particularly common in this field: Horror, trash, comedy, and melodrama. These combinations let me erode and contemplate the meaning of language,
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continuity, and conditioning, and express the specific geographical place, time, and culture into which I was born; lacking a joint cultural history, based on a multitude of rough seams and a web of cultures from all over the world, cheap imitations and lots of extremism. I approach my videos from two directions that are seemingly conflicting, but represent in fact two aspects of a single entity. One is the deterministic approach: Life is rotten, death will erase all achievements, one's legacy is not to be found by adorning oneself in symbols of ethics, liberalism, and creativity. Art does not liberate, rather it binds in heavy chains of identity and new cultural dictates. The other approach, in contrast, relates to the world as a mysterious experiential playground, replete
I take the figure of the contemporary artist, the work of art, and the creative language through a process of defamiliarization, by means of various cinematic techniques borrowed from cultures and genre combinations, and signify the dark materials of which they are composed: the urge to be authentic and meaningful, the desire to succeed at any cost, the competitiveness, the exploitation, the failure, and the clichés that are a product of these components. These clichés are in fact recycled and presented in their reprocessed form. By embodying the female figure, with the full range of gender forms that it assumes and discards, I ask the viewer to observe the figure of the artist as one who acquires culturally-dependent qualities, language, and behavior, in the same way the drag artist refers to femininity as it is defined by society, and to compare issues that arise in response to various physical representations of man-woman-trans, with issues that arise in response to good-bad-real art. The works depict Rakel in various states, honing and simplifying her figure while she conducts herself in a purposeless world. And where the project's point of departure engages in sociological questions concerning the habitus of the artist, towards its end lofty philosophical questions arise, deriving from the concept of art as an independent entity: Do artistic acts and deeds have a higher, timeless meaning, or are they blowing in the wind, at the mercy of time, place, and the observant eye?
with pleasures, in which one can experience anything, can be anything, and can mainly play and laugh. My work, which serves as a mirror stationed to reflect that which seems to me self-righteous or moralistic, displays the very same symptoms that I criticize. Hence the viewer is on unstable ground and has sufficient doubts about the work's ethical position and where he is personally in regard to it. I repeatedly raise the possibility that even the greatest humanists enjoy seeing a light spray of blood on their television screen. My recent project, "Rakel" (2014), consists of a chronological video series, in which I embody a female figure who defines herself as an artist and portrays various stages of her professional and personal life. In this project I deal with the sociological and psychological dimensions of the meaning of the artist's existence, often ignored by the artistic discourse although constituting a very significant aspect of the artist. My point of departure is that the individual, and the artist as well, is not free, and that his perceptions and code of action are dictated by stronger overt and covert forces.
In addition, the issue of the signifying and definition of the other in the artistic field and in the social context continues to float within the fabric created; the weak other, who serves as matter in the hands of the opportunistic artist and is transformed into cultural and economic capital, the "creative" other in the social role play, the deviant and mentally unstable, and the other in the artistic community, who disobeys the strict rules or is disqualified from a sphere in which everything is correct, fresh, and contemporary. At present a camera and a computer are almost all I need in order to create. I photograph, edit, create visual effects, and even compose some of the music for my works. With all these I wish to lead the viewer on a tempting, intimidating, consoling, and inconsistent journey. I am happiest when a viewer of my works leaves slightly smiling, slightly frightened, and to a certain degree also with a distinct sense of vitality. Oren Lavie is an Israeli based artist and filmmaker. He is a graduate of the “Minshar” school of film and arts in Tel-Aviv (2006) and of the Beit Berl Art College Continuing Education Unit (CEU), where he received an excellence scholarship (2013).
An interview with
Oren Lavie Oren Lavie's art practice ranges from videoperformance to narrative fiction borrowing elements from different genres and styles like melodrama, trash and horror, revealing a post-modern sensibility reminding us of Toshio Matsumoto's provocative cinema of the Sixties. We are glad to review his films Rakel and Brain for this year's Videofocus Edition. Oren, how did you get started in filmmaking? My fascination with films began when I was about 9 years old. I had a little secret box where I would keep newspaper cuttings and pictures of films. I knew the names of all the directors and actors who adorned the silver screen and I would stand drooling over the forbidden shelf of horror movies at the local video store. I made my first official movie at age 13, a day after my Bar Mitzvah ceremony, using a VHS
camera my parents had rented to document the event. I cast our cleaning lady as a housewife fed up with a life of bondage who decides to murder her family. Looking back from a mature perspective, it is interesting to see that I experienced the same symptoms typical of the childhood of other directors I later learned to know and love. When I grew up I chose to study art and new media. Making movies in the plastic arts suited me, as my attraction to the cinema has particular technical and physical dimensions in addition to the contents. I found myself attracted to the material, the language, and the technique just as a sculptor is occupied with the raw material of his trade. A combination of matter and spirit, duration and form. One of the major sources of inspiration for my work is technology. Part of my creative aspiration is the constant learning of new technologies, and I enjoy experimenting with it, sometimes as form and sometimes as content. I enjoy having full
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control, even if on a domestic level, of all aspects of cinematic work. Technique and technology will forever be the language of the era, and I am always excited to gaze forward, to find new ways of telling the same familiar story. From the first time we watched Brain, we were impressed with the painterly qualities of your work, in particular with its grainish black and white cinematography. How did you come up with the idea for this film? 'Brain' is the last film in the 'Rakel' series and it is also the film to which I feel most attached. I sought to end the series with a quieter and more existential film that would give both me and the viewers more of a perspective on the other films in the series. Cinema often describes climaxes in the life of characters. I frequently find myself thinking about cinematic instances that describe the tedious intermediate moments between the climaxes, or the routine and boredom that emerge years after the headlines appeared. When only a vague memory remains, followed by the inevitable decay.
Dementia as well has always intrigued me. I am disturbed by the thought of people who completed world transforming actions and then suddenly come to be placed beside their actions, completely unaware of them, like inanimate rocks in a Japanese garden. I was interested in combining these elements in a movie in order to explore both existential questions that bother me and vague questions about art and creating, such as: Do our actions indeed have meaning? Does their memory or reflection charge them with meaning? Does oblivion take apart their meaning? What comprises the artist's identity and artwork? is it matter, spirit or memory? Another challenge that I chose to take upon myself was the choice of a static one-shot in a close-up, and of a dialogue that would contain an entire film. One that would encompass a range of sensations and concepts but still manage to hold the viewer's attention from beginning to end. I wanted to put the viewers into a meditative mode and to synchronize them with the film's stream of consciousness and with Rakel's dubitable logic and mood.
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The final element that interested me when making the film was hi-tech versus low-tech. The tension between CGI and performance art with making a film that does not disclose when it was made. Perhaps in the 1970s, perhaps in the future.
authentic. In this way, I can defamiliarize the artist and the act of art. Through the gender forms Rakel puts on and discards throughout the films I am able to play with different culturallyand socially-dependent aesthetic patterns in order to construct and express my arguments.
The female figure is no doubt a topos of your cinema, emboding your peculiar vision of art: could you introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of Rakel?
For instance, in the first film of the series, ‘Birth’, the fact that a man is playing Rakel is characterized as what popular culture calls drag. By that I give the viewers a set of tools with which they can read Rakel's conduct and character through a certain prism of a drag show, with all its derivative cultural and social aspects. I ask them to examine the character of an artist
The moment I don Rakel's female figure an initial premise of role playing is generated. The playacting uproots the "real", the basically
with questions that arise when encountering and evaluating good-bad-real art. The different gender images also let me signify and define the ‘other’ in the social fabric and in the artistic field; the "creative", or “sensitive” other in social role playing, the deviant and the mentally unstable, and also the other within the community of artists, who does not obey the strict rules, or who is disqualified from a sphere in which everything is proper, fresh, and contemporary, the unsignified other. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? My creative process changes between projects, but it is usually an act that I am interested in trying out. It can be a performative act or a technological challenge. It is often a combination of the two. In Rakel's project, for example, I had a thought that amused me; that it would be funny to dress up before making prank calls. The mere fact that the people you are calling can't see or know that you put so much work and thought into it is absurd. Later on I understood that in fact it's not so absurd and that a great number of people go through a similar experience when they conceal their efforts, anxiety, and dress up to present a seemingly nonchalant façade to the world. This thought joined others that had been bothering me concerning issues within the artistic world; such as self-realization, totality, exploitation, and different interpretations of the essence of artwork. The figure of Rakel hovered above all this, as her existence had been with me for some time although I had never donned it. This was how the idea for the first film in the series was born. as one who acquires culturally-dependent qualities, language, and behavior, just as drag treats femininity as it is defined by society. In the second film, Blood, in the most sensitive moment of Rakel's life – her failed suicide attempt, she exposes a naked feminine body. Suddenly the emphasis changes and doubts begin to seep in. A renewed reading of her character and acts can take place through a new prism. Maybe it is not drag. Maybe it wasn’t drag all along. Now I ask the viewers to compare questions that arise when encountering different physical representations of man-woman-trans,
Your art is rich of references: your works, in particular Rakel remind us of the Japanese masterpiece Funeral Parade of the Roses. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? Funeral Parade of the Roses is indeed an excellent film, and I am humble to be mentioned alongside of it. The harsh truth is that I am inspired by so many things; right now influences that come to mind are Camp and Cyberpunk. I believe nowadays it is hard not to be a sponge that contains goo made of of the last hundred or so years of art and culture. We are inundated
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with it from every direction. So my cultural identity is a weird mixture of reproductions and gestures that are mostly not even in my dominant language, Hebrew. I learn to embrace this identity, to operate from within it.
The greatest influence on my work and the element most responsible for shaping my cultural world is probably the early 00’ Internet. Online file sharing in that era gave me the opportunity to watch films and to become
festivals by subject, by country, by year, in any category that interested me. For example, while my family was busy celebrating the Passover Seder in the living room I watched a marathon of all the films of Takashi Miike that had been produced up to that time. I am grateful to the file sharing community and I believe they had the most influence on me. What aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction? The most exciting moment for me is to see people watching my work and to see them reach an emotional experience through something I produced. The communication between the viewer and the artwork occupies me at all stages of my work and everything culminates in the moment someone views the artwork and a new energy is formed between them. Energy that I triggered, and from that moment it acquires a life of its own and a direction of its own and is no longer under my control. Sensations are very amorphous. When you try to explain sensations in words a transgression is formed, the transition neutralizes the emotions and adapts them to a set format. Through cinema, I can be more true to the original. I don't explain to the viewers what they feel. I try to arouse in them a sequence of feelings that are similar to those that I myself experienced. I'm annoyed at the world. I'm angry at so many of its injustices. I feel helpless at the world's gall to conduct itself as it does. But then again, I love it very much. It's an emotional roller-coaster. When I manage to take my viewers for such a ride, tempting, intimidating, consoling, I am happiest. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Oren. What's next for Oren Lavie? Are there any film projects on the horizon? exposed to things to which I would have had no access otherwise. I suddenly found myself in reach of all the cultures of the world within the confines of my room. I would hold my own private cinema
At the moment I am working on a new project. The structure is of a single film and the new challenges and sensations I am experiencing are surprising and exciting. Thank you, It was a real pleasure.