YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING, 2022
Video performance,Yiddishland Pavilion
59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
In collaboration with Nikolay Karabinovych.
Curated by Yevgeniy Fiks, Maria Veits
Performed by Neue Jüdische Kunst just outside of the Latvian and Ukrainian National Pavilions in Arsenale on April 23, 2022, YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING was a gestural, provocative intervention in the proper regimated art viewing experience of the Biennale visitors. Enacted in the style of Jerusalem syndrome (a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions, or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem) and howling loudly the text of the performance in Russian, Neue Jüdische Kunsts delivered a fictional testimony in court by the person on trial – a fictional character named David Magin – keeping the biennale audience that had gathered around in suspense.
While shouting at the top of their lungs the text of the performance, Neue Jüdische Kunst began to cut out with scissors from a red banner squares with printed portraits of historical personalities, including the 17th century Jewish mystic Sabbatai Zevi, the classic of the Odesian conceptual art Leonid Voizekhov, Russian poet of Jewish origin Joseph Brodsky, and Jewish-Greek performer Roza Eskenazi and lay them down on the ground in a circular arrangement. According to the narrative of the performance, these individuals were the jurors of the fictional court hearing enacted by Neue Jüdische Kunst.
The testimony that David Magin/Neue Jüdische Kunst clamored was full of self-accusations as if David Magin/Neue Jüdische Kunst were testifying against themselves and thus self incriminating and self-victimizing. David Magin was testifying against David Magin and Neue Jüdische Kunst was testifying against Neue Jüdische Kunst in a permanent court trial without an end. This was a court testimony as a form of political speech, in which ideological positions of the speaker were constantly and quite radically shifting.
In their signature-style post-historical and post-ideological practice, Neue Jüdische Kunst weave together the YARMULKE OF A STRETCHED STRING out of bits and pieces of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, records of the Nuremberg trials, and the fellow Odesian Ze’ev Jabotinskiy’s “Jewish Legion”, while presenting these elements and influences in the manner ranging from direct citations to parody and satire. In the practice of Neue Jüdische Kunst, the Jerusalem Syndrome achieves the dimension of an aesthetic category that appears authentic for the fragmented, obsessive, and traumatized 21st century “Jüdische Kunst.
“The Tone of the Bowstring”
translated text from video
I draw my string, slowly, slowly aiming at the enzyme fungus on your body. A belly full of yeast with the hope of raising your spirits, resuming the fermentation of a pot-bellied hut of bacteria, but you did not have time to knead the dough. Spots of leprosy on the left thigh, a desecrated room, a rat-catcher’s briefcase, an old Frenchman’s sour vinegar, all this is David Magin. Speaking about serving the people, shaking the air with extramarital ideas, you wanted a completely different citizenship for yourself. You, together with the shameful people brought down into the Neue Judische Kunst , wanted to lead the people into obscure darkness, make friends with enemies, take them with traitors whom we do not even know, for whom we have no right to vouch for. Counting on our blindness, you brought our troops back to Golipolye, leading us through the black harbours without the right to escape.
Dear court, gentlemen, I an making my speech before witnesses of whom there are not so many and who are not stained by the presence in the centres of your struggle for freedom, which can be dangerous for the court, for the verdict, for the truth. They can get confused, you can lead them in the wrong direction, because our hands have not yet reached the forked tongue, which is covered with a white coating of ignorance, immeasurable will and strength. Good men and women! Be vigilant, for his cultural expenditure on the task of renewing speech was not commensurate with our interests, our importance, or our strength.
They, in their cramped cellars, counted on fools drunk with violence, but their hoax failed. There was not a single soul, even the cheapest and most rotten, who would have believed to the end in the psychology of the sura’s neighbor, Nyura’s grandmother. They wanted to sell this item under the banner of avant-garde and constructivism. You knew that it would be the same greedy landlord who serves for the benefit of state oppression and public non-recognition.
A one-of-a-kind crime that was completely defendable and barbaravaravaarar NYK should start an endless process,
Neue Judische Kunst , wanted to lead the people into obscure darkness, make friends with enemies, take them with traitors whom we do not even know, for whom we have no right to vouch for. Counting on our blindness, you brought our troops back to Golipolye, leading us through the black harbours without the right to escape.
Dear court, gentlemen, I an making my speech before witnesses of whom there are not so many and who are not stained by the presence in the centres of your struggle for freedom, which can be dangerous for the court, for the verdict, for the truth. They can get confused, you can lead them in the wrong direction, because our hands have not yet reached the forked tongue, which is covered with a white coating of ignorance, immeasurable will and strength. Good men and women! Be vigilant, for his cultural expenditure on the task of renewing speech was not commensurate with our interests, our importance, or our strength.
They, in their cramped cellars, counted on fools drunk with violence, but their hoax failed. There was not a single soul, even the cheapest and most rotten, who would have believed to the end in the psychology of the sura’s neighbor, Nyura’s grandmother. They wanted to sell this item under the banner of avant-garde and constructivism. You knew that it would be the same greedy landlord who serves for the benefit of state oppression and public non-recognition.
A one-of-a-kind crime that was completely defendable and barbaravaravaarar NYK should start an endless process,
The term of which is eternity, and the price is the indifference of judges and the severity of the jury. You ask what constitutes a crime, what article?
Turbid water in Venice, isn’t that enough, do you need anything else?
We bow our heads and see no foot, no sacred law, no good faith.
The five signatories of the agreement have filed prosecutions, and it is now the duty of all involved in the process to ensure that they do not deviate in any way from those principles and traditions that give justice authority and elevate it to the place that it should occupy in the affairs of all pavilions and trays.
Now, in accordance with the procedure provided for by the statute of the tribunal, it remains for me to propose that the indictment be read out:
Sowing sprouted, fate exacted from me
But we are already unhappy now
We are accusers and this is our right
Keep the fate of the sword in your urine.
We blame the Neue Judische Kunst for creating the hummus of turmoil that flooded the philistine settlements of the Gordon type. For calling the masses to a difficult feat. Behind
Shouts, outbursts and for ridicule. I remember how this plump stub climbed up the hill shouting «Let’s follow him», his plump legs looked in a completely different direction, they dreamed of hiding in the corner of the black dwarf, the great grandfather’s skirmisher. They ate it, healed, ground tili tili, washed down with falcon droppings.
All these years I mark, count, and see clearly that the action was of two kinds. Confused and confused ideas. Who hopes, hangs on the trees in the courtyard of the ghetto? Follow after trail. The investigation was led by NATO Kamensky and Nastasya. Coming out of the ghetto in the background, in the backyard Good old Josef, did you cut your favorite corn?
Sitting in Tatarbunary, we did not want to play blindly, we begged to untie our eyes, but you Magin continued to drink vile ditties, vomit on your knees and be rude to wild geese on the streets of Trabzon.
We call and demand oblivion for Neue Judische Kunst and David Magin, endless judgment and final discomfort, thousands of festering wounds and a swollen right shoulder.
You will say, we were careful, the jury shop, we were wary of everything that happened, we watched for equality, we tried to maintain a balance. Perhaps, but weren’t you writing your rhymes in a spacious apartment with a view of the scarlet walls, forgetting your Rodopol, cutting off piece by piece of foreskin, depriving the sensitivity of all districts, exchanging it for the privilege of being dumb and blind.
So, dear jury, you have a fairly typical swindler in front of you, I suggest that you feel him in your sinus, wet your finger and stick it deep so that your saliva tells you that even she does not want to dry in his sink. This unit placed the cells, as if for them human life is the art of playing gi, today the cell is here, and tomorrow the pictogram is on the whole board. Connecting dissimilar bits around, throwing them out of their own phallus, not noticing the blood and traces of purification, they rocked us with deft melodies and ringing scurvy. The task is to intoxicate with dope, promise the future within the limits of the tavern and not care about anyone except your own Enuresis, disturbing in the morning between breakfast and midday sleep. I’m tired dear judge. I don’t have the patience to split those almonds, peel them into tiny pieces to find a military target that isn’t there. Having injected the point of the empty sign, David Magin, together with his henchmen in blue robes, prepared the ground for slowing down, detaining, confining, forgetting, freezing, sourdough on the sebald Winfried 3georgfifth, golden cognac, fucking.
M beware, you’ve been followed by scoff Y from point B, he carries angelic trumpets created in laboratories with money collected from patrons of the previously mentioned organization.
I can go on dear judge. Even forgetting about the children who are sitting on the steps and waiting for an adult who is able to chop bread, grate horseradish and drink 4 glasses of wine for the fate of the abandoned slaves to the will of the desert fate, I will not end if all this was not enough, but I call and demand oblivion for Neue Judische Kunst and Boris Magin, endless judgment and ultimate discomfort, thousands of purulent wounds and a swollen right shoulder, I curse you lackey along with your earring in your left ear and callous mind. We wait, hide our eyes and light candles for the terrible trial and witnesses, for capture and reward, for faith and betrayal, for the power of a sign with meaning and sweetness.
I draw back the bowstring, quickly aiming at the ferment fungus in your body in an instant. confusion, dryness. A belly full of yeast with the hope of raising your spirits, resuming the fermentation of a pot-bellied hut of bacteria, but you did not have time to knead the dough. The spots of leprosy on the left thigh, the desecrated little room, the rat-catcher’s briefcase, the sour vinegar of the old Frenchman, all this is you, Boris Magin. Speaking about serving the people, shaking the air with extramarital ideas, you wanted a completely different citizenship for yourself. You, together with the shameful people brought down into the Neue Judische Kunst , wanted to lead the people into obscure darkness, make friends with enemies, take them with traitors whom we do not even know, for whom we have no right to vouch for. Counting on our blindness, you brought our troops back to Golipolye, leading us through the black harbours without the right to escape.
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