Contested space.

Yael Bartana

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

Queens, New York

October 19, 2008-May 4, 2009

Framed by rising construction, figures work together. Dedicated to their tasks, they survey the landscape and wipe sweat from their brows. These individuals appear as upstanding folks, committed to a cause. Are they working as pioneers, erecting new structures in the area? Or are they rebuilding, putting energy into restoration so that generations can continue to survive, and thrive, on this land?

These assumptions are pointedly referenced by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana in her 2007 film Summer Camp, which was received with critical acclaim at Documenta. In its installation at P.S. 1, Banana's film is shown back-to-back with another: on one side of a room, viewers watch the reconstruction of a Palestinian home by members of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), chronicled in Summer Camp; rounding the central wooden display structure, visitors are confronted with Helmar Lerski's 1935 Zionist propaganda film Avodah. The formal intersections of the films are striking, as are their dissimilarities. Lerski's glowing, tanned pioneer is an overtly glorified figure--the camera steadily spans his muscular physique and consistently reminds us of his keen agricultural innovativeness. Meanwhile, the contemporary volunteers of ICAHD come across as a diverse group of varying ages and backgrounds; nonetheless, the devotion to work is underscored in both cases.

Bartana tackles the rich terrain of identity formation and nationalism, especially in regard to contested space. How may political and individual actions define space? In The Production of Space (1974) Henri Lefebvre noted, "the departure point for [the] history of space is not to be found in geographical descriptions of natural space, but rather in the study of natural rhythms, and of the modification of those rhythms and their inscription in space by means of human actions ..." Surely, environmental factors are influential determinants in our conceptions of space (and Bartana sensitively examines the natural landscape in these videos), but also significant is how space is lived and the establishment of demarcations on and of this space.

The viewpoints of the state and the ways in which these are dictated to and subsequently accepted by individuals--are of particular interest for Bartana. One such state ceremony is represented in Trembling Time (2001), which here fills a wall in its ample projection. Shot from an overpass above a busy Tel Aviv highway, the scene takes place on Israel's Memorial Day, when those who died in the Israeli wars are commemorated in a moment of recollection. Across the country, individuals stop their daily routines to remember and honor the deceased. On the highway, this collective suspension of activity is especially poignant, as cars pause in their lanes and drivers open their doors and stand quietly amidst one another. Bartana draws out the potency of the moment through use of manipulation in the video. Through fades and slowed actions, she creates ghost-like trails that hover around the figures, imbuing their movements with unusual energy. This focus on a particularly powerful moment provides Bartana's subjects with a certain presence and immediacy, even as they reverently recall the past.

In another space, the shrill exclamations that make up the soundtrack of Wild Seeds (2005) are so overpowering that they sometimes interrupt the concentrated viewing of the other videos in the near vicinity. These howls (which are subtitled in a neighboring projection) are accusations or pleas for mercy, voiced by participants in a role-playing game. In a landscape of sunlit, grassy hills, young people assume two sides: some are settlers and the others are soldiers working to remove them from the occupied territories where they have built homes. Though their wrestling and taunting are convincing, the players of each "team" are actually pacifists, and don't identify with the roles given them here.

On an adjacent wall, a quieter video exudes a measured steadiness in contrast to the visceral, tangled mass of Wild Seeds. Across a shallow plane, we can make out civilians interacting with military personal in Bartana's Low Relief II (2004). The characters and their backdrop are all rendered in a dull, beige-gray hue; the picture has been digitally distorted to appear as a low-relief sculpture, in the manner of ancient art of the Middle East. In the courts of the Assyrians, for example, relief panels would decorate the interior walls of palaces. In the "Lion Hunt" relief of Ashurbanipal (mid-600s BCE), each phase of a narrative is presented, from the lions being let out of the pen into the hunting grounds to their inevitable staged demise by the king. This is a narrative of control, where characters and their functions are clear and pre-determined. Does Bartana imply that the same could be said of her own relief system?

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In the fifth work on view at P.S.1, characters do appear to be comfortable performing their prescribed customs. In Kings of the Hill (2003), men attempt to maneuver their trucks and SUVs over and onto the land's steep rises. While onlookers gather around, drivers spin their wheels and ram their vehicles into the packed earth. Their machismo (or is it stubbornness?) is at the forefront. We may begin to see the trucks' colossal, mechanized forms as members of another species in themselves, stirring and rumbling like living beings. As the hills grow dark and headlights are switched on, Bartana suggests the passage of time: the men and their trucks have been gathering here all afternoon and into the evening, relentlessly trying to carve out their places in this landscape.

LUCY GALLUN is a writer and curator based in New York and Philadelphia and is currently a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.