Framing art as action: rethinking refusal in contemporary Israeli art.

In January 2004 five Israeli men were tried for disobeying a military order. Noam Bahat, Matan Kaminer, Adam Ma'or, Hagai Matar, and Shimri Tzameret had refused to enlist in the Israeli army, a mandatory act for every non-Arab citizen in the state of Israel. Their trial, dubbed "the trial of the five" by the media, lasted almost a year and debated complex moral and legal issues related to military refusal. At the end of the trial, the jury acknowledged the five men's passion for the state of Israel and their devotion to Israeli society, but declared that the men, in their refusal, severely undermined the rule of law Following the judgment, the court condemned the five and sentenced them to one year in prison. (1)

In February 2004 nearly 120 artworks entered Prison 6, a military jail in Athlit, in northern Israel. The exhibition, "One Pink Rose: Organic Art in a Digital Era," was extremely diverse. The one thread connecting all the work was the notion of imprisoning art together in the company of refusers. The curators of "One Pink Rose," artists Rafram Chaddad and Lance Hunter, did not restrict the participating artists in any way but one: the artworks' dimensions were limited to those of a standard-size paper so that they would be able to enter the prison without any difficulty.

The exhibition was initiated a few weeks earlier when Chaddad was facing prison for refusing to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reserves. The artworks were collected in order to curate a private exhibition in Chaddad's prison cell, as a means of turning his detention into an act of resistance, but these plans had to change when Chaddad's sentence was dismissed a few hours before his imprisonment. In order to make use of the numerous artworks collected, Chaddad and Hunter brought the art to two of the refusers, Bahat and Tzameret, who welcomed the works into their cells. On February 18, 2004, once the artworks were within prison walls, the exhibition opening began on a hill overlooking the prison, with food, drinks, and music, but obviously, without the actual art.

The public trial and the sentence of the five refusers set in motion a surprising number of artistic reactions. (1) "One Pink Rose" belongs, in part, to this reactive group as a clear homage to the refusers and their cause. But the exhibition's originality lies in its attempt to make a broader statement about the public's limited range of accepted identities, standpoints, and norms. In this article, I will draw on the trial, the refusers, and the "One Pink Rose" exhibition to outline how this particular art project engaged in the political, and how the refusal to display it affected the significance and success of the exhibition. I will take this opportunity to expose "One Pink Rose" to a broader audience, for it has remained practically unknown and escaped the media's attention despite it being a major political, social, and artistic statement involving numerous artists. The strong critical potential of "One Pink Rose" lies in the exhibition's versatile nature, its unstable interrelations, and its multiple targets of critique, which offer an alternative configuration of the social norms that shape identity politics in Israel today.

ATTEMPTS AT ESCAPE: ALTERING PRISON SPACE

The main function of the prison apparatus, according to Michel Foucault, is not the detention, but the classification of individuals. (2) In modern disciplinary societies, power involves separating, operating, and categorizing subjects. The prison apparatus is set at the heart of the social order to contain, and define, those in need of civilization. Those categorized as a menace to society are physically separated from it; those who are imprisoned are labeled as social outcasts in turn. Foucault writes on this taxonomic function of imprisonment:

  [...] one would be forced to suppose that the prison, and no doubt
  punishment in general, is not intended to eliminate offences, but
  rather to distinguish them, to distribute them, to use them; that it
  is not so much that they render docile those who are liable to
  transgress the law, but that they tend to assimilate the transgression
  of the laws in a general tactics of subjection. (3)

Bahat and Tzameret were convicted, along with the others, and marked as political criminals. To use Foucault's vision of the purpose of imprisonment, they were put in prison in order to be publicly recognized as delinquents, essentially as a means of disciplining society at large. Assigning the five refusers to prison service was designed primarily to disconnect them from the public as a "general tactic of subjection," while punishment for the concrete offense was only a secondary objective. The jury acknowledged this distinction by justifying the sentence on the grounds of intimidation of the public, agreeing that "in such a case, when the offence aims to carry away the public into a mass delinquency, this is a legitimate element in the sentence." (4) The act of refusal was a minor component in the felony; the way in which the refusers publicly framed their actions prior to and during their trial, linking civil, public, as well as political struggle with military disobedience, were taken as illegitimate acts in need of harsh suppression. Their decision to publicly claim their right of refusal was inspired by a large group of refusing veterans who served time in jail, five different support groups, and a small but existing acceptance in the media. (5) The court made use of the "trial of the five" to respond to this tendency to refuse service, and affirmed:

  Since the defenders' main goal in their refusal is not to save their
  souls but to tamper with government policy in illegitimate and
  forbidden ways, they are a danger to our democratic existence; that is
  why the court must make a clear border between a legitimate political
  expression and a refusal of a legal command that has a hazardous
  potential of hurting the interests of life saving, equality and the
  survival of the army and the people. (6) (italics mine)

TRANSGRESSIVE DISCIPLINE

The "One Pink Rose" exhibition directed its subsequent critique to the public as well. The backside of the invitation to the exhibition opening translates as follows: "You are cordially invited to the exhibition opening and a cocktail party ... Prison 6, Beit-Oren Junction, Road 4 (near Athlit).

This text rejects the idea of prison as a house of criminals and social outcasts. In its verdict, the military court divorced the conscientious objectors from the rest of society. The exhibition, in turn, reunites them by inviting the public to join the objectors in jail. This invitation transforms delinquency into a cultural event; it also transforms prison from a place of confinement to a potential place for cultural pilgrimage. As a result of this transformation, being unable to enter jail becomes a disadvantage for those in search of culture.

The details of securing transportation into the jail were supposedly found on the Web site prison.2ya.com. This URL, however, led to the Web site of Artistes sans frontieres, linked to the "One Pink Rose" virtual gallery. (7) True to its title, this page brought prison to you, rather than explaining how to get into prison. A vertical grid filled most of the main gallery page, which was divided into small squared compartments. Each compartment hosted a name of one artist participating in the exhibition. Clicking on the artist's name opened a new page and displayed a reproduction of that artist's work. Framing the top and left sides of the square compartments, and each reproduction, was the exhibition's logo, a fragmented black rose silhouette.

The grid format of the virtual gallery confined all artists to square compartments, imprisoning them together with their works and with the conscientious refusers, while creating new rules for visiting hours--unlike its material correspondent, the virtual prison is always open to the public. Clicking on an artist's name directed one to his or her artwork, and one could move between the cells or go back to the main prison grid. Here "One Pink Rose" reunited those in and out of prison by virtually releasing the images from their confinement and making them available to the public. This is the counterpart to the provocative invitation to go to prison. On the one hand, the public is impossibly invited to enter prison, and on the other, the imprisoned works are virtually released. This double move blurs the court's clear border between legitimate and illegitimate action. Passing through prison walls and confusing the distinction between the inside and the outside of the prison, the disparate exhibition elements spelled out the irrationality of imprisoning culture.

"One Pink Rose" thus proposes a reevaluation of the general norm, according to which the prison and its inhabitants represent the antithesis of civilized society. The exhibition puts forth an alternative scheme, one where the double mode of control outlined by Foucault--binary division on the one hand, and coercive assignment on the other--is broken: being in jail does not signify, in the case of "One Pink Rose," a complete alienation from culture and, having power does not entail a complete control over the classification of individuals. The physical, social, and cultural distinctions between law-abiding soldier-civilians and delinquent refusers do not hold in the world of "One Pink Rose," where culture belongs with the committed, with the uncivilized. It seems the redistribution and confusion of roles between art, artists, and offenders--in prison and on the Internet--was utilized in "One Pink Rose" to refute the disciplinary practices of the court of law.

ROSE FRAMES AND CONTEXTS

The collaboration between art and activism is not new, and Israeli artists have a long tradition of fighting for social and cultural rights, including the right of refusal. (8) What is most relevant about the jail exhibition is that it immerses itself in activism, while at the same time refusing the synthesis of politics and art.

The exhibition's refusal to be clearly contextualized is carried out through recurrent formal visual paradoxes. These paradoxes are apparent, for example, in the design of the exhibition manifesto. The manifesto, appearing on the front page of the Web site, outlines the exhibition structure and defines its goals in a clear, linear manner. The design of the text, specifically the surrounding image of a silhouette of a rose, contradicts the text's confident and unequivocal qualities. The rose silhouette is a fragmented reproduction of an artwork donated to the exhibition by artist Michal Goldman. Similar silhouettes are depicted on the invitation card to the exhibition, and frame all reproductions on the Web site. The manifesto of Artistes sans frontieres is thus literally framed by the logo of "One Pink Rose," which repeats one of the works in the exhibition. This contradictory configuration of text and image prevents an easy delineation of the exhibition's message and goals. Because the manifesto frames itself within art, it positions itself first in the art world, and only then in the political reality that it attacks. The collaboration of art and politics contained within the manifesto cannot be taken for granted because it is asserted within a closed artistic sphere, restricted and guarded by the rose's thorns. By surrounding itself with the visual logo of "One Pink Rose," the manifesto brings to the forefront some awareness of its own position as an agent of framing.

The phrase "agent of framing" comes from Mieke Bal's 2002 book Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. (9) Bal differentiates between framing and contextualizing (art) events. Arguing in favor of framing over context, Bal illustrates how the concept of framing accommodates the awareness of both the agent and the act, which engage in a constant reflexivity, as "the agent of framing is framed in turn." (10) Context, on the other hand, relies on supposedly factual data and does not call for interpretation as long as it originates from reliable sources. (11) By commenting on its very definition as a political/art exhibition, "One Pink Rose" and its organizers invite multiple frames of references, rather than a single contextualized understanding.

The curators' cautious approach to the combination of political and artistic action is also apparent in the staging of the opening cocktail party. While celebrating, the artists declined a request to sign a petition calling for the release of the five refusers. Chaddad explained this refusal was a crucial gesture in relationship to the concept of the exhibition. If artists and participants were to sign a petition in this particular context, the exhibition would become an instance--an excuse--for a demonstration. It would exist only in this specific context; the rose frame around Artistes sans frontieres's manifesto would lose its significance, and this art would be submerged in activism.

DETOURS INTO PRISON

In addition to the jail exhibition of "One Pink Rose," the individual artworks play their part and contribute to the exhibition's overall signification from their enclosed location, in either the real or virtual prison. This section will use the virtual gallery as a port to prison, in order to appreciate the role of the artworks' content within "One Pink Rose." The artworks that will be examined are 12 Roses (2004) by Tal Adler and Yulie Khromchenko and Untitled, after Manet (2004) by the collective Accidental Artists. Both artworks refer to the title of the exhibition in their application of the rose symbol. They thus

enfold their imprisoned context in their visual content and destabilize the structural relation between the single work and the comprehensive collection. These artworks represent one way that subject matter is significant in the overall statement of the jailed exhibition. (12)

12 Roses consists of twelve postcards, which are addressed to a dozen Israeli public figures. The cards can be viewed on the Internet and downloaded as a poster or as single postcards. On the Internet, the postcards are presented over a bedding of red rosebuds. Each postcard includes a computerized illustration of a pink rose positioned diagonally on an olive green background. Covering the rose in white letters reads a sarcastic thank-you note directed to a public figure, commenting on concrete and recent events. One note refers directly to the case of the conscientious refusers, thanking the Chief of Police for "taking a firm stand against leftist troublemakers and their disruptive and superfluous protests." Others extend the work's critique to other social domains. The texts are tied together by their form, pattern, and style: the postcards, the rose, and the sarcastic tone. Through the established grouping, the postcards communicate a wide-ranging social critique of Israeli public policy. (13)

A key to understanding the performance of 12 Roses is unfortunately lost in the translation from Hebrew to English. The signature on each postcard, translated to English as "thanks," is actually an idiom that literally translates to mean "prisoners of thankfulness" or "captives of gratitude." Hence, contradictory aspects are combined into one: the thank-you cards are filled with references to illegitimate behavior, and the thankful signature includes an allusion to forced detention. In this way, the work responds to the imprisonment of the refusers, suggesting that the alternative to physical incarceration is psychological imprisonment. 12 Roses invites its audience to repeat the act of sending the postcard, to "thank" the addressed public figures and to identify with the imprisoned. In so doing, 12 Roses attempts to undermine the distinction between imprisoned and free bodies, senders and addressees, and artists and audience. Analogous to the "One Pink Rose" project as a whole, the subversive message of the rose postcards lies in their performance of a "repetition that can have critical value, as it animates and alters forms that it repeats." (14)

In addition, due to their postcard format and to the image of the rose in their background, the texts can be read as communicative proposals. Offering a rose to someone is an act that can invite dialogue. Painting a rose is a citation of this act, and a visual complement to the sender's "thankful" note. Although "refusing" entails a cut in communication, a rejection, 12 Roses frames the sign of the rose in ways that reconnect the refusers and the public, emphasizing interaction and stimulating action. It calls upon the viewer to read the refusers' incarceration as an invitation for a change in convention.

The work of Accidental Artists takes a different approach in dealing with the rose, with the refusers, and with its audience. It consists of an adapted citation of Edouard Manet's once scandalous painting Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (The Luncheon in the Grass, 1863), which depicts a nude woman picnicking with two (clothed) men in a garden. Le Dejeuner stirred the public when it was first exhibited in the 1860s in the Parisian Salon des Refuses. Nowadays, it is considered to be one of the cornerstones of modern art. (15) Accidental Artists' work relies on Manet's notorious history to mobilize the idea of artistic agency in the social sphere.

In Accidental Artists's work, Le Dejeuner is reproduced with two minor changes. A text follows the contours of the nude figure at the center of the composition, reading, "sometimes even a pink rose can shock the bourgeois." In addition, above and below the reproduction, two excerpts from Karl Ruhrberg's Art of the 20th Century (1998) are printed in small type. Hence, Accidental Artists's work converses with the discipline of art history by visually reframing a reproduction of Le Dejeuner with art-historical texts. Surrounded by and covered with text, the visual image turns into an indexical sign, pointing to the significance of the original painting as it is narrated in art history.

The texts recontextualize Le Dejeuner as part of the jail exhibition by including a direct reference to the pink rose. At the same time, they deliberately place the pink rose exhibition in the tradition of earlier artistic controversies. The quotes that are cited from Ruhrberg's book read:

  None of these artists could be called social revolutionaries or
  barricade fighters ... those who could avoided military service during
  the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 ... It was the rejection, scorn and
  derision poured upon them by press and public that transformed this
  loose group of artists into secessionists. (16)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The juxtaposed references connect artistic and antiwar action. In the context of the "One Pink Rose" exhibition, the position of the nineteenth-century artist resonates with the conscientious refusers. The two groups are similar in the "rejection, scorn, and derision poured upon them by press and public." (17) Accidental Artists reframe the refusers as contemporary impressionists, as a prologue to post-nationalism if you like, shocking only those who are not open to change, and as forthcoming heroes.

Accidental Artists recapitulate the history of impressionism to remind their viewers that, over time, refusal can turn into acceptance and recognition. At the same time, they comment on the position of contemporary artists in Israeli society, borrowing social credit from their esteemed predecessors. They contend that modern art has always been a tool for changing cultural consciousness, and that the modern artist is bound to push boundaries and rethink social positions. Citing and appropriating Manet and Ruhrberg, Accidental Artists activate the viewer's knowledge of art history in an attempt to reenact the effect of Le Dejeuner in a contemporary context and reinforce the possibility of art to mobilize social change.

FRAMING ART AS ACTION

Ambivalent attributes are common and appreciated in the art world, but typically absent from political discussions. National politics in particular require, and cause, clear-cut definitions of national and non-national subjects. Although artworks can be (and often have been) used as tools for the creation of a national consciousness, they may also disrupt dichotomist thinking and challenge common truths. The exhibition presented ambivalence and self-reflexivity as constructive supplements to political action. It was not allowed to become unilaterally contextualized in either artistic discourse or political struggle. Its critique was directed at both politics and the aim of art to criticize politics; the public was both invited and barred from looking at the artworks; and the artists acted as political agents to some extent, while at the same time struggling to remain distanced from direct political action. Such inherent contradictions compelled a dynamic communication with the works of art: detailed readings of art's specific political messages, integrated complexity, and subjectivity into political discourse.

"One Pink Rose" simultaneously took on the roles of the judge and the convict, committing its own works of art to jail, parading on the trial, and emphatically mocking the court's decision. The exhibition incarcerated works of art and virtually imprisoned artists on the Internet, thus joining in the statement of refusal, deemed illegal by the court. Yet, while the refusers were prosecuted, the artists were not perceived as lawbreakers. Moreover, despite the participation of many artists and the provocative theme of imprisoning art, "One Pink Rose" received very little media attention and was generally known only within artistic and refuser-solidarity circles. The different chronicles of the refusers and the artists in this narrative suggest that when artists refuse, provoke, and declare, they do not raise the same reactions, from either the public or the court, as do other social agents.

This apparently disadvantaged position, when mobilized, can be effective, as it allows art a wider working space. Because artistic statements were regarded with less severity in the field of national politics, art received a gentler treatment from the court. Artists participating in "One Pink Rose" could raise the issue of refusal without provoking immediate fear or objection. That is why the attempt of "One Pink Rose" to destabilize political discourse through a performative theater of contradictions and ambiguities cannot be dismissed as a failure. Rather, it should be appreciated as a mode of political-artistic interaction that re-imagined the power relations between the activist, the artist, and the state. As a result of its deceptively distant contemplation, art could, in the case of "One Pink Rose," raise categorical issues and bring them closer to the heart of social discourse.

NOA ROEI is a PhD candidate in the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

NOTES

1. The testimonies of the five refusers, the appeals of the prosecutor and attorney, and the court's verdict and sentence were published in Hebrew in The Refuseniks' Trials by Dov Hanin, ed. (Tel Aviv: Babel Publishing House, 2004).

2. In the course of a year, four films, two theater shows, a concert, an art exhibition, and a book dealing specifically with the trial of the five refusers were produced.

3. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Alan Sheridan, trans. (London: Penguin Books, 1977).

4. Ibid, 272.

5. Hanin, 235.

6. For more information about the different refuser support groups see, for example, the Refusal Solidarity Network Web site at www.refusersolidarity.net.

7. Hanin, 229.

8. This was true at the time of the exhibition. Today the site of Artistes sans frontieres is located at http://artingjerusalem.com/kele6/.

9. For example, Yesh Gvul, the oldest refusal movement in Israel, organized a fund raising exhibition just a few months prior to the "One Pink Rose" exhibition, featuring several leading Israeli artists. The exhibition was held in the Ha'Heder art gallery in Tel-Aviv, and all profits from this exhibition were donated to the movement.

10. Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 135.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid, 135-36.

13. These artworks are not the only ones that represent the rose in its different forms. Other works participating in the exhibition apply to this category as well, and not incorporating them in this article undoubtedly affects my analysis. By the same token, I could have chosen another grouping, and not the rose, in order to approach the works. Therefore, my reading should not be seen as exemplary for the entire collection, but instead as one instance of the way the artworks comment on, talk back to, and affect, their surrounding.

14. The jailed viewers were supposed to receive the poster version of this work. The full work is accessible at www.itemz.org/roses/index.htm.

15. This case is made for the performative in Jonathan Culler, "Philosophy and Literature: The Fortunes of the Performative," Poctics Today, Volume 21, No. 3 (2000), 517.

16. Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (1863). For an extensive study of Manet's oeuvre see Michael Fried, Manet's Modernism: The Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), and Timothy J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Flowers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

17. Karl Ruhrberg et al., eds., Art of the 20th Century (New York: Taschen, 1998), 8-9. It is important to mention that the connection between the impressionists' artistic and political positions does not exist in the original text. Ruhrberg does argue that the impressionists turned into a defined (and rebellious) artistic group only due to the public's fierce negative response at the time. However, he undermines the impressionists' abstention from army service and mentions it as evidence of the fact that their revolutionary side was unintentional. Accidental Artists appropriated and modified Ruhrberg's text, cutting and combining sentences to create new meaning.

18. Ibid.