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Trapped in the Gestures of the Day-To-Day
On the Works of Elyasaf Kowner
ILANA TENENBAUM
The video works and stills presented in Elyasaf
Kowner’s exhibition call attention to his creative point
of departure – that of an artist who creates while strolling
in the city, in the tradition of the roving photographer.
While the exhibition does include works that digress from
this context, and despite the difference in form between various
works, one can still point to a common thread running through
them: a constant indication of a different and sometimes enigmatic
dimension that flickers from within the apparent simplicity
of gestures and fragments of reality caught on camera.
Kowner’s camera documents segments of daily events,
which undergo minimal editing, and some of these segments
are presented almost as stills. Most scenes are based on interaction
between individuals, which the camera singles out from the
movement of the crowd and from tumultuous urban life. The
filming, which tends to focus on various physical gestures,
charges the human action with strains of despair and hope
destined to be endlessly repeated. The segments are taken
out of coherent context and the viewer is invited to infuse
them with subjective meaning. These moments – blending
softness with violence, daily routine with elements of surprise
and even ecstasy – are captured by a curious and sometimes
empathetic eye that yields to random phenomena and events,
not from a critical standpoint but from attentiveness to the
contemporary rhythm of life that pulses in the city and on
its fringes. The random journalistic element and the esthetical
choices that characterize Kowner’s works enable them
to be read as a whole that signifies a hidden facet of reality,
which can be glimpsed through them.
The acts of roving and focusing on the ephemeral experience
are linked to existing traditions that examine the moment
of photography in space and time. One such example is the
capturing of "the decisive moment" – a term
linked to the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who began
his work in the 1930s. This moment, intensely charged with
the emotions and activities that fill it, reveals the inner
meaning of events beyond their mere documentation. Another
example is provided by the activities of the Situationists
(led by Guy Debord), who during the 1960s championed the dérive
in urban space as a critical action which, in calling one’s
attention to the entrapment of the city by the patterns of
modern urban consumerism, aims to diverge from these patterns.
However, Kowner's activity in urban space is related to a
different state of mind, one not based on a structured critical
viewpoint but rather on an experiential and sometimes poetic
foundation, which consists mainly of human gestures.
Kowner's work can be viewed and discussed in light of an early
phenomenon of modernism, related to roving the urban space
– the flâneur, a term for the urban stroller whose
eye captures the intricacy of the modern city. This concept,
which developed in 19th-century literary and artistic circles,
became something of an ideal weltanschauung – especially
in Paris – demarking the artist's place in modern times,
with the development of the metropolitan city. Through the
eyes of the flâneur, the urban experience is exposed
as a cultural, social, economical and political activity (as
articulated in the works of Walter Benjamin).
In The Art of Taking a Walk, Anke Gleber describes the flâneur’s
point of view as both the gaze of a drifter who yields to
the city’s sensory stimulation and focuses on the surrounding
styles, and a representation of an inventory, which includes
sensations that are novel in their contemporary context. The
flâneur specializes in perceiving and establishing the
mental heterogeneity of city life with his observation of
passers-by, as a starting point that structures the many various
aspects of street life, which he documents only partially
and in a fragmented manner.1 Gleber maintains that the flâneur’s
strolls are an act of reading and interpretation that turns
the flickering of motion into a stationary continuum. The
critical potential of the flâneur’s actions is
anchored in his attention to details, much like a private
eye or a hunter motivated by fascination with the semiotic
space of the urban environment.2 In many ways, these ideas
can be linked to Kowner’s works, which are primarily
based on tracing the signals transmitted by the city at the
onset of the 21st century. In regard to video art, one should
note Gleber’s comment that the cinematic media and the
flâneur are essentially linked to modern perception.
The flâneur strives for the redemption and liberation
of modern reality and contains the underlying sensory sensitivity;
the same is possible
for the cinematic lens, an intrinsically modern medium which
defines the city’s visual space, the public sphere and
the everyday realms.3 Kowner’s observation of the events
he encounters while strolling is thus fundamentally linked
to the possibilities which the documentary cinematic lens
has defined in its modern urban context.
Activity in urban space has already found its expression in
an earlier stage of Kowner's work – his graffiti work
in New York City’s East Village in the first half of
the 1990s. Defining his work as "night art," Kowner
began by painting on newspapers and then gluing his paintings
in the street, and later engaged the technique of spray-painting
his works using stencils. His works referenced the advertising
world, particularly in a series of colorful, seductive images
of high-heeled shoes with captions such as "Elyasaf Kowner
– Paris," "Pure Timeless Seduction" and
"Desire Has No Limit." Naturally, the Parisian identity
of Kowner-the-shoe-salesman is fictive. The fleeting essence
of the works and their elusive dialogue with the outside world
(is it art, or is it a collection of enticing idioms for promotional
purposes?) are intrinsic characteristics of the attempt to
blur the boundaries of defined imagery. These paintings operate
in a twilight zone that stretches between different images,
and this complements their activity under the auspices of
the dark as "night art." In many ways, the videos
and stills in this exhibition point to a consistent rationale
in Kowner's works; they often focus your gaze on an isolated
and intense image, occasionally anecdotal or seductive, which
reflects the oblique tensions and gaps asking to be filled
in.
A clear example of this can be found in the video work Dynamism
of a Phone Booth (2004), filmed in Paris. In this work, which
presents an anecdotal situation, the stationary camera focuses
on a woman standing in a phone booth. The frame captures the
woman’s torso from chest to knees. Her head and hand
that holds the receiver cannot be seen; her actions are represented
solely by the slight movements of her torso. The center of
the frame is occupied by a small dog, whose tan-colored fur
matches the tone of the woman's clothes, sitting inside her
purse and peering at the camera. The image of the woman becomes
a fixed, anonymous and mute picture, but the anonymity of
this urban image is disrupted by the interaction with the
dog, via its response to the filmmaker. The tension between
anonymity and intimacy, foreignness and communicativeness,
is thus expressed through a minute, anecdotal situation isolated
from the urban din.
Green Grass (2004), filmed in Amsterdam, also isolates a moment
within urban existence.
The setting is a city park, a man-made island of nature in
the urban environment. Green Grass is also filmed with a stationary
camera focusing on an isolated activity. The bottom of the
frame captures tall, blurred grass, since the camera is focused
on a couple sitting on the grass in the distance, across a
pond (which cannot be seen in the frame); beyond them is a
lane occasionally crossed by bicycle traffic. The entire frame
suggests concentration on a distant, continuous activity of
a non-narrative nature. The man lies with his head on the
woman's knees as she braids his hair. Their contrasting tones
of skin – the woman’s complexion is fair, the
man’s dark – stands out at first glance. The entire
situation is strikingly colorful – the contrasting skin
tone of the protagonists, the glistening green grass and the
striking red-and-white items in their attire.
But an attentive examination of the work reveals the subtleties
of the situation. The woman, who seems to be bitter and harangued,
is fervently speaking to the man lying comfortably at her
feet, and seems to be articulating intense emotions. Although
their voices are too distant to be heard, the soundtrack creates
a disconcerting effect, since a vague murmur accompanies the
film – the voices of Kowner and a female companion.
The viewer is aware that there is no correlation between picture
and soundtrack. This creates a kind of situational split,
as far as aural and visual information are concerned. The
camera is focused on people who are unaware of being filmed,
but, simultaneously, the soundtrack turns the viewer's attention
to a vague transaction happening elsewhere. This creates a
sensation of blurred boundaries between different subjects
and situations, including the filmmaker himself – the
roving artist. Once again, the feeling created is that of
being trapped in a realm of physical gestures and emotional
expressions that generate a kind of world separated from its
surroundings.
Around the Fire (2003) was filmed at the Beresheet Festival
– a festival in the new-age, tribal spirit, annually
held on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Kowner's lens –
usually directed at the urban experience – now roves
into a space that is not defined as urban by nature and yet
isn’t detached from urban experience, since communities
of this nature have come into existence within Israeli cities,
especially during the last decade. If the context of Green
Grass was that of a kind of artificial island of nature within
the city, here we encounter a pseudo-tribal gathering of modern
people in an extra-urban space, in nature's midst. However,
what this festival, with its various spiritual workshops and
jamborees, represents on a cultural level, is also strongly
present in the pulse of city life and contemporary culture.
The concept of “roving the city” is metaphorically
extended to the attentiveness to contemporary social phenomena
and cultural dynamics, beyond
the limited geographical contexts of the city.
In this work, the lens moves across a crowd creating a large
circle around a bonfire during the daytime. The general context
is of an ecstatic jamboree which includes dancing and playing
tribal instruments. The camera focuses especially on one man
performing a kind of prayer-rite for rain, consisting of ritual
singing, and the intense dancing of two young, nearly naked
men, leaping on each other ecstatically. The gestures of these
characters seem to aim at a primal tribal expression. However,
the camera nonetheless captures the nuances: modern underwear
underneath the pseudo-tribal loincloth rags of the dancers;
people whose code of clothing and appearance are atypical
of such “tribal” gatherings; different facial
expressions – some festive, some restrained; and various
other subtleties linked to the social activity. The filmmaker’s
curious view can be perceived as the empathic gaze of a man
who partakes in the activities, but also as that of an alert
outsider looking to capture different nuances. In a manner
similar to the way he engages urban space, Kowner focuses
mainly on the relation between the individual, isolated by
the camera for an instance, and the crowd surrounding him.
Despite the film’s documentary nature, these subtleties
create a refined, multi-layered and sometimes lingering experience,
tuned to the hidden frequencies and the expressions of an
individual in an all-embracing collective activity.
The two following video works are of a different nature than
the previous ones, as they were not filmed on the roam. However,
in many ways they point to an experiential element that is
common to Kowner's body of work, though it is less obvious
here.
Houdini Triptych (2005) comprises three screens. The first
displays a head, resembling that of a medieval monastic figure,
with a blanket shrouded round it like a pointed cloak, creating
a triangular composition of the head imagery. The image is
displayed in a bluish-tinted negative that gives it a simultaneously
enchanted and threatening feeling – the air of a dark
holiness. Because of the decision to project the image in
negative, the dark spaces in the original image – the
oral cavity, the nostrils, the shadowed space between the
cloak and the neck – appear to bask in light, a morbid-grotesque
intensification of image’s aspect of holiness. The cloaked
figure continually repeats a key phrase – “It's
not me, it's you.” Since the image is presented in slow
motion, the tone of the figure's voice is slower and low-pitched.
The nature of the visual imaging and the slowed-down sound
make it difficult to perceive that the figure's gender is
female.
The central screen is flanked by two screens, on which two
identical images are projected in opposing directions, creating
a kind of mirror image. These images include a brief segment
from the Buster Keaton comedy, The Navigator (1924), in which
Keaton and his female lover are adrift on the Atlantic Ocean.
Keaton, wearing a massive diving suit, is floating face-up,
while his companion sits on his torso rows them across the
water. Keaton’s facial expressions, visible through
the helmet on his head, project severe respiratory distress,
and he points to his neck in attempt to signal this distress.
This segment, which includes shots from different angles and
distances, is continually repeated via Kowner's editing, and
because of the opposing directions of projection on the two
screens, the Keaton characters appear to be rowing away from
the central image. Both screens displaying the Keaton segment
are also tinted blue, and the original musical score of the
film is intertwined with the voice of the hooded figure on
the central screen.
In its entirety, the work blends a dark-spiritual dimension
with comical-grotesque imaging, creating a charged experience.
Despite the notable difference between Houdini Triptych and
the works previously described, it too projects a sensation
of characters trapped in their gestures, repeated over and
over without any narrative development. It also seems that
Kowner, whose works deal with the consistent experience of
establishing reality by lingering over isolated details, manifests
this infrastructural principle in a theoretical manner –
a gaze capturing a piece of reality from which other dimensions,
denoting a branching and broadening of this reality, can be
derived. Anyone observing these gestures winds up projecting
his own world on them anyway – an act that can be literally
linked with the utterings of the hooded figure, "It's
not me, it's you."
The fifth video work, located at the far edge of the exhibition
space, is Manual Indication (2005). The title of Kowner’s
exhibition is derived from this work's central motif –
the number 15. In many ways, this work's symbolism is a kind
of code for the entire exhibition – a theoretical infrastructure
from which one may learn of Kowner's strategy regarding the
perception of reality characterizing his work. Manual Indication
consists of two monitors, each displaying a repeated image
of a fist opening and closing three times – signifying
the number 15. The basis for this simple action is connected
to one of Kowner’s memories. He recalls playing a game
(of Chinese origin) with his relative, where each of the two
players has to bet on a number, which is the projected sum
of the number of fingers that both players choose to extend.
The highest number one can bid is 20, a tally that can be
reached if both players extend all ten of their fingers. Each
player
has to take into account the number of fingers he himself
plans to extend: 5 fingers (one palm), 10 fingers (two palms),
or zero – if he intends to "show" two clenched
fists to his partner. Since in this case the player does not
intend to extend any fingers, the highest number on which
he can bet is 10.
Kowner recalls that, playing with his relative, he knew that
he wouldn't extend any fingers but still bet on a number which,
in this case, became illogical – the number 15. This
was, therefore, a sort of jest, an illusion which begs to
indicate the presence of an unseen hand supposed to partake
in the game, beyond its logical rules – a dimension
that can't exist in the normative mathematical perception
of reality, but is still present in the familiar and presupposed
rules of the game. This signal, pointing to something that
does not exist yet somehow does exist, can be perceived as
a kind of theoretical code, which is linked to the way Kowner
describes the segments of reality captured in his other works.
Within the seemingly completely-familiar details of this reality
exists a process of pointing to another dimension, simultaneously
intimate and foreign, which is exposed in familiar environments.
The simple, isolated physical gestures are narrowed down in
this work to an even greater extent than that of a gesture
that tells of a concealed and elusive dimension. Figuratively,
the manual indication may be hinting at those hidden signals
transmitted by the segments of reality displayed in the rest
of the exhibition's works.
Next to these video works, the exhibition includes several
stills. Though these stills focus on vistas rather than human
gestures, they share a fundamental principle with the video
works. These captures of urban scenery and photos of trees
display a common, elusive thread between presence and absence,
the seizing of a magic moment while roaming the city. Wrapped
Building (2003) portrays an enormous canvas covering a wall.
The canvas reflects the reddish tint of the sunset, which
gives it an enchanted, hypnotizing look and underscores its
shadowed creases, like pieces of an urban reality displayed
as a sort of abstract painting. Karei Deshe (2003) sets a
group of palm trees as a dark penumbra against a dusk purple-blue
sky. From My Window (2004) – shot from Kowner's studio
in Tel Aviv – shows the skyscraping skyline of the east
of the city on a rainy day, just as sunlight breaches the
clouds behind the camera. All these photos point to elements
of objects expropriated from their simplicity, an isolated
gesture of still life observed for a moment on an elusive
dusk, a world of in-between briefly glimpsed.
In another still photo, Helping (2003), Kowner describes a
fracture of urban existence
close in spirit to many of his video works. A man lies prostrate
on his stomach on the sandy beach, while a woman bends above
him, lightly touching his back, holding a cigarette in her
hand. The soft and hazy light is reminiscent of the dusk hours.
The photo can be interpreted simply as a soft touch of a woman,
nonchalantly enjoying a cigarette, on the back of a man resting
on a beach. But once again, the awkward position in which
the man lies on the sand conveys an upsetting reality. Kowner
points to a situation of distress, inasmuch as the photo simultaneously
projects softness and a measure of grace – and perhaps
some equanimity on the woman's part, as she holds the cigarette
in an offhand manner that does not necessarily point to a
dramatic moment in time. The audience may interpret this fragment
of reality observed while wandering in the urban realm according
to its wishes – a simultaneously soft and threatening
reality, whose elusive gaps can be filled through the eyes
of the observer. This "decisive moment" rife with
intrinsic tension adequately reflects, in the most refined
and distilled form, the spirit of Kowner's work and the nature
of his camera's gaze.
1 Gleber, Anke, The Art of Taking a Walk
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 24,
29.
2 Ibid., pp. 52, 57
3 Ibid, p. 151.
Translated by Eyal Katz
Written for 15, exhibition catalogue, Haifa
Museum of Art, 2004
Ilana Tenenbaum is a curator and director of the New Media
Center, Haifa Museum of Art
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