Participating Artists
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Drop the Monkey, 2010 (video still), video, 8:00 minutes, sound, courtesy of the artist
Guy Ben-Ner
In this work, Guy Ben-Ner examines the reciprocal relations between art and life through a discussion of the relations between technical and economic means of production and the personal aspects of the creative process. Ben-Ner entertains a witty, rhymed dialogue with himself, representing himself as a bifurcated figure located at once in Berlin and in Tel Aviv. This work, which was filmed in the course of an entire year without taking the film out of the camera even once, was created after he signed contract with a cultural body whose name he refrains from revealing, and which compelled him to travel weekly between these two cities. As the work unfolds, however, we learn about Ben-Ner's scheme: the artist is in fact using the money given to him by this international body in order to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend, who lives in Berlin. When his beloved leaves him, he is constrained to keep commuting in order to complete his project. In this work, Ben-Ner reignites the ongoing discourse on the "purity" of art and its underlying motives from the cynical, disillusioned perspective of an artist familiar with the well-oiled mechanisms of the contemporary art world.
Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, 1969; lives and works in Tel Aviv
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