While travelling the art institutions of the world with her film trilogy “…and Europe will be stunned”, Yael Bartana is also hard at work preparing the inaugural JRMiP Congress and spending time with her wife and baby in Berlin. The first non-Polish artist to represent Poland at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, Bartana’s fictive Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP) calls for the return of 3,300,000 Jews to the land of their forefathers. Or that’s the cover story, at least.
The trilogy, outlining the movement’s emergence, its first Jewish settlements in Poland, and the inevitable assassination of its leader, is an unsparing – albeit hilarious – glance at Israeli society, and the promise, as against the current reality, that arose from the Zionist movement. It’s also about the way Europe deals with immigration today, Bartana says. “And of course, the aesthetic language of propaganda and political manipulation. I made sure there was something in it to anger everybody” she adds, laughing. The power of the trilogy lies in the variety of readings it offers according to the viewer’s personal history and background. “In Russia, people were enraged by the use of Stalinist aesthetics; in Poland, they were struck by the story of the leader’s martyrdom, is an idea deeply rooted in Polish cultural heritage. In Israel, where I’m from, people accused me of lots of ugly things.”
The film project came about after Bartana visited Poland in 2006. “I was overwhelmed by the void. You walk around and hear, ‘This used to be the Jewish quarter’ quite a lot. So I started to imagine what it would be like. The ability to envision a different reality starts with the power to imagine, and with leaving fear of change behind.” The trilogy’s message is deeply ambivalent; confusion seems to be the point.
In the congress, held in conjunction with the Seventh Berlin Biennale, Bartana seeks to gather thinkers, activists, historians and anyone interested in challenging notions of national identity. “So the assassinated leader wrote a document where he describes his vision for Israel, Poland and Europe. The congress has a fictive narrative as its starting point, but I want to cross that threshold from fiction to reality. It’s megalomaniac and naïve at the same time,” she admits, “but I’m not interested in mere provocation. That’s boring. I’m looking for the point where art can actually effect change.” HP
The First Congress of the JRMiP will take place in Berlin, at HAU 1, May 11–13 2012. www.jrmip.org.
7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art,
April 27–July 1 2012.
www.berlinbiennale.de