"The Dream of the Moving Sculpture"
by Zohar Gotesman
“Public space and the way it is perceived in Bolzano is very different from how urban space is perceived in Israel. When I lived in Europe I realized that the connection to heritage and its visibility in European cities is very strong. I want to investigate the public’s relation to a changing, moving sculpture - a concept that I feel very strongly about in my work.”
“The excessive number of public statues in Bolzano are a perfect surrounding for camouflaging The Dream of the Moving Sculpture, and diffusing its social critique into the public space.”
The Side Project “The Dream of the Moving Sculpture” by Zohar Gotesman, curated by Kathrin Oberrauch, Eau&Gaz, in cooperation with the company Nikolaus Bagnara AG, was also presented at the opening of Intermezzo 2.
“The Dream of the Moving Sculpture” is a sculptural as well as a performative work that is constantly changing and redesigning itself. Its dynamics live in opposition to the stagnation of the monument and resist any ideological appropriation of history. At the end of the three-month transformation, a grotesque mashup of various epochs remains: a devastated theatre of war of conflict between past and present.
The tool of unmasking and the lack of respect towards traditional cultural values are fundamental features of Surrealist humor.
The alteration of the work will happen at night, without any advance notice, so that every few days passer-by locals will have a new experience in relation to the surroundings.
There is a great dissonance between the extreme effort and labor that I put into the work and between the ridiculous action.
“Visual perception becomes a cultural reading process, charging the image with history and narratives.”
“Naturally local issues and conversations will find themselves inside the sculpture as I am interested in the influence of specific cultural, historical, and political everyday matters.”
“My work often creates a juxtaposition between a naïve or romantic view of the past and an acknowledgment that this stance necessarily relies on a fetishistic artifact.”
“[…] myth and history are in fact beyond conciliation: While the former claims that nothing truly new can occur, the concept of history implicates the possibility of human influence on events, making humans responsible both for their conscious actions and at the same time morally and politically in charge of their own fate.”
