Miri Segal Selected Press

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Selected Press 2012

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

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The Body in Women’s Art Now: Part 3 – ReCreation @ Rollo Contemporary – REVIEW Contemporary artists have been rather slow on the up-take when it comes to contemporary media – perhaps disregarding the messy world (wide web) of the internet happenings as the realm of spotty teens rather than rather than of discourse-orientated artistes. But the artist’s in Rollo’s new show are refreshingly different, with the gallery bringing together works from four different glitch-based practices, that share a delight in the pop and pixel of all things digital. Helen Carmel Benigson is the big name amongst the four, recently described in the Independent as ‘A Pipilotti Rist for a harder, more media-savvy generation’, and tipped by those in the know (apparently) to make it big. Consequently her work is given the largest showing, including a ceiling to floor scroll of tweets by alter-ego Princess Belsize Dollar, and the transcript of an improvised erotic rap delivered down the phone to an unsuspecting victim – who understandably hangs up upon the barrage of ‘glistening creamy milky ahh dripping pouring sexy wet’. Comparisons to Rist are understandable, with both artists bathing their work in saturated colours and psychedelic patterns. But, beyond visual parallels, the two artists could not be more different; while Rist projects phychic visions mined from self, Benigson is in the business of appropriation – adopting and adapting imagery from external culture to create a sickening, swirling remix; a crazy mirror of contemporary visual languages. Part 3 – ReCreation is the final exhibition in Rollo’s The Body in Women’s Art Now series, with a mission to examine the altered status and experience of the body in relation to new media and technologies – ‘the impact of technology on bodily interaction and bodily capabilities’. Thus Benigson video work is that which most aligns her with the rest of the work in the show, being the piece that most explicitly addresses questions of gender and its relation to new technologies. Mashing-up scenes from a first-person-shooter game with online virtual Poker, she plays out a narrative of gender stereotypes in which macho commandos strive towards the heroic rescue of a reluctant princess avatar at the poker table. The piece alludes to the regressive gender constructions typical of the virtual world, the with the princess both physically tailored to male erotic desire, and violently denied the ability to follow her own (economic?) imperatives. This neo-feminism is the thread that runs throughout. Miri Segal’s video piece BRB, for instance, contains an epic scene of lesbian-avatar intercourse, with two corpselike fantasy images going through the motions of passion. But, genital-less, we are given a horrific and impotent vision of male desire, objectifying and sanitising the female body into something sub-human – titillating but safely neutered. Similarly (although with less success), Anne-Marie Schleiner plays with sexualised tropes of game-dom, donning the absurdly skimpy outfit of Lara Croft a she traverses the streets of New York, staging ‘wireless gaming interventions’ (also known as ‘playing a computer game in public’).

Ultimately, Rollo ought to be applauded in their effort to bring together the work of these IT girls (if you’ll excuse the phrase for the sake of a pun), and their messily pioneer practices, genuinely contemporary in their open-eyed engagement with an all-pervasive technological culture. Words Thomas Keane © 2011 ArtLyst

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Selected Press 2010

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

What prices for perfection ? By Akin Ajayi Based on first impressions alone, it would be tempting to dismiss Or Even Tov and Miri Segal’s video exhibit “Future Perfect,” on view until December 11 at Tel Aviv’s Dvir Gallery, as clever if somewhat overstated satire. Taking its cues from the realm of technological-scientific progress, one immediately discerns tropes from science fiction, specifically the specter of omnipotent control. The short film starts with a lone figure surveying a panoramic landscape before turning to address his Internet audience, tens of millions from across the world.

Courtesy Dvir Gallery The benevolent overlord is Sergey B, co-founder and president of Gooble Inc. (sound familiar?); the purpose of his public address, on 28th March 2013, is to announce the launch of the revolutionary Gmind, a wearable computer activated by users’ thoughts. A small headset equipped with a minute camera and projector, it captures the wearer’s thoughts by reading EEG patterns, and projects search engine associations onto the user’s pupil. Through thought command, it can also film all that the wearer sees, to be archived and made accessible at will. Sergey B describes this innovation as the democratization of knowledge. “Within our lifetime, everyone can have tools of equal power,” he purrs soothingly. It does sound a little like speculative babble; but then, who could have predicted the omnipresent utility of, say, the iPhone a decade ago? More to the point, one does not — at least not yet — have Steve Jobs evoking Primo Levi and that “wonderful, fallacious instrument” called human memory at one of his famous press conferences. And it is in this context that “Future Perfect” 41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,11-1111441 ‫פקס‬,11-2111111 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

engages. What it does, subtly, is to push to the foreground the ethical and social considerations that must accompany any assessment of what technology can do for us. Sergey B suggests that a suitably adapted version of the Gmind, for infants, can capture every significant event in their lives, good as well as bad. No more suppressed traumas, he proposes. No further need for psychoanalysis. But can something as complex as the human mind be reduced to a set of changeable algorithms, to be downloaded and clinically dissected at will? And, for that matter, can the democratization of information actually bring parity to the people? It is one thing to have access to information; another to have the opportunity to use it. “Future Perfect” does not propose to answer these questions, but rather seeks to ease them into our consciousness. This is not to say that the short film does not hint at opinions of its own; in a delightfully whimsical coda, a young woman dances to an archived film called up through her Gmind, her spontaneity in pointed contrast to Sergey B’s earnestness. But “Future Perfect” is also cautionary; on leaving the gallery, the viewer is directed to a poster of Google’s corporate slogan, “Don’t Be Evil.” It seems to serve as both rebuke and reminder; after all, the road to Hell is lined with good intentions.

http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/133514/#idc-container

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,11-1111441 ‫פקס‬,11-2111111 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Selected Press 2007

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Double Life Tali Kohen-Garbuz, published in YNET, May 3, 2007. Miri Segal inserts a virtual life into Dvir Gallery. One cannot stay indifferent to Miri Segal's new installation at Dvir Gallery. In an elegant and precise way, it pushes the boundary of plastic art to the fourth dimension, and from there it brings up questions which are difficult to measure concerning the Real, such as love. Segal, a mathematician in the past and a highly appreciated video artist in the present, takes into account the viewer as a subject who should be engrossed in the work, with all the senses and intelligence he or she can come up with. Second Life, an online multi-participants game exists already for a few years. Participants can create a self image according to their choice and are free to move between spaces. In fact, they are to do anything..., almost. The space is inhabited by familiar participants as well as newcomers, each of which designs his avatar (i.e. His character). A participant can enter a casino, walk in a field of flowers, or join (like Segal) a discussion around a campfire were philosophers meet. One can also create new spaces in Second Life according to his/her imagination; there is a Second life currency with a change rate to the USD and the sex and gambling economies.

Segal entered Second Life as a participant in the past August with her own character, along with her assistant Iris Domany. Since then she is there, holding conversations and other kinds of relations with the other Avatars. In addition, Segal created a gallery space planted in the Second Life in which she exhibited her works. Participants can walk into the gallery, but they cannot change things within it. After many hours of footage, Segal created a thirty-minute documentary film concerning Second Life and its participants.

An intelligent feat It is, actually, an animation engine that allows a participant a number of vantage points and the option to step in and step out, be "inside" or "outside". The participants exist and are virtual at the same time, and everything that happens within the game supposedly exists in the borderline of fantasy. Segal's mirror-image can jump off a tall building and then get up and run; she can wear an impeccable look and attract whoever she desires. In spite of all this, however, the longer one watches the film, it becomes clearer that people who transport themselves into this unlimited fantasy, take everything with them: their loneliness, existential questions, depressions, random sexual encounters, and disappointments. Is there a singular 'I', or maybe also a joint 'I'? “Is there anything beyond the roles, a unifying entity which makes me 'me'?" wonders a participant who took the form of a skeleton when seated among the philosophers. This work is an intelligent feat, rich in details and well thought out; with a lot of consideration put into the sound, (part of the soundtrack is taken from Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom). In parallel to the deconstruction and transportation of the supposed intimacy between a single person and his/her computer screen, into a public space, Segal reenact, using new techniques, the modernist act of transporting the trivial and mundane into the art sphere. Another presentation of the virtual gallery is hung on a different wall, or, to be more accurate, is reflected from a screen projected onto a mirror. The gaze follows the motion of a virtual camera moving in the space of the virtual gallery and looking at it from different angles. In addition, the viewer's face is reflected in the mirror, as if forcing him or her to participate. On another wall is a single image of Segal's "Google Face". The gallery talks with Segal are packed with a wide ranging audience, who wish to better understand this show. Connoisseurs of her previous works know well how seductive they can be, and are ready for the challenge. Structurally, this work is a meandering in the medium between computer art and cinema, between documentary and fantasy, between naive and ironic, and, at the end, it is deeply affecting.

Second Life, First Love On the movie BRB, questions to Miri Segal

Yael Bergstein

From Studio 169 June-July 2007

Translation: Iris Domany

Y.B. M.S.

Let’s start with a description of the work BRB, from your latest exhibition "Just a Second, Life" at Dvir Gallery. The film BRB documents my journey, along with Iris Domany, in the new world of Second Life. The film relates to questions concerning the nature of life, the nature of images, and the relationship between the two. Second Life (SL) is one of several internet based virtual worlds which have sprung out of cyberpunk culture, and which have been particularly influenced by Neal Stephenson's novel "Snow Crash" (1992). SL is a kind of game with no specific goal. The participants (Residents) design their own virtual body (Avatar), travel within the world, meet other Residents, create and trade items (virtual property) and socialize. SL's spaces and objects are almost exclusively designed by the players themselves. Actually, SL is a universe of collective creation. It differs from our first life in that it is not (yet) run by huge corporations: every object could be traced back to its original creator, so it is a kind of intimate and anonymous cooperation. The installation at Dvir Gallery included the film (30 minute long), a virtual gallery which I've constructed up in the sky of Second Life, and a still image of a self portrait inside the game. The virtual gallery was screened LIVE into the real life gallery, and both exhibitions opened simultaneously, so the spectators at Dvir could peep on the avatars that gathered in the virtual gallery. BRB (Be Right Back), which resembles an animation movie, was shot entirely inside SL and brings forth elements of our journey through the new continent (or more accurately: archipelago). Our experiences and conversations were shot using a virtual in-world camera and the footage was then recorded onto the computer by independent software. We designed our Avatars based upon our real-life appearances, but I sometimes appeared with Google's search page as a mask on my face, and Iris showed up in a Queen Esther costume on one occasion. The film opens with conversation shown on a black screen, registered at a philosophers gathering place. There is a girl there who tries to disclose some of her personal problems. The philosophers however try to

2

generalize from her words and extract universal meaning, and tension rises. Someone asks her: "what happened lately that got you so annoyed?" to which she replies: "the truth is, that I am sick of the fakeness of this place". A philosopher wonders, half quoting Baudrillard: "Do you think that the more our image is projected into this type of space, the less vital the representation becomes?" she explains that she came to SL in search of things missing in her Real Life (RL). The conversation goes on to address body-images, the masks we wear in SL and RL, and the differences in communication within those two worlds. Later on, one player comments that SL is just another screen upon which we cast the shadow of our self, and Muzza (the name I chose for my character) points out that strangely enough the graphics do not allow shadows or mirror reflections. Someone says that she appreciates the non-flesh manner which leads us to get right to the core of our 'selves' The conversation continues. The first woman keeps complaining about life in SL, until one player asks her: "Have you experienced a recent loss in RL?" "Yes", she says, "I had to part from persons and certainties in my life, but let that not interrupt the discussion". One Philosopher answers: "well, loss is huge, loss is omnipresent, even here it follows us, but maybe now we can restore ourselves in new modalities" At this point the movie screen is no longer black, and the philosophers gathering place, around a campfire at night-time, is revealed. The journey begins from here, passing through various places we arrived at, sometimes by chance, by using the game's search engine. For instance, when searching for "Love" we arrived at a public orgies space, where Iris met a young guy and had sex with him, while I filmed. The film shifts between those places, the Philosophers’ campfire and the virtual gallery I constructed, capturing the conversations as they take place.

3

Y.B. M.S.

Y.B.

M.S.

How do you explain the medium in your works, and your interest in images? The medium of my works is the projection; not the video itself, but the projected image. The projector resembles the eye: an optical double cone (the Euclidian model) and a lens in its center, but the light's direction is reversed. Instead of light coming from the outside and forming a retinal image inside the eye, the light comes from inside the device, projecting the inner image onto the outside world. The same type of reversal occurs with psychological projection: "he hates me" replaces "I hate him". The Solipsistic approach – stating that everything in the external world is merely a projection of one's own perceptions – suggests that projection has a blinding potential, but it is also responsible for our ability to sympathize ("I know you are in pain when you hit your elbow"). To me, this is the mechanism that establishes Fantasy – from the projector to the screen and from the screen to the structure of passion – and establishes the manner in which images live inside us.

Some of your previous works forced the spectator into a specific viewing position: sitting, standing, moving, etc. BRB, however, is a direct projection unto a screen. In previous works I tried to raise awareness to the projected image as such, at times attempting to make the image physically present. In some works like "Still life in cucumber season" (2003), and "unun too easy to ease" (2001), a synaesthesia of sight and touch occurred. BRB was my first direct projection, and in the beginning of the process it felt a bit uncomfortable. In the classic understanding of sculpture, the viewer is a neutral eye floating in space. However when video works first came out in the 70's, their basic assumption was the contrary: the viewer had a body, and this body was placed in the exhibition space in relation to the image or sculpture. The first Video works set out to amplify the viewer's awareness to her own body, and to the circumstances of seeing art, to the extent that at times the works were embarrassing for the viewer, the work and its viewing became politicized. In my own works, in a strange way, almost the opposite happens in respect to the body. In "Place de la bonne heure" (2005), for instance,

4

the viewer - a single viewer in the gallery space - sits on a rotating chair with a projector attached to its top, right above the viewer's head. The viewer revolves together with the image. He surrenders his body, and in return sees things through my eyes. The image travels around all four walls, disintegrated from the architecture of the room. Viewing the film while rotating turns out to be quite physical and it imposes upon the viewer the awareness that the image is a sheer projection. The work deals with political projection – of a circus or a square, for instance – onto the public sphere. The two circuses which appear in the work, one in Tel Aviv –"The Beautiful Hours" circus - and the other in Kalandia Checkpoint on the way to Ramallah,have both been artificially and inorganically planted in the public space, forced upon it. The film travels between them. The video ends with an image of a horseback rider shooting the sun and exploding it. The projection then stops, and the chair comes to a halt. The image of the sun bursting transfers from the screen and affects the reality in the gallery. Second Life itself seemed to me to be the ultimate arena of Projection, and so additional sculptural elements seemed redundant. You don’t bring any of your RL physical presence into SL – neither looks, nor voice, nor smell, but still SL is a visual space in which the body has a representation: you can sit in silence with someone, for example, and the silence can be meaningful, unlike in a Chat Room. Roaming in SL is like wandering inside the collective sub-conscious: when I “speak” with someone there are no nuances of tone or facial expression, I can not raise one brow in irony and so forth. As a result, an amplified interpretation of what is said is occurring - a projection; It is up to me to decide how to understand what happens, and the objective reality barely limits me. Naturally, I bring my own subconscious and mood into those interpretations. When somebody "speaks" in the game his avatar is seen typing, a mechanical ticking sound is heard, and his words appear as text on the screen. The speech is read by the eyes, and this strengthens the feeling that the conversation is taking place inside my head. This may be what causes the players to approach what is said as they would approach an idea that comes to mind, even if it’s a bad idea. Freud claimed that there is no indecision in a dream: if two options are considered, they shall both appear one after or in parallel to the other. In the same fashion, conflicts and arguments are differently structured in SL.

5

The conversations are fast, and as the sub-conscious is more active, the emotions that the conversations evoke are amplified. The mirror reflection and the shadow are the classical elements from which images came to being, and they are also the fundamental figures in representing the subconscious. Although neither the mirror nor the shadow exists in the game, there is a strong sensation of being inside the sub-conscious. The world may be flat, shiny and with no inner shadowing, like a true "second degree”, but somehow that is what draws you in. The mirror reflection idea was also dealt with in the virtual gallery. It was projected into the RL gallery through a mirror, and so seemed to appear on an imaginary plane, "behind" Dvir Gallery's walls. Also, the virtual gallery itself was designed as a double structure, with two sides, each acting as the reflector of the other, and so all the objects were "mirrored", but the avatars were not. In a conversation about my work, Irad Kimchi said that vampires do not reflect in a mirror because the image has no image.

Y.B. M.S.

Y.B. M.S.

What was the shown in the virtual gallery? The exhibition in the virtual gallery is titled "No Matter, What?”. The gallery was built in the air, 300 meters above the ground in the middle of nowhere, and it compliments the philosophers gathering place, which also exists in detachment of its surroundings, and holds discussions about the death of god in an already abandoned universe. The virtual exhibition deals with Non-Matter, with the death of the images shown there, and with the death existing within life; one of the pieces features a 3D image of the written word TIME, and when the viewer gets closer he sees that it's made out of a texture composed of dead flies flying (Time Flies). Other works include a magnification of my Escape keyboard button, an auto portrait titled Necrofleur and two still images from Place de la bonne heure, showing the sun being shot at, and exploding.

What can you tell us about the appearance of the avatars in the film? They all look glittery, synthetic. BRB's atmosphere is that of the purgatory. The avatars seem ghostly, but also sensual and arousing. There are two sex scenes in the film, featuring the illusive seductiveness of the virtual body: on the one hand ideal, forever young, glamorous, but on the other hand dead – unaffected by time. It is a sort of flickering death, a death indicating life.

6

Miri Segal, "Just a Second, Life", Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv, April 19th – May 19th 2007

7

Selected Press 2006

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

art press 324

experiences

I

optlques Paul Ardenne Venue des mathematiques la premiere

et familiere

fois ce printemps,

notion de spectacle.

de I'optique,

a la galerie

Propos principal?

simulacre parfait, de I'image docile.

Miri Segal est une artiste

Kamel Mennour,

Multiplier

les situations

Pour mieux signifier,

phare de la jeune scene artistique

son C2uvre se distingue

israelienne.

par son gout des installations

ou voir revient d'abord a experimenter

dans la foulee, notre alienation

une situation

Exposee

ambigues

prenant

de dependance:

en France pour pour theme

la

desir du beau, du

a I'image.

Ie visage reflete mais a gauche -c'est-a-dire, dans les faits, du mauvais cOte. Maints autres dispositifs optiques mis au point par Miri Segal troublent d'une meme maniere Ie sens visuel. La piece Love & Strife (un titre inspire d'Empedocle, suggerant I'affrontement des contra ires et I'inimitie) se presente de nouveau comme une table flanquee de miroirs lateraux, mais ronde celle-ci. Sa particularite ? Une fois assis a cette table, on embrasse du regard la totalite du cercle de la table sans qu'apparaisse notre reflet. Disparition du corps, escamote par Ie visible. Wishful Thinking (Strife), qui reclame la presence d'une tierce personne, pousse Ie jeu plus loin encore. Aucun des deux pprotagonistes assis a la table, presque exactement situes pourtant I'un en face de I'autre, ne voit son vis-a-vis. Tout au plus chacun forme-t-il visuellement I'image du cercle parfait de la table. Simple gag visuel digne de la salle des miroirs de la foire du TrOne? On peut envisager Ie sens de I'ceuvre autrement. Non sans a-propos, Miri Segal suggere qu'il pourrait s'agir la d'une table de negociation parfaite dans Ie cadre d'un conflit territorial «Necrofleur».

Photographie

couleur.

(To utes les photos,

court.

galerie

Kamel

Mennour,

PariS;

@ Miri Segal).

DigitalC-print .Tous les travaux de Miri Segal prennent soin de rappeler que nous avons un corps, en combrant parfois. Fountain adopte la forme inattendue d'une replique miniature de I'urinoir de Marcel Duchamp : I'artiste s'en sert pour uriner, un acte: avouons-le, guere commode pour une femme. Necrofleur: cette photographie montre Segal ingerant une orchidee. S'inspirant de I'autoportrait en fontaine de Bruce Nauman (I'artiste americain ycracheun filet d'eau), Miri Segal choisit, dit-elle, de Ie feminiser et de Ie re-humaniser. L'homme cultive-t-illes figures du rejet hors du corps: Ie sperme dans I'acte sexuel, I'energie que I'on vide dans I'effort viril, etc. ?, Miri Segal, de son c6te, pen~e pour I'ingestion, acte physique dont les vertus metaphoriques valorisent I'idee d'absorption et de corps receptacle. Se souvenir que nous sommes matiere entre les

matieres, presence constituee, accumulation et melange de substances organiques.. Si nous avons un corps, nous avons aussi des yeux, la capacite de voir. C'est ce sens surtout que Miri Segal exploite. Ses reuvres optiques, a dessein, induisent I'exces de curiosite sinon une crispation du spectateur. Leur but? Sur-solliciter I'attention, signifier aussi que la vision, la plupart du temps, est preformee, culturelle. 4 U [«For You»] (love) prend la forme d'un mobilier d'un genre pour Ie mains ordinaire : une table surmontee d'un miroir d'angle et flanquee d'une chaise. Le spectateur qui s'assied face a ce miroir a peu de chances de remarquer immediatement Ie subtil subterfuge dont il est ici la victime. Tel que I'artiste I'a re-agence, Ie reflet perd en effet ses propri~ tes de dissymetrie. Un point noir sur la partie droite de notre visage apparaTtnon a droite sur 34

celui, par exemple, qui oppose depuis 1948 Palestiniens et Israeliens. Pourquoi parfaite ? II n'ya plus de contradicteur.

Gerer la densite

du visible

Une installation telle que Downcast, Autumn Dale joue pour sa part sur Ie renversement. Un film documentaire de six minutes, videoprojete 8 I'envers sur un mur et au-dessus d'une flaque d'eau, est reflete 8 I'endroit par cette derniere. Le sujet du film est tres ordinaire : I'artiste a simplement filme des passants pres de chez elle, 8 Tel Aviv. Optiquement mise cui pardessus tete, paradoxalement retablie dans son equilibre et remise sur pied par Ie reflet, cette realite quelconque suscite du coup plus de curiosite. On regarde les images autrement, d'une maniere pensive. II s'agit 18d'une reflexion sur Ie simulacre, la manipulation visuelle, I'apparence, la double densite des images proposees par I'artiste.

art press 324

experiences

Miri Segal, sans doute, opere dans une lignee fournie. Duchamp deja (son portrait photographique a reflets multiples par Roche, ses Rotareliefslles

artistes

de I'op art et du GRAV, Dan

Graham et ses miroirs sans tain a double face, plus recemment Carster H611er invitant leg spectateurs de ses expositions

«optiques»

a chaus-

A trained mathematician

conversant

with optics,

ser des lunettes donnant du monde une image inversee... ou se situera la difference? Dans

Miri Segal is a leading art scene. Presented

lagestion meme de I'effet, toujours

show at Galerie Kamel Mennour this spring, her work is notable for its ambiguous installations

Segal comme

designe

tel, sans dissimulation.

par

Dans Ie

maintien aussi, en depit du simulacre affiche, d'une certaine «densite» de reel. Circuit ferme,

referencing

video-installation, consiste

experience

en une double projec-

create

the theme

situations

light of the young Israeli in her first French solo

of the spectacle.

where

of dependency,

seeing

These

becomes

conditioned

an

by our

tion, sur des miroirs situes aux extremites

oppo-

desire for beauty, for the perfect simulacrum,

sees d'une

d'une

an image that does what we want. And in doing so they teach us that we are in thrall to the visual.

piece,

d'images

du corps

meme jeune f-emme. Curieuse sensation pour qui leg contemple : malgre I'artifice, ou grace a

for

tout indique

d'une representation. The Poetic

Principle

une meme sensation

pourtant

qu'il

Fountain

unexpected

form

for a woman

to do. Necrofleur

own words, feminized

She reminds world,

Sight Lines

signes tangibles galerie etvenant lors meme

d'un arbre prig

sa it quece

it. Where

and of the body as receptacle.

and mixing

is constituted

Of course,

the

body

has eyes, too, and

n'est pas vrai.

or induce tension. The goal is to overstrain

Comme I'a ecrit Diana Gilerman a propos des travauxde I'artiste, «Ie spectateur devient a part entiere une piece du dispositif tout en restant averti de son statut d'observateur, d'outsider(l»>. Statut problematique, en I'occurrence, obligeant Ie spectateur a requalifier safonction, entre pulsion au voyeurisme actif et ab9ndon vaincu ou voluptueux a la contemplation. Cette tension statutaire entre activite et passivite a I'egard du spectacle, aucune reuvre optique de Miri Segal ne I'illustre mieux que Place de la Bonne Heure. L'artiste y presente un documentaire video d'une douzaine de minutes consacre a deux «non lieux» israeliens: d'une part la place de la Bonne Heure aTelAviv, une agora recente semi desaffectee ; d'autre part, Ie ch.eck-point de Kalandiya entre Jerusalem et Ramallah. Deux lieux de passage, de transit, d'attente ou ce qui importe, si cela importe, se cache toujours dans Ie detail des faits et des micro-evenements locaux, sans rien de spectaculaire (des anonymes attendent ou passe nt, rien de plus). Au lieu d'etre place face a un ecran, toutefois, Ie spectateur est installe sur un fauteuil tournant diffusant les images comme un phare. Regarder, ici, c'est accomp3gner physiquement Ie spectacle dans sori deroule chronologique en tournant sur soi-meme. Notre position, en tant que spectateur ? Celie du pivot de "action. Le rythme de la rotation? Allusivement, celui

our

capacity for sight is Segal's chief object. By design, her optical works overexcite the viewer's curiosity,

Tournez manege

-

by the

of organic substances.

leg

du vent s'engouffrant dans la bragger leg feuilles de I'arbre,

quej'on

it, re-humanized

that our presence

Segal videa-projette

ici taus

is a photograph

us that we are matter in a material

accumulation

On trouvera

of

showing Segal eating orchids. Segal took the principle of Bruce Nauman's Fountain, in which the American spouts a jet of water, and, in her

idea of absorption

au spectateur

d'avoir ete installe par I'ar-

leg images

replica

Duchamp's urinal that the artist uses it to urinate in-not, it will be agreed, an especially easy thing

tiste a mi-<:hemin entre reel et representation. Sur leg pales d'un ventilateur en marche, Miri dans une tempete.

(Made-Ready) takes on the

of a miniature

manly effort, etc.-she shows ingestion, a physical act whose metaphorical virtues convey the

s'agit

Une piece telle que Vaporprodigue

burdensome.

men develop figures of ejection and expenditure-sperm in sexual intercourse, energy in

lui, Ie corps videoprojete acquiert la consistance d'un corps reel, incarne. Dans Ie meme mouvement,

.All Miri Segal's works are careful to remind us that we have a body, a body that is sometimes

atten-

tion and to intimate, also, that most of the time our vision is preformed, a cultural product. 4 U (Love) takes the form of a very ordinary ensemble of furniture:

a table with

a mirror

on top and a

chair beside it. The visitor sitting and looking into the mirror will need a bit of time to grasp the «Wishful Thinking (Strife},. Installation. Table en bois et miroirs. (Ph. M. Domage). Wooden table, mirrors

35

subtle trick being played on them here: the reflection before them has lost its usual symmetry.

art press 324

--

experiences

d'une camera de surveillance, ou d'un gyrophare. Sangle dans son fauteuil rotatif Ie temps que dure la projection, Ie spectateur de Place de la Bonne Heure devient Ie superviseur optique d'une errance dans des lieux battus prenant analogiquement la forme d'une promenade visuelle ambigue, entre iovestigation policiere (que se passe-t-il exactement dans les images 7) et tentation du vertige (Ie corps de I'observateur devenu toupie). Lancinant

manege. Chez Miri Segal, Ie jeu optique prend sans fard des airs de jeu ontologique. Pas de gratuite du spectacle. Le spectateur, jamais, ne doit oublier qu'il est aussi acteur. Etre aboli dans Ie mouvement de la perception comblee, amusee ou surprise 7 II s'agirait plut6t de privilegier la vision reflexive, qui n'est pas une ennemie de la poesie des formes, et n'estjamais dupe. Une maniere de voir ou Ie corps vif ne se degage pas de lui-meme, force en retour a s'engager, en ne traitant jamais Ie visible a la legere. . (1) «Le moment ou Ie spectateur

est trahi», site VideoArt,

juillet 2003.

MIRISEGAL Nee en/born 1965

A blackhead

on the right-hand

side of the face is the

(The Poetic Principle) also makes the viewer feel that they have been placed halfway between

Many other optical devices challenge our visual sense in this way. For example, Segal's Love &

blades of a fan, Segal videoprojects images of a tree in a storm. We have all the signs and

Strife (a title inspired by Empedocles, suggesting both the clash of opposites and intimacy) also

sense impressions

reflected, not on the right, but on the left-on wrong side.

consists

of a table, this time a round

the real and its representation.

one, with

mirrors at the side. The odd thing here is that when we sit at the table our gaze takes in the whole

circle of the table

hidden

This

even further

is taken

by what is visible. in Wishful

Thinking (Strife), which requires two viewers. They sit opposite each other, yet are unable to see each other. All they get is an image of the perfect circle formed by the table. Is this just a visual trick of the kind played by funhouse

person nelleS/solo shows:

shows:

part of the

setup while being made aware of their status as an observer, an outsider."(1) This, as it happens, rather uncomfortable status obliges the viewer to redefine his or her function, between the drive to active voyeurism

and a defeated

or volup-

Managing the Density of the Visible

Jerusalem

The installation

transit and waiting, where what is important-if it is important-is hidden in the details of local

principle

Downcast,

Autumn

of reversal.

Dale plays

A six-minute

reflected the right way up. The subject of the film is very ordinary: the artist simply filmed passersby on the street near her home in Tel Aviv.

2004 Love is in the Air, Israeli Art Center, Tel Aviv

Optically turned ass over teakettle, and its balance then paradoxically restored and righted by a reflection, this reality suddenly becomes more intriguing. more pensively. meditate

We look at images differently, The work thus prompts us to

on simulacra,

appearance

visual

manipulation,

and the double density of the images

put forward by the artist. Segal is certainly working in a populous one that includes phic portrait

Duchamp

with multiple

(Roche's reflections,

and passive

roles in relation

active

to the spectacle

tary, the artist presents two Israeli "non-places": on the one hand, the eponymous square in Tel

and Ramallah.

Both are places

micro-events. Nothing spectacular happen, all we see are people waiting

of

seems to or passing

by. However, instead offacing a screen here, the spectator sits in a spinning chair that projects the images like the beam from a lighthouse. Here, looking means physically accompanying the spectacle in its chronological unfolding with one's own turning movement. The spectator is like the pivot of the action. And the rhythm of rotation alludes to that of a flashing police light or surveillance camera. Strapped into the rotating chair for the duration of the projection, the spectator of Place de la Bonne Heure becomes the optical supervisor of a trawal through places of movement that analogically takes the form of an ambiguous visual excursion, halfway between

tradition, photograthe Roto-

a police

reliefs), Op Art, GRAV, Dan Graham (the two-way, double-sided mirrors) and, most recently, Carsten Holler (inviting spectators at his "optical"

in these

investigation

observer's

images?)

(what exactly is going on

and the pull of vertigo

body like a spinning

(the

top). A dizzying

reverse images of the world), So what makes her

carousel. In Segal's work, optical games overtly take the form of ontological games. There is no gratuitous

different?

spectacle.

exhibitions

to

put on goggles

producing

It is the way she manages

a

her effects:

The spectator

is never allowed

to

these are always indicated as such, never hidden. And it also the way she maintains a certain

forget that he is also an actor. Absorption in the movement of sated, amused or surprised

"density"

perception? It is more a reflexive perception, which the poetry of forms, but either. It is a way of seeing

in the real, in spite of the overt use of

simulacra. The video installation consists of a double projection young woman's

"Vapo~'. Installation video. Ventilateur. (Ph. M. Domage @ Miri Segal). Video installation, industrial fan

in Segal's work,

a full-fledged

Aviv, a recent but half-abandoned civic agora; on the other, the Kalandiya checkpoint between

2002 Thin Skin, AXA Gallery, New York

2005 Nuit blanche, Paris; La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel

has written,

becomes

party the other side is invisible.

documentary film is videoprojected upside down on the wall over a puddle of water, where it is

Expositions de groupe/group

"the spectator

than Place de la Bonne Heure. In this documen-

2003Art

2005 Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv; Lisson Gallery, Londres

As Diana Gilerman

negotiations over a territorial conflict, like the one between Palestinians and Israelis that has gone on since 1948. Why perfect? Because for each

on the

2006 GaJerieKamel Mennour, Paris

A Dizzying Carousel

tuous wallowing in contemplation. No work illustrates this tension between

2001 PS1, New York Focus, Jerusalem

through the

~rrors? There is another way of considering this work's meaning. Segal rather pointedly suggests that this would make a perfect table for

Vit et travaille 'd/lives and works in Tel Aviv Expositions

of a wind blowing

gallery and shaking the leaves of the tree, and yet we know that it is not the case.

but with no reflection.

The body disappears, game

On the spinning

Closed Circuit of images of a

body on two mirrors,

located at

matter of privileging is never an enemy of never taken in by it, in which the body is

opposite ends of a room. In spite of the artifice, or because of it, the viewer has the curious

unable to forget itself and is compelled to assume a position in relation to a visible reality that

sensation that this videoprojected body has taken on the substance of a real, incarnate body.

cannot be taken lightly. .

And at the same time everything is merely

a representation. 36

tells us that it

A piece like Vapor

Translation, C. Penwarden (1) ."Le momentou Ie spectateur est trahi," Video Art, July

2003.

Selected Press 2005

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Thu., June 30, 2005 Sivan 23, 5765|

|Israel Time: 15:41 (EST+7)

DR Miri Segal: No regrets. (Reli Avrahami)

THE CALCULUS OF ART By Aviva Lori The first moment of the encounter with Miri Segal's video installation was a bit frightening. Having to enter a dark hall alone, sit on a black armchair, put on earphones and, for 10 minutes, give yourself up to what the artist has conjured generates a feeling of unease. Outside, people waited for their turn to enter the dark space. With a sure hand, Segal activated the instruments and left the hall. The armchair started to revolve. Saying "Stop the armchair, I want to get off" was pointless: There was no one there to talk to. After a few revolutions, at a comfortable pace which is adjusted to the eye of the beholder, the feeling of uneasiness gave way to curiosity and one could be receptive to what was happening on the screen. On the back of the chair, adjacent to the viewer's line of

vision, a projector screened Segal's video, which moved across the walls as the chair followed the images. "Place de la bonne heure" is the title of the solo show, which will open next week at the Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv. Actually, the show is not really opening but reopening; it was already held in April and May, and is being mounted again due to public demand and at the request of several curators from abroad, who expressed a desire to come to Israel especially to view it. The installation is a kind of road movie, accompanied by an original soundtrack by Uri Frost, formerly a member of the rock band Carmela Gross Wagner and, at present, Segal's partner. The journey begins in a square called Place de la bonne heure in Tel Aviv and moves from there, in a rough cut, to the Qalandiyah checkpoint and back again in an endless cycle. Where in Tel Aviv is there a square with such a promising name? Between the Dan Panorama Hotel and Textile House by the sea, the city fathers have created a round public square with handsome vegetation, but the city's residents appear to be unaware of its existence. "A landscape architect told me about the place, and it amazed me," Segal says. "Because to get to the offbeat site you have to climb stairs that are suspended in the air from four directions, and only then are these abandoned spaces exposed. There is a view of the sea from the square, but most of the time it is empty. Only once in a while do you find homeless people there. This square is a metaphor for the aspect of Israeliness that has a distorted conception of the environment, like building such a fertile garden in the air." And the Qalandiyah checkpoint? Segal: "The Qalandiyah checkpoint, which lies on an ancient Roman road, is the opposite of the Place de la bonne heure. It is throbbing with life. Until a year ago there was a vibrantly alive market there, which the Israeli forces evacuated. In the scene I am photographing everything is stuck, the cars are backed up, bumper to bumper, in an endless snarl-up, standing and not moving, only honking hysterically. It looks like the gate to hell. "The connection between the two images draws a geographic comparison between the two squares. Both are places of `togetherness,' which is to a degree fictitious. One is always empty, the other is subject to constant pressure. That, in my view, provides a very particular view of our existence here and of its reflection in the eye of the beholder."

Seven times eight Five works by Segal are currently on display in a group exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, entitled "Dreaming Art / Dreaming Reality," which is being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the Nathan Gottesdiener Israeli Art Prize, awarded to Segal in 2002. Segal, 39, is a new face in Israeli art. Six years ago, as the holder of a doctorate in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, her career was focused on academia. In the short time since she decided to take up a new profession, she has succeeded in gaining an honorable place in the field of art, both here and overseas. Segal has achieved this without having attended any of the prestigious art schools - in fact, she never studied art systematically - and without rubbing elbows with the teachers who set the tone in the art world and shape public opinion. Miri Segal was born in Haifa to a middle-class family who were part of the Revisionist movement in Zionism (the precursor of today's Likud). "We were a normal family," she says. "Dad is an engineer, Mom is an accountant, and neither of them was involved with art." Her father immigrated to Israel from Romania in the 1950s; her mother is native-born, from a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) family which goes back seven generations in Safed. "My maternal grandfather was a textile merchant and a cantor. He was a Haredi of the old type and used to ride a mule to Syria and Lebanon to buy fabrics. In my grandparents' house the languages spoken were Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic. My mother abandoned the faith." Both her parents are professional bridge players - her mother is a member of the Israeli national team - and very right-wing in their politics. "My mother had a brother who was killed in an operation of the Irgun [pre-1948 underground organization]; my father's parents had vineyards and a lot of property in Romania. After the Soviet communist occupation all my family's assets were expropriated and they lived very meagerly. I think those events affected each of them separately." The daughter absorbed her parents' right-wing views. "In my early twenties I underwent an ideological transformation," she recalls. "The more my interest in myself developed, and the more my interest in my surroundings grew, the more my right-wing attitude from home was replaced by a left-wing approach." Segal was not a very good student in high school, beset by problems of concentration and perhaps minor dyslexia, she says. To her father's disappointment, she failed her matriculation exam in mathematics (which she took for three points - the lowest level). "My father was a frustrated mathematician. His

dream was to study mathematics, but he studied engineering in Romania. When I was a girl he used to give me riddles in mathematics." Not wanting to reprise her father's career as a frustrated mathematician, Segal decided to fight her dyslexia. She sat for the mathematics exam again, this time at the five-point (highest) level - and passed. In the army she was a flight instructor on a simulator. After completing her service she enrolled at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taking psychology and mathematics. "Until I started university it was hard for me to concentrate in mathematics. Maybe it had something to do with the dyslexia, which is felt less over the years, though when I am tired I can still make mistakes in Hebrew, confuse right and left, and not know how much seven times six is - the hardest thing to remember in the multiplication table." She was admitted to the department of mathematics, even though her psychometric score was not brilliant. "At that time almost everyone who wanted was accepted to mathematics, because so few people registered for it," Segal recalls. She eventually completed her doctorate and felt very sure about her choice and about the continuation of her career. "Mathematics interested me very much," she explains. "My doctoral thesis was on a subject that was close to a research group at Caltech, and the university sent me there a few times. My supervisor was Prof. Menachem Magidor, who is now president of the Hebrew University." Invasion of privacy Segal started to paint as a hobby during her student days. She studied drawing and painting in various departments. While doing her M.A. she applied to and was accepted as a student by the Art Teachers College, which was then in Ramat Hasharon, but she lasted only a month there. "It gave the impression of being a place where there was a tremendous invasion of privacy, because in artwork one exposes oneself," Segal explains. "At that stage I wasn't yet ready for that." She immersed herself into the tranquil life of the junior faculty at the university, as a student and a tutorial assistant. "Starting with the M.A., the university paid me a small salary. I had a steady job and a lot of spare time, so I could allow myself to paint. I had a studio in my rented apartment and at the same time I was a volunteer in the unit for social involvement at the university and gave courses in mathematics to gifted children and to children from Yeroham [a

southern development town] who needed help." Toward the end of her doctoral studies she went to San Francisco with the man who was then her partner, a professor of mathematics. He went to spend a year at an institute of mathematics; she completed her thesis and enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute. "It is a private place that charges a very high tuition fee, because in the American art world it's terribly important to have a diploma," she says. "I didn't go there to get a diploma, because I only came for a year. I registered for only two courses, but the school let me audit courses and started to take an interest in my work." During this period, Segal started to suffer from mild "schizophrenia": On the one hand, she dug deep and invested energy and much love in her mathematics thesis, but at the same time, art grabbed her hard and shook her up. "Before I went to San Francisco I had mainly sculpted and painted. Over there we rented a house in the Berkeley area, which belonged to Japanese people who had gone on sabbatical for a year, a wonderful house that was very well kept but a bit shaky. I did one sculpture in their kitchen but I was afraid I was wrecking the kitchen. So I painted a little, but I didn't have room to paint, either." Her dilemma led her to a "cleaner medium" - she started to make video works. "I did most of the work from the car, where I kept all my equipment, and I started to work in video in the school, too. The two happiest years of my life were the first year of studying mathematics - the love of my life - and the year I lived in San Francisco." Fictitious exhibition Returning to Israel in 1998, she submitted her doctoral thesis, but instead of the usual postdoctoral track, Segal decided to devote herself to her second love, art. Before leaving San Francisco she organized a "fictitious exhibition" at the city's Museum of Modern Art. What is a fictitious exhibition? "I came to a decision to make the move to art, but my resume was hopeless. One big blank. It was important for me to enrich it. I decided that I was going to have an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which was notorious for its lack of female artists. I sent invitations to all the VIPs in the city announcing a solo show by Miri Segal to be held at the museum on the floor of the permanent exhibitions. On the back of the invitation was a photograph of the hall where my exhibition was `supposed' to take place. The photo shows paintings by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, which are on permanent display there, and in the

space between them is supposedly another picture - me in a gilded dress and on the back of the dress a circle is sewn, which is not completely decipherable on the invitation. "I hired a private detective to document the event, because photography is not allowed inside. So, for a few Saturdays I stood in the space between the two pictures, with my face to the wall and my back to the audience, and froze for a few hours every time. On the back of my dress was an oval frame, inside which I was seen standing in the hall, in the space between the two pictures, with my face to the wall and my back to the audience. "The first time a guided tour came by, people asked the guide who I was, and she didn't know what to say. After a while another tour came by with the same guide, and this time she said, `This is what contemporary artists do. They look at paintings and paint themselves looking at paintings.' All kinds of art critics wrote about me in all kinds of papers, even in Germany." Didn't you have qualms about forsaking mathematics? "Serious qualms. It was hard decision, because I really loved mathematics and the decision also had repercussions with respect to my way of life and my income level. But I thought that if I did not try art at that stage, I would never be able to take it up professionally afterward." There was also something else that made her change direction. She was pretty fed up with being referred to as the "meideleh" at mathematics conferences. "It was a nightmare," she recalls. "I attended mathematics conferences from the age of 25. Sometimes there was another woman there, but usually not, and there were 40 middle-aged men in whom sexism wasn't all that rare. The world of art, fortunately, is far more receptive to women, and that was a change that made me utter a big sigh of relief." "Miri was a riveting mathematician," says her former supervisor, Prof. Magidor. "I was very frustrated and disappointed when she decided to leave, one reason being that I wanted to promote an academic career for women. I am very sorry that she left mathematics, at which she could have succeeded wonderfully, but on the other hand the art world benefited." `Dvir took me on' Segal moved to Tel Aviv, where she now lives in a rented apartment in Kikar Hamoshavot, near the old central bus station, an area which until not long ago was colorful and very much

alive, populated mainly by foreign workers. Segal captured the neighborhood in one of her works, which she calls "Shfelat stav," (a play on words meaning something like "low autumn"), as an ironic counterpoint to "Ramat Aviv," the upscale city neighborhood whose name means, more or less, "high spring." She held her first exhibition in 1999, at the Dvir Gallery. "After I got back to Israel," she relates, "I approached a few gallery owners and asked them to come to my studio, because it was impossible to explain or document my works or bring them to the galleries - some of them were complex, unfinished installations. Of all the people I contacted, only Dvir [Intrator] came, saw the works, and took me on." "Dvir took me on" is a key phrase in the Israeli art scene. The Dvir Gallery has connections to museum directors, collectors, gallery owners and other people and institutions able to advance those artists the gallery believes in and wants to promote. After her 1999 show, Segal was invited to take part in group exhibitions at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and several international exhibitions, including a solo show at one of the most coveted art spaces in New York: P.S. 1 Center for Contemporary Art, in Queens, a museum owned by New York's Museum of Modern Art. Afterward she had exhibitions in Lucerne, Munich, and in 2004 at the Lisson Gallery in London, with which Segal has been connected ever since. In 2002, the year in which she received the Gottesdiener Prize, she had a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and spent five months working at the art center of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Nice, France. In two weeks she will return to France, this time to Paris, where she has received a studio and an apartment as part of a scholarship for artists awarded by the government of France. Four years ago Segal started to teach at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, so far on a part-time basis. To help make ends meet she worked as a consultant in mathematics to high-tech firms. However, in the past two years she has been able to make a living from art alone and is trying to integrate the sciences into her work. "The chair in my work at Dvir is a very basic and not very sophisticated example of the integration of technological means into art." In another work of hers, which was shown in a huge hall in the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2000, a small image of the sea was screened on a wall. "All in all, it was very boring," the artist acknowledges. Most of the time nothing happened in the room, and the viewers left after a few seconds. Once in a while, though, without advance preparation, the image would suddenly open up and a huge wave

flooded the room reaching almost to the feet of the astonished visitors. The soundtrack was of a laughing woman and the whole room seemed to fill up, awash in water and light. "That was a work that dealt with the potential for contact between the artist and the viewer," Segal notes. "Instead of the viewer opening to the work of art, it opens to the viewer. The whole thing lasted for three seconds, and immediately receded." Where do you see yourself in another 10 years? "Art is a way of existence that has multiple difficulties, but I intend to continue with it. Video is not a picture you hang on the wall, so it is harder to see it and to sell. Works of mine have actually sold well. The collector Doran Sabag bought a video work from me, the Israel Museum bought one, so did other private collectors, whose names I cannot reveal, and in Lucerne all the works I exhibited were sold. In Paris an art space called Maison Rose recently opened and they also bought one of my video works, which will be part of the permanent architecture of the place. "I have not succeeded in getting rich from this. Since I got involved in art, my standard of living has only declined. In the months I spend working on a production such as the exhibition at Dvir, not only do I not earn money, I also underwrite it with my own funds, which can reach NIS 20,000 or NIS 30,000. The game in this market is uncertainty: Your work might sell immediately, but it could take months before it is sold." Are you a bit sorry that you left a more promising career? "To engage in art is a great privilege, which demands a sacrifice of economic security. On the other hand, my art career has been relatively very brief, but I have already had successes, exhibitions in very prestigious places. I feel no regret; on the contrary, I am very happy to be engaged in art though I sometimes miss mathematics."

Selected Press 2004

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Selected Press 2003

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Still Life in Cucumber Season The viewer enters a small room where one of the walls contains a window-shaped aperture. Opposite the “window” there hangs a piece of transparent glass, reflecting a running film; in front of the film, there hangs a small mirror, reflecting the viewer’s face. The film begins with the shot of a girl leaning against a wall, caressing herself, waiting. The viewer’s reflected image merges with the girl’s screened image, creating the illusion of contact between film and viewer. After a while, the girl is joined by fellow with a bouquet of flowers and bends over the girl for a lingering kiss, the projected artificial bouquet finds its place in a real vase in the room. At this moment, the viewer feels that the image of the girl no longer submits to her, but rather to a different image. The action in the film is taking place on the viewer’s face excluding and embarrassing him, turning him into the “still life”.

A critical article by Dana Gilerman, in Haaretz, an Israeli daily newspaper:

Video Art

13 July 2003

Miri Segal at the Haifa Installation Triennial

The Moment when the Viewer is Betrayed By Dana Gilerman Translated by: Daria Kassovsky

One of the most impressive pieces exhibited at Haifa Museum’s second Installation Triennial is Miri Segal’s “Still life in cucumber season”. It is easy to discern the magic in Segal’s work, but less so to explain how she does it. Segal, within a technological, alienated medium manages to create an emotional, sensual, erotic piece and much more: she manages to involve the spectator in the spectacle, drawing her into the work and simultaneously keeping her out. The viewer becomes part of the piece and yet remains aware of her outsider, observer status. This dissonance, the essence of existentialism, informs almost all of Segal’s works. Like most of her installations, the current one, too, creates a highly lyrical, magical and sensual world. Here, too, the world is formed from petty gimmicks, optical illusions that stimulate the senses. The viewer enters a small room where one of the walls contains a window-shaped aperture. Opposite the “window” there hangs a piece of transparent glass, reflecting a running film; in front of the film, there hangs a small mirror, reflecting the viewer’s face. The film begins with the shot of a girl leaning against a wall, caressing herself, waiting. The viewer’s reflected image merges with the girl’s screened image, creating the illusion of contact between film and viewer. The mounting tension of these moments, the eroticism of the untouching touch, and the viewer’s embarrassment at the possibility of being caught in so

intimate an act by other observers – are all very reminiscent of Segal’s roulette installation, which she presented at the Tel-Aviv Museum about a year ago. At the time, Segal exhibited the image of a colorful roulette on a ceiling corner. Absorbed in the roulette motion, it took a little while for the viewer to sense the presence of another female figure in the room, walking behind her, touching, not touching. A few nerve-wracking seconds passed before the viewer dared to look over her shoulder, only to find that there was no one there, that the shadow was the shadow of the artist, projected from another projector. In the new installation, a few seconds of “waiting” go by before a young fellow appears in the film with a bouquet of flowers and bends over the girl for a lingering kiss. The projected artificial bouquet finds its place in a real vase in the room. The background music is “Besame Mucho” (Kiss Me Much). Originally performed by a man, it is Cesaria Evora’s female version of the song that Segal has elected to play. Like Poliker’s performance of “Romeo”, which he had originally written for Yehudit Tamir and which in his rendition became a man’s love song, Segal’s “Besame Mucho” becomes a woman’s love song. Segal feels that the fellow’s entry into the scene distances the viewer. At this moment, the viewer feels that the image of the girl no longer submits to her, but rather to a different image. “At this moment, the physical pleasure of contact with the image is taken from the viewer”, says Segal. This is the moment of betrayal, positioning the viewer outside of the scene, turning her into a bystander. “Which is why I call the work, Still life, she explains”.

This is how a small, poetic piece, bordering on romantic kitsch, becomes the eternal triangle of hurt and betrayal: the screened girl’s betrayal of the yielding viewer, accented perhaps by the fellow’s bouquet offering, and ultimately his desertion – as he exits the frame. What remains, in actual fact, are fake flowers in a real vase.

Selected Press 2002

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

Wheels of Fortune Israeli artist Miri Segal projects both sides of her body, bouncing balls, and games of roulette onto mirrors and glass plates hanging in the air • By Tami Katz-Freiman

W

she has had an exhibition at her Tel Aviv gallery, Dvir, and has been included in group shows at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, and Munich’s Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung. Her work sells for between $8,000 and $25,000. She is currently in the group exhibition “Thin Skin,” cocurated by Barbara Clausen and Carin Kuoni for Independent Curators International and at New York’s AXA Gallery through the 13th of next month. Recently awarded the prestigious Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize, Segal is now preparing for her show, in conjunction with the prize, at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. And while most of her works incorporate video, Segal does not regard herself as a video artist. Rather, she remains an artist who is a scholar of phenomena, from the laws of math to those

COURTESY THE ARTIST(2)

ith a Ph.D. in mathematical logic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Miri Segal is systematically exposing the nuances of perception. A part-time math consultant to high-tech companies in Tel Aviv, the 36-year-old artist has been using a basic video camera to investigate how we see. The results have been striking enough to lead to one solo show at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York, last spring and another at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art next month. Segal’s video installations incorporate playful tricks, diversions, or deceptions. A dancing woman hugs herself in Closed Circuit (2000). Images of her shot from the back and the front are projected from opposite sides of the room onto a sheet of glass, so that her two sides overlap, back turning into front, front turning into back. Her arms look as if they encircle her body. In Vapor—The Poetic Principle (1998) eucalyptus trees appear to thrash in the wind as they are projected onto the quickly spinning blades of an industrial fan. “I am not one of those artists who gathers material or creates via dialogue,” says Segal. A soft-spoken woman with pale skin and light blue eyes, she speaks precisely and deliberately about her work. “I imagine not what the piece would look like but rather what it would do to the viewer.” In Foreshadowing (2001), a spinning roulette wheel is projected onto glass in the air overhead. A number flashes, anticipating the winning digits. At the same time, standing in front of the projector, the viewer’s own image flings shadows up across the wall. Another shadow, thrown by a second projector, joins this one, creating the illusion of someone looking over one’s shoulder. “The viewer has to stretch his neck and look up, in order to find his reflection standing next to a roulette wheel,” Segal has written. She continues, “One who succeeds in foreseeing the future might be persuaded that she has in fact shaped it.” The artist composes technical descriptions of each piece—like the steps of a mathematical proof—discussing how its mechanics are supposed to act on people. “The precision required in the construction of the pieces, which is an important part of their heft, is that of a mathematician,” says Larissa Harris, associate curator at P.S.1. “This precision is required to achieve perfection in the illusion.” “It interests me to know, for instance, what objects look like without the eye looking directly at them,” says Segal. In other words, the representation of an object can sometimes replace the effect of the thing itself. In her work e.g. (2000), juggling balls bounce in the air, the result of a video projected behind a two-way mirror, which reflects the viewer back to herself. A woman’s figure briefly flashes, suggesting the next step—to reach out your hands and play with the illusion. Similarly, with Vapor, says Harris, “you walk in and see this circular vision of very green trees blowing—and you feel them blowing.” Born in Haifa, Israel, Segal began to take classes at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998 while finishing her dissertation. In the few years since, in addition to her solo show at P.S.1,

In Foreshadowing, 2001, one of Miri Segal’s intricate video installations, the winning numbers are flashed briefly onto the image of a spinning roulette wheel.

of perception. “I use video as a tool just because I have two left hands,” she confesses. “At this stage, it is the most suitable vehicle to convey my ideas.” ■ Tami Katz-Freiman is a curator and art historian based in Tel Aviv. She most recently cocurated “LandEscapes,” a multisite project of contemporary Israeli art in Philadelphia. This story was translated by Daria Kassovsky. ARTNEWS/MARCH 2002

101

Selected Press 2001

41-41 :‫ שבת‬,‫ שישי‬,44-44 :'‫ה‬-'‫ ג‬,1111441-11 ‫פקס‬,2111111-11 '‫טל‬,2411116 ‫ תל אביב‬, 11144 .‫ד‬.‫ ת‬,41 ‫ראשית חכמה‬ 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893, [email protected], www.dvirgallery.com

17/08/2016

Miri Segal | Frieze

REVIEW - 11 NOV 2001

Miri Segal BY JAMES TR AINOR

PS1, New York, USA

https://frieze.com/article/miri­segal?language=de

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Miri Segal | Frieze

Miri Segal wrote her doctoral thesis on 'Hyper nite Equivalence Relations and Forcing'. Before you try to gure out what sub-branch of post-Structuralist theory to le that under, it might help to learn that Segal received her Ph.D. in mathematics, not art theory. The 36-year-old Israeli artist came fairly recently to the making of art, but was unusually prepared: with canny ideas transplanted from tangential disciplines and a healthy epistemological interest in the nature of illusion, both optical and psychological. For her rst solo show in New York, Segal studied the contradictions and paradoxes of perception, using seductive visual models and rounds of ocular game-playing. Vapor - The Poetic Principle (1999), comprises video footage of a wind-blown tree projected onto the whirling blades of a standing industrial fan with its protective grille removed. This creates the dual sensation of an image that is cast visually upon an object that projects back physically in the form of wind: a sort of sensory feedback loop. Owing to the rotation of the fan blades, the moving image cannot be xed everywhere simultaneously, generating the impression of an unstable three-dimensional volume emanating, aura-like, from the fan's surface. As projected light passes through the gaps between the rapidly spinning blades, an identical version of the tree appears on the wall directly behind. Analogous to a zoetrope device - a popular 19th-century amusement that produced a ickering moving image when light penetrated the slits in its rotating drum - the fan's stuttering surface causes a false doubling of what is actually a single image oscillating imperceptibly between fan and wall. Our senses are often more persuasive than our reasoning mind. The disorienting perceptual closed circuit created by a two-dimensional representation of wind (the video) and its actual manifestation (the fan) ampli es the sensation of a third discrete element synthesized somewhere between the two. Hermann von Helmholtz, the 19th-century German pioneer in the psychophysiology of optics, wrote 'none of our sensations gives us anything more than "signs" for external objects and movements.' Optical illusions are troublesome for the very reason that they reshu e the deck of those signs and their interpretation. Constructed tautologically, Vapor attains a certain rapturous lyricism - without sentiment or triteness - because Segal never tries to hide the simple mechanics of what remains a soothing sleight of hand. A more technically elaborate musing on illusion, Foreshadowing (2001) uses complex modelling software to create and operate a synthetic image of a spinning roulette wheel. Screened high above viewers' heads, the wheel is intermittently overlaid by a seemingly random number, ashed so brie y as to be nearly subliminal, which none the less always reliably 'predicts' the winner. With each round the ostensibly chance-determined outcome of the game invariably ful ls the expectations of the tipped-o viewer. Segal's roulette wheel is not simply a rigged tool for suckering gamblers and museum-goers but is also an object of optical deception that, like the spinning hypnotist's spiral it resembles, is visually mesmerizing and suggestive. As it slows, the wheel appears to rotate forwards and backwards simultaneously, its retrograde motion both promising and teasingly denying the desired result. The artist shares a nimble intellectual curiosity in the trickery of optics with Duchamp, the self-styled 'precision oculist' whose dizzyingly pulsing rotoreliefs and demispheres optiques explored the same languid state of temporal suspension induced by the inward-turning spiral. For all its ambiguity the work seems to propose that the results of our actions may be far more predictable then we care to admit. The image of the roulette wheel was screened in such a way that visitors could not avoid casting their shadows on the work. During a recent visit I noticed that my own shadow had been joined by another, whose impatient, weight-shifting body language silently communicated museum fatigue. Automatically glancing towards the https://frieze.com/article/miri­segal?language=de

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Miri Segal | Frieze

new arrival, I discovered that if I remained alone in the gallery, the shadow became another chimerical overlay of projection. Thus gently duped, the viewer's sudden awareness of the artist's unaccountable presence (it is Segal's own phantom-like shadow) disrupts any stable suppositions about the relationship between observer and observed, making one keenly attentive to one's simultaneously participatory and voyeuristic position. In The Optical Unconscious (1993) Rosalind Krauss describes this 'both at once' sensation as 'being caught inside the illusion and looking on nonetheless from without'. The success of this or any other parlour trick is entirely dependent upon our willing desire to suspend disbelief and just play along.

JAMES TR AINOR

James Trainor was US editor of frieze between 2004–07

    T W I T TF A ER CEB EM OA O IKP L INTEREST TO

MIRI SEGAL

PS1

JAMES TRAINOR

frieze magazine First published in Issue 63

November-December 2001

London 1 Montclare Street London E2 7EU, UK +44 (0)203 372 6111 New York 247 Centre St 5th Floor https://frieze.com/article/miri­segal?language=de

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