Artist Statement
Just like the flaneur/Clown/Jester I see the artist having a key role in participating in and portraying the culture of his time. He plays a double role in cultural life and within philosophical concerns while remaining a detached observer. This stance, simultaneously a part of and apart from, combines sociological and historical notions of the relationship between the individual and the greater populace exposing the distance between himself/ the work and the viewer. The role of the Jester is a most elusive yet persistent tradition, it transcends cultural and geographic boundaries, spans stylistic limits, and defies conventional notions of technique and instrumentation.
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For this clown, reality is a huge show and narratives are everything and everywhere. As narratives, history and myths are being represented in mass media in the form of Film and Television, these are no more than recruited lying machines used to gain mass power and control. The actions of the clown—his bootstrap, form a singular uprising, proving the neccessity of movement outside the vicious cycle of propaganda and control. If History is Narrative as it is claimed to be, it risks permanence –becoming a static dogma in the collective psyche.  The up-rising is a temporary moment that springs itself up and out, violates the laws of History and like a spontaneous peak experience opposes and ridicules the staus quo.
The performance of this uprising I call a social theater. My video work presents situated allegories in which gallery of characters play out an extreme plots based on daily life and received narratives. Specific political realities, the «middle east conflict» the Holocaust, the founding of the state of Israel, the archetype of «the Jew» and more, are everpresent among the types of narratives this Flaneur disrupts.  His stance is mutable, breaking boundaries and setting new limits in language and within structures of meaning. He is like the middle man, crossing over, pointing out the limits of common sense and opening up new fields of communication.

Using the simple form of a parable or allegory hewing a moral and political point. My work employs those forms of visual language as a means to provide the Clown [that I am] a container for his controversial performances. The revised order and shape of the story sets the narrative askew and allows for complex layers of poetry and criticism. These slapstick uprisings derive from low culture, Jewish/Yiddish theatrical traditions, vaudeville and local TV and appear in my work as silhouettes, puppet shows and folk dances. By shifting and changing the common themes of forgiveness, tolerance, beauty, humanity, death and love the Clown is able to draw new meanings.

These situated allegories always involve more than one medium, usually a mixture of video, performance, sculpture, and drawing.  In most cases I do every thing by my self from the early stages of development, from writing the script and building the set,  to editing the video and post production. I see lots of importance in being involved at all levels of creation and production. As I think the idea of labor in this case is an important part of my artistic stance. The honest gesture of research and failure is sometimes part of the grotesque character of the clown but at the same time it is his freedom and not his burden.

Humor is fundamental. It is a destructive political force that can break any bounderies of faith and dogma and reach every heart.  It can be found in every folklore and every culture as the release for the repressed/oppressed individual. When forms of political resistance force the individual to put his/her body into the theater of discourse, excessively acting out scenarios that break the boundaries of common sense, the absurdity of the underlying power structures is exposed.
The artist as clown must disrupt and disobey. His/her independence from express politicalagenda makes him uniquely qualified to disrupt conventional wisdom. By preferring joy and passion, he moves form one form to another erasing any vertical tectonic or architecture. This unique kind of status allows the freedom of extreme acts, sometimes only for the sake of performing. He is mocking, jumping, laughing, on the ruins of history while representing the place for the rebel against the centers of power in our time.