installation: musical chairs
Magnet
The idea for the multi-media exhibition Musical Chairs was initially sparked by a BBC news item about British schools considering banning the classic game of Musical Chairs because psychologists were fearful that it bred violence and was too competitive. I recall playing the seemingly innocent game and how it stirred feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, humiliation along with a lust to conquer and vanquish the chair at all cost.
I began with a psycho-social experiment filming adults playing musical chairs (see video below), followed by a group discussion and individual interviews (the discussion and interviews are in Hebrew but the game requires no words to see just how treacherous it can get!).True personalities were revealed and it became clear that the chair is but a metaphor for what each and every one of us is prepared, or not prepared, to do in order to achieve our goals and fulfill our desires.
Video, found chairs, painted wooden silhouettes, magnet images of chairs, photography.
I began with a psycho-social experiment filming adults playing musical chairs (see video below), followed by a group discussion and individual interviews (the discussion and interviews are in Hebrew but the game requires no words to see just how treacherous it can get!).True personalities were revealed and it became clear that the chair is but a metaphor for what each and every one of us is prepared, or not prepared, to do in order to achieve our goals and fulfill our desires.
Video, found chairs, painted wooden silhouettes, magnet images of chairs, photography.
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The Musical Chairs video was included in a national touring exhibition entitled Plus 3 Ferris Wheel. Viewer comments indicated I hit a nerve : "I enjoyed how the adults clearly displayed rejection, defeat, disappointment even on small or large levels. Their expressions matched the ones I could see in my imagination of memories from childhood. The end result with the 2 adults sitting on the chair, one up-side-down and one right-side-up put a friendly and positive conclusion to the otherwise overly-wrought argument over a chair at the end there. I appreciate your comparison of the game to society at large." Read more details here.
