FFF3 | Archive

Taking as his starting point visual material from the archives of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Arkadi Zaides does not hesitate to turn his critical gaze to the political reality of his country. A unique voice of the Israeli dance scene, Zaides has created a masterpiece about the violence inflicted on the human body, and about the cost paid by a society permitting such violence to take place.

In 2013 Zaides began working with B’Tselem. Wishing to equip Palestinians living in the West Bank with recorded evidence of any illegal actions against them by Israeli soldiers – proof that could be used in future trials – B’Tselem gave them cameras. Having examined 4,500 hours of visual material, Zaides chose as the core of his work material depicting the everyday violence of Israelis.

Examining the consequences of violence on the bodies of people living in war zones, he reproduces the movements of those depicted. Sometimes the movements are synchronized, other times are anticipated, and other times repeated. Zaides also reproduces the sounds, so that the violence inscribed on the body becomes a wild dance, paradoxically constructed with movements of violence, rawness and inhumanity. Constantly shifting perspective and transforming his body into a mirror, a magnifying glass, or simply a body with no place to stand, Zaides reduces the boundaries between reality and representation. To the audience, he poses his questions about violence, that shadow of humanity, as well as about issues of the responsibility shared by all regarding perpetrators of violence.