Tzion Abraham Hazan is a filmmaker and artist, a graduate of HaMidrasha Faculty Of Arts at The Beit Berl College. In 2013, his film, “Marganit,” won first prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival in the experimental film category. He was selected to participate in the prestigious Artport residency program in Tel Aviv in 2015. His works have been exhibited in Israel and abroad; At the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Line 16 Municipal gallery in Tel Aviv, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum, Berlin. In the exhibition in Beeri, the artist returns to deal with questions of recognition and identification, civilian communities in which the military is central to their identity. The recognition concept arises an experience of confusion, the ability to be confused and identify a colleague as an enemy. What conditions generate identification, and is it possible to expand the identification experience beyond the usual boundaries: beyond the self, physical resemblance, common language, and the group to which you belong?
The exhibition at the Beeri gallery features a video the artist filmed at the kibbutz last summer. Participants are four members of Kibbutz Beeri and a local crowd of non-actors. The filmed scene depicts a meeting around a white-tablecloth-covered table in the kibbutz’s dining hall. The four protagonists participated in a battle near the Saluki River in Lebanon, where they shot at each other and caused the death of their commander. To the table are seated the wounded commander’s signaler, his lieutenant who headed the force that opened fire, the lieutenant’s signaler, and the soldier who opened fire. They recount the event, argue over the details, and recreate battle occurrences using the cutlery on the table. The tablecloth, utensils, food scraps, and table become a battlefield. Old questions arise and float to the surface. It isn’t clear whether they were silenced or whether it’s a conversation that recurs every time they meet. Who is to blame? What were the orders? What caused the miscommunication, and what made them identify each other as an enemy? Could they have acted differently?
This exhibition recruits the locals to its forces and uses the kibbutz dining hall, the community’s heart, as a filming site, and the kibbutz members as actors.
