PaRDeS

The blueprint of paradise is?
Daily life without errands and emails!!!
Tel-Aviv – the beach – 19 years old – the first days of sun, warmth, waves, blue, and sun.

 

The blueprint of your studio?
Time
Concentration
Focus
A retreat – hidden place from the daily
Collaborators
Inspiration
Words
Movement
Challenge
Playroom at the 14th Street Y

Your urban orchard?  
Words and words and words, usually an end of the world, and end of life, irony in the face of reality. Surprising gestures, surprising images, surprising sounds, captured every moment if you look and see. It is an endless garden of fruit plucked by me, and eaten onstage. 

The blueprint of paradise is?
The blueprint of my paradise cannot be mapped or drawn out – it is more of an idea than a design. I know it involves a massive open sky, green trees, red rock, a free and efficient subway system, 12 million people, solitude, tons of open and peaceful space, snow-capped mountains, a large lake, theater, cheap but delicious restaurants, quiet, a Latin beat and people who are working (but not racing) to achieve their dreams. The Paradise is not perfect, but provides the means for people to always work towards its perfection.


The blueprint of your studio?
I used to think the blueprint of my studio would be a rehearsal room with mirrors and a marley floor, rectangular and isolated from the outside noise of the world. Now it is quite the opposite. Recently, the blueprint of my studio has been a friend's apartment in the heart of Chelsea where I, along with a motley crew of many others, have been planning strategy of a group called Queer Rising, which demands queer rights through direct action. We work in a living room with a gorgeous view of Manhattan, sitting in a circle, debating, collaborating, and developing quick and strong connections to each other and the work we are creating. It is noisy, two dogs run around, people can get up and leave anytime they way, and the noise from the real world is the necessary ingredient to get us started working.

Your Urban Orchard ?
Fucking New York City. Why change a thing? It is wild enough!

The blueprint of paradise is?
A sunny tropical day. You can hear the galloping of a horse
splashing water and pressing river stones ever so gently
as it slides upstream in the vast echoing colors of nature
The music patterning serenity as the roar of the waterfall  approaches
And there, at the end of the road, a gate
A cloud of mist blurring the water wall
forever renewing itself and the promise of oneness
awaiting on the other side.

Your urban orchard?
I was walking one day, purposefully, maybe even already late
On my way from one place to another practical obligation.
And then, just for a moment as I pass by a door closing,
A scent, a cloud of memories flooded me for a brief moment.
Suddenly my mom appeared young and vibrant and me
so small and thin, and the sun so strong and warm
in a windy New York winter.
On my way down the steps to catch the 4,5 or even the 6 train
I filed it away under innocence.

I work with the mobility and quickness of drawings; I assemble common and throwaway materials into spontaneous sculptural situations, and use temporary installations. I employ those mixtures of styles, voices and media, as I treat each project as a totally new experience. I suggest bits and pieces of work that do not represent a united whole, but restore meaning as a composed unity of separate elements. The many parts don't have an overall cohesive storyline behind them; rather they mesh and suggest a meaning according to the poetic potential of a non-linear progression.

The thoughts, methods, poetics, and taste I employ, as well as my ignorance, blindness, mistakes and shticks reflect my background, education and experiences. Nonetheless, my personal growth as an artist is a long process of depersonalization. There is so much work to be done that certainly is not expression of personal-emotion. By being aware to my surroundings, I hope to respond to the world at eye level and restore the possibility for a meaningful discourse among us.

The blueprint of paradise?
Walter Benjamin tells the story, in his essay on Kafka in Illuminations. In conversation with a contemporary, Kafka said that human beings are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts, that come into God's head; yet perhaps our world is only a bad mood of God's, a bad day of his. Then, said his interlocutor, 'There is hope outside this manifestation of the world as we know it?' Kafka apparently enigmatically smiled: 'Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us.'

There is no paradise, no blueprints; it is over, done, gone, forgotten, lost. There is no hope, no change, and no messiah. I believe that accepting this fundamental thought might open some hidden paths towards a possibility for true and deep redemption.

The blueprint of your studio?
My studio is the last unmarked territory in the world.

It is a place for contemplation, regrouping, and deep understandings.

It is a failure badlands, a forced reservation and a deserted island.

I swim in the warm and shallow waters of normality, root in the illusive ground of having a “work-like” environment.

As limiting as having a studio is, it is still the more perfect hideout for a sinner.

Your urban orchard?
It must be Los Angeles.