Alona Rodeh
Fire, Work!
Kav 16 - Community Gallery for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
Dec 2010 - Feb 2011
Fire, Work!, a multi channel video installation by Alona Rodeh gives the name to her new Solo show at Kav 16 – Community Gallery for Contemporary Art, Neve Elliezer Community Center, Tel Aviv. The work, a five channel video installation done specially for the show, was filmed at Neve Elliezer in collaboration with youths from the neighborhood and surroundings, Rodeh's ex-students from the educational program "Artist Teacher" on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, Science and Sport at Ort Singalovsky School. The work deals with the documentation of color smoke bombs preparation and their activation. A group of teenagers under instructions of an educational figure learn in a structured way how to prepare color smoke bombs and activate them later on in the neighborhood open spaces. Through the installation piece, Rodeh raises questions regarding educational values, challenging absolute conventions and turning things upside down, in which the non educational becomes educational, the unacceptable legitimate and the play role between teacher and student gets confuse and unstable. Rodeh manages to arouse consciousness concerning the digital media place in general and the web particularly in our daily life, especially among youngsters. She puts to discussion the web accessibility and availability to present us with confidential, illegal and dangerous information, underlining how easy it is to gather this kind of information. The work is based on information taken from internet web sites which Rodeh researched for this work, resembling you tube home made movies genre characterized by a light and amusing atmosphere and a "do it yourself" "trash" aesthetics. Tension and dissonance are created due to the existing gap between the work's nature and its content. Fire, work! relates in an uncritical way, to manifestations such as boredom, inactivity and idleness among teenagers and their potential to divert into violence and vandalism, pointing them as a sweeping phenomenon and not a result of social status or geographical location doubting common prejudices. Rodeh's choice to present a five channel installation enables a wide color spectrum display. Five colored smoke bombs fill the screenings with colored thick smoke till it becomes an abstract patch at the peak's work. A fantastic atmosphere is created, constituting a deviation from the characteristic documentary guide line and rigid structure of the work, and revealing a reversed experience from the destruction and violent action concealed in the utilization of a color smoke bomb. Fire, work! Is an amusing non sense and thought provoking work as well, raising questions concerning ethics, law and order and what is forbidden or permitted.
Curator: Sally Haftel Naveh