Nothing New

2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Oded Hirsch

location: New York, New York
year born: 1976
gender: male
nationality: Israeli
home town: Kibbutz Afikim, Israel

Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel. In the video, a fallen parachutist hangs tangled by his own lines, suspended between two electrical towers in a surreally desolate landscape of overgrown fields in the Jordan Valley of Israel. A group of over a hundred men and women approach the towers, working with almost mechanic efficiency to free the parachutist from the power lines overhead. Although the subject of a would-be rescue mission, it is never clear if the parachutist survived the fall – seemingly inanimate, he functions more as an object of convergence to bring the various actors on the ground together. Filmed near the Jordanian border with Israel, the video considers multiple iterations of borderlands – from the geo-political borders between nation states to the border between life and death occupied by the endangered parachutist – while also suggesting how these intermediate spaces can be static. Hirsch’s work, however, suggests that complacency can only be countered by communal effort and action. We never know the outcome of the groups’ attempt to save the parachutist, and this ambiguity troubles our desire and expectation for resolution. But in foregrounding the imperative need for collective response, Hirsch stakes out a critical space for shared experiences driven by empathy while advocating for greater common awareness and understanding.


Oded Hirsch produces video, installation, and photography that explore the phenomena of collective experience and participatory spectacle in present day Israel. Born and raised in Kibbutz Afikim, Israel, Hirsch examines how group structures function as a point of departure for deeper considerations of circumstance, choice, and communal action. Often removed from logic and reason, his videos show conflict and resolution as contemporaneous and co-essential phenomenon. While his works occasionally employ absurd tropes to disorienting effect, his narratives focus on situations that invite collective response, shared experience, and greater consciousness of the world around us. Recent solo shows include: The Mad Lift, Liverpool Biennial, UK; Nothing New, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY; The Chelsea Project, EDS Galeria, Mexico City; and Sleep Tight Ramat-Gan Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel. Recent group exhibitions include: MASS MoCA, MA; Queens Museum of Art, New York; The Jewish Museum, Munich, Germany; Black and White Gallery, New York; Lesley Heller Workspace, New York; Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; and the Soap Factory, Minneapolis.


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Color Photography, » Contemporary Conceptualism, » Contemporary Surrealistic, » Film/Video, » Israeli

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion)
© » KADIST

Adrian Wong

2012

Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...

Exquisite Eco Living (executive Properties series)
© » KADIST

Vincent Leong

2012

The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1)
© » KADIST

Cerith Wyn Evans

2008

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...

Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself...

Hako
© » KADIST

Hiraki Sawa

2006

Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled...

Drag
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

In the video work Drag, a man in a dark room pulls on the end of a rope...

The Magic Mirror of John Dee
© » KADIST

Joachim Koester

2006

Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years...

Fridge-Freezer
© » KADIST

Yoshua Okón

2015

Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...

7-headed Lalandau Hat
© » KADIST

Yee I-Lann

2020

7-headed Lalandau Hat by Yee I-Lann is an intricately woven sculpture evoking the ceremonial headdress worn by Murut men in Borneo...

A Little Bit More Virtual Than Reality, A Little Bit Warmer than Craziness, A Little Bit Whiter Than Darkness, A Little Bit Longer than A heavy Sigh
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2012

The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...

A Declaration
© » KADIST

Yael Bartana

2006

Yael Bartana’s video work A Declaration was shot in southern Tel Aviv, on the visible border between that city and Jaffa...

One Minute To Act A Title: Kim Jong Il Favorite Movies
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

2005

Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...

A Tank Translated
© » KADIST

Omer Fast

2002

In this work, Omer Fast probes the feelings experienced by young people involved in an acts of war...

Vanishing Point
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2014

The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...

Walking Through
© » KADIST

Koki Tanaka

2009

Walking Through is one of a series of videos—sometimes humorous, often absurd—that record the artist’s performative interactions with objects in a particular site...

The Transparencies of the Non-Act
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...

Regard Eating Every Single Time as a Formal Declaration, My Stomach is Sexy out of Anger
© » KADIST

Xiaoyun Chen

2006

The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...

Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark my Creativity
© » KADIST

Mario Garcia Torres

2010

In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...