Nothing New
2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Oded Hirsch
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.
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