Fold Along the Line
Guy Ben-Ner

Since the beginning of the Nineties, Guy Ben-Ner’s (Israel, 1969) working methodology has relied on video recordings in which he and his family have played the central roles. His works propose a continuous compromise between the creation of individual identities and the existing relationships among individuals as he puts cohabitational situations into practice. Ben-Ner departs from the micro to analyze social conventions and archetypes that convert his intimate and personal stories into passages with which the spectator can identify.

Many of his videos draw inspiration from screenplays, folk stories, and novels. Analysis of these literary and cinematographic passages allows him to explore the conventions of filmic storytelling: ways of telling a story; of captivating the public through the storyline; of maintaining a degree of tension and entertainment… At the same time, Ben-Ner permeates fictional magic as he exhibits to us the entrails of the recording material without resorting to coercion, unafraid that we may be able to perceive each of his tricks. For several years, he staged his works in his family’s small apartment, rustically modified for the video recordings, always resorting to a low-tech aesthetical approach. In this video series – that expands to 2005 – the common thread becomes the study of the paternal figure, always intended for extrapolation to any person attempting to conform within a group.

Inspired by the film A Man Escaped by Robert Bresson, House Hold narrates Ben-Her’s domestic adventure of trying to escape from his son’s crib, which here is transformed into a sort of family cage. Or in Wild Boy, for instance, the artist changes the Provencal scenery of the film by François Truffaut, The Wild Child, to explore the moral conventions applied to the education of his youngest offspring. In Berkeley’s Island, Guy Ben-Ner becomes Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in order to narrate a particular castaway story in his home. Atop a mountain of sand artificially constructed in the middle of his kitchen, he narrates his experiences on this mysterious island set, in contrast, to the reality that surrounds it. It would appear that the artist returns to an infant state with this imaginary invented despite of the difficulties of a “grown-up” world. Nevertheless, Ben-Ner’s own voice-over tells the story without permitting any comparisons: “My Island is not a metaphor. It is the thing in itself.”

Guy establishes different entries into his work as he combines real scenarios with comic situations in which the absurd becomes the only way for reflecting upon a desperate situation. The ridiculous and yet fearless figure makes us think of him as a modern Buster Keaton. Like the mythic Hollywood actor, Ben-Ner does more than merely entertain the spectators. From the screenplay’s incongruity, truths come forth without obstacles. Sometimes in the mists of the comic exercise, gestures replace words. Under humorous pretenses, this domestic buffoon possesses the immunity to say whatever he wishes without having to take responsibility for his acts. This need reveals to us the “making of” many of his videos that serve as a mirror to explain the idiosyncrasy of our modus vivendi: the unfolded stratagem demonstrates for  us that which exists but that not everyone desires to see.  It is a space where only the buffoon can play at telling the truth.

The macg exhibition includes some of the videos belonging to the group of works focusing on the domestic realm: House Hold, Wild Boy,and Berkeley’s Island lay out abstract feelings such as  loneliness or alienation in the construction of the collective subject.

The work entitled Tree House Kit, probably one of Ben-Ner’s most characteristic videos, is presented as the main installation in the macg space. A 4-meter wooden tree is placed in the space, transforming the museum in a stage of artificial nature. In the video accompanying the sculpture, Ben-Ner becomes a castaway obsessed with bricolage. Lost on a mysterious island – four walls and a carpet with artificial flowers – the artist transforms the tree on the stage into an endless array of furniture and domestic objects. As in Buster Keaton’s movie One Week, the video narrates the modern obsession with prefabricated objects, as well as the possibility of compressing spaces to confer upon these the largest possible number of functions – stereotyped and similar spaces in which each person must resort to his/her imagination so as not to succumb to a standard of imposed comfort.

Two of Ben-Ner’s most recent videos complete the exhibit: in 2nd Nature, the family setting and the genealogy of artificial living quarters are replaced by a natural space in which the artists recounts a popular fable: the story of the crow and the fox, rendered as a TV spot. There, we observe two animal trainers chosen to animate the action and who are directed by Ben-Ner’s himself. Far from addressing technical issues, the trainers establish an absurd dialogue based on Samuel Beckett’s piece entitled Waiting for Godot (1953). Knowledgeable about the contraptions employed in the fable genre, Ben-Ner abandons Aristotelian tradition in favor of an approach closer to the idea of Brechtian theater, where the different components of the fable can be subtracted from the totality for comparison with their corresponding parts in real life.

In the last video, Ben-Ner takes the breaking of the different parts of the screenplay to its fullest extent. The story presents us with the ordeal the artists and his traveling companion experience by means of several forms of transportation. Many exaggerated accidents take place without these being a surprise to the travelers. The conversation continues despite the disasters, which do not appear to be part of their experience. Resorting to this particular manner of overlapping arguments, the scene become even more complicated when the spectator senses that the characters possess multiple personalities and that they change the nature of their discourse depending on the personalities they adopt. From Sancho and Quijote to Mr. Fog and Passepartout, this anti-epic journey questions the plausibility of the events and appears to attempt to tell us that we are all someone else in the eyes of others.

Ruth Estévez

Guy Ben-Ner / Biographical sketch
Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, 1969. Works in Tel-Aviv. He represented Israel at the 2005 Venice Biennale; subsequently, he exhibited his work at Münster 2007. His most recent exhibitions include Real Life at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, and his exhibition at the mass moca, in Boston, which runs concurrently with his exhibition at the macg. Alongside his professional career as a video artist, he is also recognized for his work as a teacher shaping the new generations of students in his country.

 

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