Dani Gal

Gallery Artists

exhibition views "The Shooting Of Officers" 2009 at Freymond-Guth

untitled ( from the Coupon Series), 2009
Pigment print on newsprint, framed
Dimensions H 46 x B 30 cm ( h 18,5 x w 13 inches )

The series of prints examine the relationship between technological development and the conditioning of viewing habits. Images from
various issues from the 1960s of the German magazine DER SPIEGEL are applied to
a background of newsprint. The images show advertisements for tape recorders and
compact cameras at the cutting edge of technology at the time. Booming in this decade,
these new technological products promised the appropriation and adequate documentation
of everyone’s experiences. The transformation of the source material into artistic works also
points to the debate over the dichotomy of photography as a medium that is capable
of both visual documentation and artistic creation while not incidentally referring to
rules within the system of visual language

untitled ( from the Coupon Series), 2009
Pigment print on newsprint, framed
Dimensions H 46 x B 30 cm ( h 18,5 x w 13 inches )

Black Magic Marker, 2009 (still)
DV-Video
27:40 min

Black Magic Marker’ (2009) shows music producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in his current residence at Einsiedeln (Switzerland). The Lee Perry operated Black Ark Studio in Kingston, and its unique sounds central to the progression and promotion of the Jamaican music scene, mysteriously went up in flames in 1979. Scratch Perry, known as the ‘Upsetter’, psalmodises, in the midst of walls strewn with characters strongly reminiscent of his former studio, on divine power, animalistic objects and the power of symbols and words to become reality.

Black Magic Marker, 2009 (still)
DV-Video
27:40 min

Installation view "Chanting Down Babylon", Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, DE

Chanting Down Babylon, 2009
slide projection (132 slides) & sound (102 min)

The Horns of Jericho, 2009
wood, loud speakers
40x50x118 cm, each

Shortly after the take-off of El-Al flight 1862 in October 1992 from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam the Israeli Boeing 747 crashed into a residential complex in Bijlermeer on the Amsterdam outskirts. The tragic and never wholly explained airplane accident opened a Pandora’s box, in political terms, in Holland – the secret transportation of weapons of mass destruction, erased sequences from the Black Box recordings and mysterious illness are only a few of the scandals that came to light in the media following the airplane crash.
For ‘Chanting Down Babylon’ (2009) Dani Gal visited residents of the Bijlermeer district, primarily migrants from Surinam and Africa and the journalist Vincent Dekker to enter into a dialogue on the airplane crash and their re-established everyday life in the reconstructed residential complex. The installation resulting thereof in Halle fuer Kunst presents clippings of these meetings in a slide show and the two modified loudspeakers which constitute the sound sculptures ‘The Horns of Jericho’ (2009). Formally quoting minimalistic objects, the loudspeakers lead the sound through a spiral of chambers evoking associations with the spiral trajectory of the freight aircraft before it hit the building.

Chanting Down Babylon, 2009 (slide)
slide projection (132 slides) & sound (102 min)

i.e., 2008
book/ object, paperback
957 p, 13,4 x 21,4 x 3,3 cm.

Every word in the Oxford Dictionary has one or more example sentences that demonstrate how the word should be used in a sentence. The sentences cover every possible topic in culture so when they are taken out of context, the examples appear to be fragments of a story, a dialogue or references out of another text.

i.e. ( id est-- latin ) means "that is" or "in other words." It specifies or makes more clear.
" I'm going to the place where I work i.e. the university."

edition 43, Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, 2008

i.e., 2008
projection/ screen
dimensions variable

in a random slide show of the sentences, the authorship can be generated by the viewer.

installation view Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, 2008

i.e., 2008 (extract)
projection/ screen

The record archive, in process

Gal’s record archive is an ongoing project of collecting vinyl records that sound document historical events of the twentieth century.

The archive contains speeches and interviews by world leaders, wars in sound, peace agreements, human rights struggles and other radio broadcasts of the events that shaped history from the invention of the phonograph to the fall of the Berlin wall.

The phenomena of records that document political and historical events was popular from the 50’s until the late 80’s Most of the records had direct connection to propaganda and for the shaping of a national historical naratives.

The collection underlines how a society turns its historical events into commodities and how sound documentation functions in relation to collective memory.

installation view SMART Project Space, Amsterdam NL, 2008

"The Ballot or the Bullet", 2008
performance at Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, 2008
voiceoverhead: Dani Gal & Achim Lengerer

turntables, mixed media, dimensions, variable

voiceoverhead is an ongoing project since 2006 that deals with performative aspects of speech, sound documents and archived spoken language.

In their sound performance Achim Lengerer and Dani Gal work with historical audio recordings and archived acoustic material.

Using this material Lengerer and Gal create
live-performance where they choose sound fragments and arrange them into a newly contextualised composition.

Architecture regarding the future of conversation, 2008 (front)
two modefied turntables, speakers, multi media

based on the record "Conversation on the future of architecture" from 1956, that interviews archtitects such as Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Mies Van Der Rohe and Walter Gropius a.o. on their ideas of the future of architecture, the artist modefied the turntables on which the record is playing in such ways, that it's speed and volume adapt to the movements of the visitor through sensors in the pliths the record players stand on.

Doing so the visitors become conscious of their movements in space and between each other, while they manipulate the record, that let's some of the most influential modernist architects formulate their ideas on space and it's future.

exhibition view, "Freisteller", Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, 2008

Architecture regarding the future of conversation, 2008 (cover)
two modefied turntables, speakers, multi media

exhibition view, "Freisteller", Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, 2008

oscillations, 2007, (still)
installation
16mm/sound
5min44

In his 16mm film “Oscillations”, 2007 the artist re-enacts the last scene of the Tarkovsky film “The Skalker” from 1979: the daughter of the Stalker, seemingly in possession of telekinetic powers, sitting at a table on which three glasses move without explanation.
While in the original version of this scene it remains unresolved if the glasses move because of the telekinetic powers or simply because of the vibrations of a train passing close by the house, the artist combines this classic scene in his reenactment with a rehearsal of his Frankfurt Punk band “Pornoheft ( Engl. Porn mag). According the frequencies of the bass amplifier onto which the camera was placed, the band is being filmed. The connecting element of the two scenes is the sound recording of the pauses between the rehearsels that is played independently from the two films.

oscillations, 2007, (still)
installation
16mm/sound
5min44

The talking mountain of Israel, 2007
(detail)

The talking mountain of Israel, 2007 (still)
installation
video, image, text

On the 4th of January 1966 the Israeli postal service aired for the first time television in Israel. The purpose of the broadcast was to try the broadcasting devices and to make a reception quality check of picture and sound in different areas of the country.
A special machine was built especially for the broadcast constructed from a simple overhead projector (the one used for school lectures) connected to a television broadcaster.
A technician stood next to the projector and replaced newspaper photos of different people, sites and national events every 30 seconds followed by sounds and music.
The program, that lasted 30 minutes, ended with of a photo of an Israeli army missile battery and was followed by the Tchaikovsky’s - 1812 Overture where real cannons played as instruments.
During the first few minutes of the show a fly flu, accidentally, between one of the photos and the projector and viewers could see it flying across the screen.
A voice of a reporter asked viewers to report on the quality of the broadcast by sending letters to the station giving them a mailing address. Many people responded but one of the viewers, a woman, wrote and asked for one of the photos in which, as she claimed, recognized her self and her daughter picking flowers.
It was actually the photographer’s wife and daughter.
One of the fears that arose by the government regarding the broadcast television was how to prevent the risk of Israeli children being exposed to Arab television that used the same channels to broadcast it’s own shows.

The Israeli television archive holds no documentation of this show. All the information about the broadcast was found in newspaper articles written around the time of the broadcast and stories told of people who were involved in the production.
By reconstructing the event that signified the beginning of the television era in Israel intends to reveal the moment which reflects the way people in Israel perceived themselves as a society and a culture at the time and how people understood the role of television.

The talking mountain of Israel, 2007 (still)
installation
video, image, text

installation view "the lost moment", Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin 2007

La Battaglia, 2007 (still)
video/audio
6min 16sec

"La Battaglia" is a music video of an Italian Hip-hop band “follitrafogli” performing the futurist poem "La Battaglia Di Adrianopoli" of Italian Futurism's founder, Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti from 1914.

Through working with rappers on their own interpretation of the poem, "La Battaglia" shows futurism, as an avant-garde modernist art movement and Hip-hop’s as a street sub culture, which became a billion dollar pop industry are shering the same passions to violence and speed and use similar representation methods.
Through the use of spoken language futurist sound poetry, glorifies danger, violance and speed and points out the urban realty at the beginning of the industrial era. Through the same means and similar aesthetics Hip-hop culture represent dangerous urban reality as experienced at first hand or through the media in a postindustrial era.

The work also creates a link between graffiti culture in Milan and Marnetti’s idea of “Parola in libertá”- which is the typographical experiment that the futurists made in order to free their poetry from old conventions and imbue it with rhythm and sound through graphics.

The rappers were being filmed performing the poet in their own interpretation
different locations, which are associated with the Italian futurist movement in Milan and Turin.

La Battaglia, 2007 (still)
video/audio
6min 16sec

search in volumes in an isolated building, 2007
16mm film
3min

In an desolated hulk of the long gone industrial era, a graffiti is being sprayed. What at first does not seem to differ much from other graffitis, at second glance reveals to a precise adaption of an architectural drawing "Search on volumes in an isolated building" by Futurist star architect Virgilio Marchi from 1919.

"The New Terrorism", 2006
video / audio Installation
11min 27sec

The "The new terrorism" is an educational kit for American schools from the 1970’s. It consists of a strip of photo slides, a one-sided record, a booklet and a game. Using examples of current affairs at the time, the kit was used to teach high school kids about the threat of terrorism.

For the work, the film strip was recorded with a video recorder and the footage slowed so the slide show would match the exact length of the album. When played simultaneously the two resources do not synchronise. This de-synchronisation interrupts and suspends the viewer’s reading of the
footage. The meaning of the document escapes its original educational- and sensational-intention and the process of creating certain historical narratives becomes evident.

"The New Terrorism", 2006
video / audio Installation
11min 27sec

"The déjà vu of Avner Kaufmann", 2006, video
Parallel screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” and Michael Anderson’s "Sword of Gideon"
dimensions variable

In his movie "Munich", Steven Spielberg deals with one of the more sensitive issues in the new Jewish/ Israeli history - the terror attack from the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich where eleven Israeli athletes were killed by the members of the Palestinian group, Black September. The story of the movie revolves around the character of Avner Kaufmann, an Israeli military officer who is personally recruited to the mossad by then Prime Minister Golda Meir to lead the spy team who will avenge the terror attack and will kill the terrorist involved in the attack.
Twenty years ago, HBO produced a television movie about the same historical events. The thriller film, "Sword of Gideon", also focuses on an Israeli agent named Avner who faces a similar crisis of conscience as Spielberg’s Avner and is wracked by guilt after helping assassinate Palestinians believed to be behind the Munich slayings.

Remaking movies and directors ripping each other off is not a new phenomenon in the movie industry. "Munich"/ "Sword of Gideon"'s case, though, is interesting because of Spielberg’s attempt to show his take on world terror and his original position as a Zionist Jew while, actually, making a movie that had already been done and denying even seeing it.

Through the parallel screening, a situation occurs where cinematographic mechanisms become transparent and new connections emerge. For example, some scenes in one movie function as a cinematic visualization of a dialogue in the other. What becomes interesting are the subtle readings that arise when the two films are screened together, namely, Spielberg’s kitchified
simulacra take on the representation of terror. This results in a kind of "déjà vu" that underlines society’s tendency to emotionally frame ideas of terror and justice. Munich’s introductory claim, that it is "inspired by real events", situates the idea of "déjà vu" within the context that the two movies share.

Keep it real
3 videos project, 2005

The works document three young rappers who are trying to achieve success in the hip hop industry. In the videos, Nymesis, Blind Fury and P-Star tell their stories, present their agendas, talk about the way they are trying to position themselves in the hip hop game and demonstrate their artistic skills.

Nymesis
video
11min 38sec

Nemesis is 19 years old and lives in Harlem NY. He goes daily to the street corner in 125th and St Nicholas Ave. where he and his friends sell cigarettes in the black market for a living. He Battle Raps occasionally with the
bypassers who dare to battle him.

Keep it real
3 videos project, 2005

Stephen Norris a.k.a Blind Fury
video
11min

Stephan is 21 years old. He was born blind, grew up in Camden, South Carolina. He has rhymed since he was 9. A few years ago he started to rap and battle in the local club scene where he met his friend DJ Mellow.
Mellow contacted his friends DJ spice & Darrell Jones from NY, They believed in Fury’s potential and decided to produce him under their production company 3 wise men.

Blind Fury made the finals on MTV’s "mc battle" award and came in the third of the top five in the country, he is performing nation wide and is currently working on his first E.P.

Keep it real
3 videos project, 2005

Pricilla Dies a.k.a P-Star
video
29min 52sec

Priscilla is 19 years old. She started to rap when she was 7. She lives in Harlem, NY with her older sister and her father Jesse who is also her producer.

P-Star has been filmed by a few hip hop DVD magazines in NY, performed in different clubs in the city, won 8 beauty pageant competitions and she is about to sign on a major Music label.

"How to convert a scientific problem into a banal love story", 2005
video/audio installation
loop

The work is based on the science fiction film Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky that was made after a novel by Stanislaw Lem.
The film centres on a group of research astronauts who spend very long periods of time in space in order to study the mysterious star Solaris and have to confront their consciences by meeting, in reality, characters from their memories. Out of longing to home- planet earth--they fix a piece of paper cut to strips onto the spaceship vents because the sound it makes reminds them of trees moving in the wind.

For the work, the paper installation was rebuilt and filmed with a super 8 camera that records no sound. Next to the film production a record player was installed, that repeatedly played a record called "wind in trees" which is a recorded sound of the wind blowing in the trees (The record was pressed in the 70’s and was used for therapy purposes.) The sound and the film are played simultaneously but are only become synchronised at random moments. When the sound and the image meet there is an illusion that the sound comes from the vent blowing the paper.

The title of the work refers to one of the astronauts who tells the main character, after seeing his dead wife and falling in love with her that he shouldn’t make a banal love story out of a scientific problem.

"How to convert a scientific problem into a banal love story", 2005
video/audio installation
loop

installation view "if on a winter's night a traveller",
Freymond-Guth, 2006

"There is nothing here but the recordings", 2005
video
8min 44sec

The work is a video documentary about Avi Yaffe, an Israeli sound technician who served as a soldier in the Suez Canal during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Yaffe brought his recording device with him to the bunker on the Suez Canal front where he was positioned because he wanted to play music to his friends and maybe to record some sounds. He ended up recording the first seven hours of an ambush in a war that none of the Israelis knew was going to start. His material is unique as a document as no other journalists or news reporters could make it to the front. His footage has never been fully published.
In the video he tells the story of his experience in the war and the experience of recording a war while samples of the footage are playing. The video subtitles the footage in English. When Avi Yaffe is speaking in the interview, the screen is blank and his words are documented in English subtitles.
The recordings show the trauma that lies in the aural memory of war. In opposition to the official propagandist victory recordings that exist of the 1967 war in Isreal, Yaffe’s voice and ears serve as a requiem for the end of a period of almost euphoric national pride in Isreal.

"Keiner schiebt uns weg", 2005
video\audio installation
14min 03sec

In 1981, after over three years of political struggle and a successful outcome, a record that documented the activity of 29 women who fought for equal rights in their company called "Heinze photo druck und papier" in Gelsenkirchen was pressed. The workers union released the record. On the record one can hear the radio broadcast of the reports on the struggle, songs sung by the women and other voices that made this event.

The works wants to follow its history by trying to find out what has happened to the women and how they would look at the event today. Three of the women who took part in the strugglewere tracked down.

The result was an installation in the Gelsenkirchen Kunstverein, which is made of two parts: The first part is a video of an interview with the "heinze frauen" (The "Heinze women" as the press use to call them) where they tell about their experiences during these years. Part of the video shows the women listening to the record and reacting to the memories that the sound activates.
The second part of the installation is a record player with the record and a film (the film has no sound) that was made by one of the colleagues during the last demonstration in Kassel in 1981. The visitor can listen to the record while watching the film so the record becomes a loose soundtrack for the amateur film of the same subject.

"Keiner schiebt uns weg", 2005
video\audio installation
14min 03sec

installation view at Kunstverein Gelsenkirchen, 2005

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