PA’AM

Although still young, the multimedia artist Nadav Barnea, a musician, lighting and sound designer, has already become quite established in Israel, since he has worked with numerous renowned choreographers and other artists. We believe that in bringing his author project to Bitef, the installation PA’AM will contribute to a deserved international "discovery" of this extraordinary young artist. His multimedia work is a distinctively atmospheric installation, which consists of video-works that are both abstract and documentary. Mounted upon eight suspended TV sets in a rhythmically mesmerizing manner, it assumes the character of true, "live" performers similar to the role the pianos played in Stifter’s Things by Heiner Goebbels. These video-works are accompanied by voices which utter intimate, fragmentary, melancholic, and documentary-phantasmagoric confessions not directly related to the video-art. They express contemplations about the loss of loved ones, of guilt, or complex relations between children and parents, and on global disasters spanning from the Holocaust to the mysterious explosions and the disappearance of children: in a word, on death. This unique experience, atmospherically powerful, sensual and emotional, is organically linked to the hypnotic "choreography of light" and suitable electronic music. It creates an atmospheric landscape which, at the same time, represents a kaleidoscope of dispersed memories, and a limbo between the world of the living and the world of the dead, as well as a state of mind close to tripping. Strictly contemporary stage expression combined with a primal feeling of death – that would be the shortest description of this fascinating installation.