“Using sound and air to develop a conceptual architecture as a post-Zionist critique, performance artist Tobaron Waxman collaborates with dancer Jesse Zaritt and composer James Hurley to present a motion activated sound installation. Mechitza 7.1 uses field recordings Waxman made in the occupied territories of Palestine, and in men’s prayer spaces from his Chassidic life in New York. In Tobaron’s unique collaborative process, a movement score and soundscape for motion playback were created simultaneously. At ICI, for this beta version/performance, rather than a motiontracking interface, the soundscape will be played live, together with the movement. This way the concept of a separation wall / border trauma is presented as a series of sound and motion events. A mechitza is the separation architecture between women and men in a Jewish prayer space. ‘7.1’ is both a Jewish metatextual reference about nation and destiny as well as indicative of this piece being composed for surround sound with 7.1 channels. An elision is made between sacred/taboo space, and ‘ethnically cleansed’ space, using interactive audio, as a way to interrogate the notion of border. Mechitza 7.1. reflects on the segregatory architecture that controls public and private space, imposed by the state.” – Kulturlabor ICI Berlin
Choreography and collaborative composition for surround, motion activated playback.
Exhibition history:
Kulturlabor ICI Berlin, 2010
Publication history:
“Mechitza 7.1, Tobaron Waxman and Jesse Zaritt” PROTOCOLS #10 — TEMPLE, 2022
“In the Mosaic: Jewish Identities in Canadian Performance and Installation Art”
by Carol Zemel. Canadian Theatre Review, Winter 2013, no. 153, pp. 13-19
“Hadassah and Halacha: the Interventions of Queer Jewish Performance Art” by Carol Zemel in Jews and Theatre in an International Context. Edna Nashon, ed. 2012
http://www.david-rusitschka.com/?/sound-design/Mechitza/
“Shows that rocked, shocked and taught” (year end ‘best of’ selection) – Globe and Mail, RM Vaughan, 2010
