Thursday, September 20, at 7:30 pm CCA Tel Aviv, Tsadok HaCohen 2, Tel Aviv
Videos by: Keren Cytter, Uri Katzenstein, Shahar Freddy Kislev, Talia Link, Mika Rottenberg, and Miri Segal Curated by Meital Aviram
The CCA Tel Aviv is pleased to present “Executives’ Amusements” an outdoor screening of works from the center’s vast video archive. In contrast with “Langue de Chat” – the first part of this project that dealt with the bizarre – this event will consists of works from the early 1990s till today that capture the absurdity of life at the turn of the millennium and the apocalyptic spirit that accompanied it.
Executive toys such as floating globes and Newton’s cradle symbolize the spirit of the free market and its ensuing alienation. Furthermore, these objects were given to make employees feel at home, to give a sense domesticity to the cubical, mirroring the paradoxical attitudes of companies and corporations that compare themselves to families.
If in the 1990s executive toys were used for fragments of leisure time within the framework of work time, labor, today, is about slacking off and hiding behind your screen while scrolling through porn or Facebook. But originally, executive toys were talismans of fondness or respect between colleagues. These manifestations of appreciation are today no longer as popular due to the fact that the welfare system has somewhat collapsed, employees have been losing benefits while being asked to give up their personal lives, or rather, to perform all their activities — labor and leisure — in the workplace. Following this theme, Aviram selected works that define leisure moments within the frame of labor.
Dedicated to Uri Katzenstein (1951 – 2018), “Executives’ Amusements” is organised by Meital Aviram, an independent curator based in Tel Aviv and the founder of Third Floor on The Left. Aviram earned her MA in Policy and Theory of the Arts from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.
This video program, screened outdoors, will be accompanied by drinks courtesy Malka Beer. For more information please contact CCA Tel Aviv public relations manager, Omer Shachar, at office@cca.org.il
Image: Uri Katzenstein, Home, 2001, 09:34 min. still from video, courtesy of the artist