ABOUT THE VIDEO ARCHIVE
The Video Archive at CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo was established in 2000. It comprises over 4000 videos by Israeli and international artists, with works from the 1960s to the present day. What distinguishes the archive is the presence of early Israeli video art – comprising the first experiments in the medium – works featured in VideoZone – International Video Art Biennial (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010) video documentation of works presented at blurrrr – International Performance Art Biennial (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009), and several works by contemporary video artists. The video archive is a hub for research and education and it functions as a pedagogical tool for several of our educational programs. Screenings based on titles that are currently present in the Archive have been presented in venues in Israel, such as the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and the Jerusalem Film Festival, and abroad at Art in General in New York, OK Center for Contemporary Art in Linz (Austria), the Jewish Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Tate Modern in London, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Centro da Cultura Judaica in São Paulo, and Galerie KUB in Leipzig (Germany) among others. The archive was founded with the support of the late Mr. Arye Sabinsky in memory of his mother, Elizabeth Sabinsky, and with additional support from the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation. In 2020, after twenty years from its establishment, CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo has received a grant from Artis and established a fellowship whose aim is to map, research and restructure the Video Archive with a focus on Israeli artists.
The video Archive and its library is open to students, curators, professionals, and to the general public by appointment. To set up a visit, please contact: archive@cca.org.il
documentary genre is undercut by the artist’s use of technology-based manipulation. “At the end of the day, I’m the one pulling all the strings. In practically every work I’ve done, there’s an emotional crisis, where I’m embarrassed by the power I’ve taken upon myself.”
In My Father in the Cloud (2022), Patir extends her interest in self-representation and life in the age of the Internet and problematizes a rather recent phenomenon: losing a loved one in an era in which their digital presence confoundingly carries on. The artist takes her cue from her late father – an engineer, a telecommunications executive, and a gadget enthusiast – and broaches technology’s potential to resuscitate someone no longer alive. She seeks to temporarily arrest her grief by the
simulation of his presence, and the possibility of generating new memories with him – a quest ultimately doomed for failure.
This travelog-inspired documentary unfolds across the artist’s desktop, as well as in the thickets of the Web and virtual software. Patir, together with animator Yonatan Wasserman, set out on a journey laced with humor and psychological insight to ‘communicate’ with the dead, in order to allow the artist to dance with her father again. “A dad dancing is an essence. Not of the person but of their ‘dadness,’” she says in the film. With a combination of naïveté and an earnestness doomed for disappointment, Patir and Wasserman enlist A.I. technologies and the help of Patir’s family members for this renewed dance with the father, as an act of love.
Working primarily in video and new media, Ruth Patir (*1984 New York; lives and works in Tel Aviv) fuses documentary and modes of storytelling with computer-generated imagery in a quest to expand the possibilities of realism. Often departing from the artist’s own autobiography and the voices of those close to her, Patir’s works gradually open up to address larger societal issues, such as the politics of gender, technology, and the hidden mechanisms of power.
“My work veers toward the documentary because I believe in puncturing the aura around the artist and the act of art-making,” Patir explained in an interview. “Cinema enables this because it is inclusive at its core; it lets other people into the work.” Yet the objectivity implied by the
Making transparent the process of its own making, the video work offers a requiem on love, control, and both the digital footprint as well as the memory traces that we leave behind.
Ruth Patir, My Father in the Cloud, 2022. Excerpt from video, 25 mins. Courtesy of the artist and Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv. The video was presented at CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo in 2022, as part of “Ruth Patir: My Father in the Cloud,” the artist’s solo exhibition at the Center.