Keren Cytter

Antonio Grulli

Tel Aviv – Jerusalem

Diaries
Keren Cytter
Antonio Grulli
Tel Aviv – Jerusalem
Humboldt Books
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Diaries info@humboldtbooks.com
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images from a film
Photographs
Keren Cytter ISBN 978 – 88 – 99385 – 61 – 3
Moshe Cytter
Yael Cytter
Antonio Grulli
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37 – 79 Diaries
© Humboldt Books
Texts © Keren Cytter
Keren Cytter
Antonio Grulli
© Antonio Grulli
81 16 photographs
from the journey
pp. 1 – 32
Graphic Design Des Trous (video stills)
Federico Barbon © 2018 Keren Cytter

Proofreading pp. 37 – 96
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© 2018 Keren Cytter, Moshe Cytter,
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 Tel Aviv – Jerusalem
Diaries

K.C. I don’t like art. Especially not contemporary

art. I like almost everything but art – sport,
food, making art, Netflix, writing, reading easy books,
staring at the wall, making lists, taking notes, texting.
I don’t like talking on the phone.

A.G. I fly to Tel Aviv directly from Milan. It is

3 May. Ben Gurion Airport has always
been a weird place in my mind ever since all the stories
I heard and read about Israel and its history. Three big
mosaics from the Byzantine era hang on a big wall in
the vast entrance lobby of the airport. One is covered
with images of green birds which resemble the parrots
that will accompany my entire stay in the country. It’s
already night; I get out and I need to find a way to reach
Jerusalem where I will spend my first few days. Keren’s
family suggested I should get a Sherut. It’s difficult for
me to understand what they are talking about, but I
ask around and I easily reach the place where Sherut
departs for Jerusalem.
The Sherut leaves me in the middle of an area that as
far as I’m concerned might be the city centre or a far-flung
suburb. I see a lot of people walking around, mainly or-
thodox Jews. All the houses are clad in Jerusalem stone.
It is a rule, dating back to the days of the English Mandate.

37
All the houses here have to be covered with it to main-
tain a homogeneous aspect and so as not to ruin the
landscape of the city and of its important historical past.
The material used for the old city is a pale, dusty yellow
stone. It reminds me of some Southern Italian stone, like
that most typically used in Puglia, or the stone Matera
is made from. It’s creamy, warm but at the same time
understated. Houses from outside are not so beautiful,
and everywhere there is a Middle-Eastern architectural
messiness, that same happy urban anarchy you can also
find in some parts of Italy. There are cats everywhere.
Super skinny cats, a bit mangy, scuttling in and out of
the houses and into the rubbish bins.
I will sleep at Keren’s sister’s place for couple of days
since she is not there. I find it easily enough; I get in and
immediately Albert, the cat of the house, comes up to
me and starts purring and softly winding around my
legs. After a couple of minutes, he starts acting very
weirdly, yowling and getting rather upset. As soon as I
make a move towards the bedroom, the cat goes for my
shin, biting me and scratching my skin open. I remove
the cat from my body and hide in the bedroom, leaving
him outside. Keren’s parents told me to be careful with
the cat because sometimes he can be edgy, but I would
never have expected something like that. I take a wa-
tering can, usually used for the house plants but which
they left for me in order to move around the house while
keeping the cat at a safe distance from me. Rarely have
I been so terrified in my life.
I manage to get out and I go for a night stroll in order
to see a bit of the neighbourhood where the house is.
Everything is open. Bars and restaurants full of young
people eating and drinking. I walk into a typical Israeli
restaurant and I find just one small table free. I go for
a Jerusalem grill dish, a typical mix of different meats,
mainly chicken, complete with guts and liver. It turns
out to be one of the most delicious things I have ever
had, and the liver is astonishing. Generally speaking,
the food in Israel is one of the strongest experiences I
have ever had. The mix of the Jewish tradition with the
Arabian, and the additions provided by new arrivals –
38
Russian, French and Yemenite – make the country one
of the best places in the world foodwise.
In the restaurant there are basically only young people,
and probably some of the most beautiful boys and girls I
have ever seen in my life. The physical aspect of the Israel
people is probably the most impressive thing in the whole
country. I couldn’t stop looking at the beauty of the people
throughout my stay in Israel. The population is basically
only young people. Pretty much everyone is under forty,
and people in their twenties are everywhere. The percent-
age of children with young parents is just unfathomable
for an Italian. It’s one of the most multiethnic countries
in Europe – maybe the only really multiethnic one. Many
of them came here from somewhere else, perhaps also
in recent times. There are a lot of Russians, French, and
people from Yemen and East Africa that have flown in
over the last few years. They have opened supermarkets,
restaurants and shops everywhere, and you hear so many
different languages being spoken. Also their attitude and
their way of acting and living is kaleidoscopically different.
I get out the house early in the morning to avoid at-
tacks from Albert, using the watering can, so as to stroll
a bit around Jerusalem and have a proper breakfast. I had
decided to arrive a few days before Keren in order to see
the first leg of the Giro d’Italia, which this year will con-
nect Jerusalem, the starting point, and Rome, the city of
arrival: two of the most important religious cities in the
world. The first leg is a short chrono test, and the route
passes along the walls surrounding the Old City and ends
up near the Jaffa Gate, on the top of a hill. I have always
loved cycling, and I try to follow the main races whenev-
er I have time. My love has survived the decline in the
popularity of this sport over recent years due to doping
scandals. Nothing is weirder than cycling. The idea of
moving around with that metal between your legs is just
the most unnatural thing I could imagine. Maybe that’s
why it’s also the most anti-natural sport in the way its
athletes develop, with the use of drugs and the ability
to take it to its most radical conclusions. People cycle for
hours and for hundreds of kilometres every day, despite
the pain, suffering, heat and cold.
39
 I position myself near the wall of the most ancient part
of Jerusalem where the race ends. When they are riding
their bikes, with their helmets on, you might think you
are looking at a new kind of mantis, a new animal, with
its own very specific buzz. There is a very specific noise
the bikes makes when they pass close to you, a kind of
droning noise.
Of all the mythologies linked to cycling and the meta-
phors used to talk about it, the most frequent are those
taken from the Bible. Every mountain is referred to as “the
Golgotha”, “the Calvary”, and every cyclist has his own
“cross to bear.” So, at the end of the race, I leave my spot
and I walk down the hill; I pass the Jaffa Gate and make
my way into the small streets of the old town in order to
reach the place where people think the real Golgotha is:
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
For me it is something very special to visit this place.
I grew up in a Catholic family and in a Catholic country,
even though neither of them have any real obsession with
it. Catholicism in Italy is something simple, a given fact,
and you perceive it as almost part of the landscape.
It’s even more special my being here in the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre due to my being involved in art. When
you look at art, and when you love it, and you see all these
works of art with religious subjects that for centuries were
the mainstay of art in general, you cannot avoid Christi-
anity as part of any reflection on it. And it is difficult to
understand art in general if you don’t get this idea of the
body within the words and deeds of Christ.
It is something that Pasolini always understood and
put into all the works he did. I mean the body of Christ,
God that became man, a real man, with a name, not a
generic man. All the deeds of Christ were about acting in
order to separate and not to put together, to ignite conflict,
to unsheathe the sword: a path producing complexity and
building individuality rather than one offering a generic
idea of society.
Christ who for his first miracle turned water in wine,
from something useful into something toxic, something
useless, something bad, something to be used for conviv-
iality, for being together and being happy. God becoming
40
man is purity becoming dirtiness, and the acceptance
and love of dirtiness, of the error, of the mistake, of sin.
After all, life is dirty and human beings make mistakes.
What every fundamentalist movement tries to do is
to achieve some childish idea of purity, of purification,
which always ends up with the purging of differences.
The main and first development of art in modernity, as
we conceive art today, started more or less in the Mid-
dle Ages in the Christian countries of Southern Europe,
those that would later become Catholic. Art and image-
ry have been often seen as ‘the lie’, as a fake part of the
reality around us ever since Plato: maybe the first major
iconoclastic ideologist able to sum up all those who would
later follow him, and who stated that art is a secondary
reality, a lie.
What he didn’t understand and what iconoclasts nev-
er understand is that an image is not a reproduction of
reality: it’s a reality in itself, and sometimes with more
intensity and more meaning than the reality it draws
on. It’s a means of making our world more complex and
not more simple.
K.C. When I was young, I decided to learn a poem
by heart for the rest of my life in order to ma-
terialise my soul. It was a poem by Rachel The Poetess:
The stubborn hand is knocking,
knocking at a locked gate
The skin is tattered
dripping onto the lock’s palms
There’s no answer, not a sound
The guard drags his feet
he’ll be late he’ll be late
In a yearned for moment
on the doorstep
I collapse and die
Rachel the poetess died from tuberculosis at the age of
forty. She was buried in a cemetery near the Kineret.
There are new banknotes in Israel. One with Rachel
the Poetess (a red note worth twenty shekels) and the
41
 other of Lea Goldberg (a yellow one worth a hundred.) I
like both of them.
The Great War had ended. Abraham Goldberg, the
economist who founded Lithuania’s health care system,
his wife and their eight-year-old daughter are on their
way home to Kaunas from their exile in Russia. They are
stopped at the border. A group of Lithuanian soldiers tell
Abraham the verdict of some false accusations they fabri-
cate – execution. The next day, at the last moment, they
pardon him. They do it again and again, day after day: A
little entertainment for their leisure time. By the tenth
day, Abraham starts to lose his sanity. He’s hospitalised
in a mental institute until his death.
He would be killed in the Holocaust several decades
later.
From the moment Abraham Goldberg was hospital-
ised in a mental institute, a new life began for his small
daughter Leah and her mother Zilla. The mother devoted
her life and dedicated her time and all of her means to
her daughter. Her grave bears the words (at her request)
“Leah Goldberg’s mother”. Her daughter experienced a life
of spiritual elevation, great creation as well as bitter dis-
appointment and torment.
At the age of twelve, she wrote: “I must be an important
Hebrew Poetess. Otherwise there’s no reason to live.” Lat-
er on she declared: “I’m afraid to have children because my
father was mentally ill and people like me shouldn’t bring
children to the world.”
The two poets are not the first women portrayed on
banknotes. Before that was Golda Meir – the fourth prime
minister of Israel on the ten-shekel note. She was the first
and last female prime minister. She came before Merkel,
Thatcher and the prime minister of New Zealand. And
they all came before the first female American president.
I live in New York.
A.G. The pilgrimage and devotion to the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre is meaningful in this
sense. The centrality of the body, with its heaviness, with
its being connected to the force of gravity, to time, to the
process of getting old and falling ill and dying is also the
42
reason why where Christ’s passion, crucifixion and bur-
ial supposedly took place is so important. And I love this
centrality of the body in Christianity and most of all in the
Catholic tradition so much.
The whole of Jerusalem is the ‘city of stones’. Here in
this church at the entrance lies a big flat stone on the floor,
slightly suspended over the plinth surrounding it. It’s the
stone where the dead body of Christ was apparently pre-
pared prior to burial, and covered in oil. The relationship
with this stone is almost erotic: the devotees touch it, ca-
ress it, kiss it, they pass their skin over it, they pour oil
onto it and then wipe it off with a piece of fabric in order
to take home some oil blessed by the stone. So many warm
things done to something so cold.
On the right, after taking a narrow stairway, there
is the rock of the crucifixion, the Golgotha. And also
here people get down onto their knees in order to caress
the point where the cross was placed. On the other side
there is the Holy Sepulchre, probably the most sacred
place for many Christians. A line of people moving slow-
ly leads you inside the small chapel that protects the
tomb and the stone overturned by Christ, the stone on
which an angel sat.
But also the other two most important places of the city
are based on this special relationship between body and
stone. After the church, I make my way down the small
streets until I reach the Western Wall. Here you have to
pass checks and photos inside are not allowed. 4 May is a
Friday, so I have the possibility to see the most important
moment for Jews to come here, just before sunset. There
is a huge crowd of people bowing in front of the Wall, with
men and women separated. They rock softly, a few centi-
metres from the wall, praying with their head toward the
stones but never touching them. Then they start dancing
and singing in the open space in front of it, and rarely have
I seen such a joyous moment in other religious celebrations.
On top of the Wall there is the Dome of the Rock, a
shrine that covers the stone which for Jews is the point
from which God began to build the world, while for Mus-
lims it is the point where Muhammad started his Night
Journey to Heaven. As everyone knows, this part of the
43
city is controlled by the Muslim community, and I never
managed to visit it throughout my stay in Israel.
Three places, three different relationships with the
stones, three different metaphors: the HOLE of the Sep-
ulchre for the Christians, down inside the body of the
earth; the WALL of the Jews, this vertical limit that
stands in front of us and that faces us; and the PLAT-
FORM of the Muslims, the spot from which to take flight,
the journey toward something higher, far from the Earth
and all its dirtiness.
K.C. When I was born, my parents were living in
Tel Aviv. My mother worked in a refrigerator
company called ‘Tadiran’ and my father was an electronic
engineer in Israel Air Industries. They lived in Brenner
Street, close to the corner with Allenby Street. A couple
of years later, they moved to Givatayim and shared an
apartment with my maternal grandmother. I lived there
until I was eight years old. In 1986 we moved to Ariel – a
settlement in the West Bank.
The first Intifada started in 1987, triggered by a car
accident. There were demonstrations all over the West
Bank. I watched them on TV, while my father was iron-
ing his clothes in the same room. “They’re really close
to us, close to where will live,” he said. After he left the
room, I turned down the TV volume and tried to hear
the demonstrators outside.
I left my hometown when I was nineteen or twenty.
Then I moved to Tel Aviv and studied art. I worked as
a dishwasher for a year in an Italian restaurant called
‘Mama Mia’. Then I worked as a cook in a Spanish restau-
rant named ‘Alioli’ in the building of my parents’ first
apartment on Brenner Street. I didn’t know or remem-
ber I had lived there in that building. My mother told me
that couple of years later.
My parents lived in Ariel until they were sixty years
old, and then they moved to South America for my fa-
ther’s job. They lived in Bogota for three years, a couple
of years in San Paolo and another couple of years in Rio.
Meanwhile, both of my sisters – Ruth, the elder one (now
a radiologist in the Shaare Zedek Medical Center) and
44
Yael the younger one (now a biochemistry student at the
Hebrew University) – moved to Jerusalem. When my
father retired, my parents returned to Israel and rent-
ed an apartment in Jerusalem to help my older sister
and her husband with their three children. They loved
the city.
My father is now an amateur photographer and moth-
er has turned into a prolific artist – their apartment is
full of her sculptures.
Both of the photos on the left were taken by my fa-
ther, Moshe Cytter – he was experimenting with var-
ious Photoshop filters. They were taken in Mamilla, a
neighbourhood near the Old Town. To the right of the
picture, the corner of the Stern House can be seen. All
the bricks on it are numbered.
The Stern House was built under Ottoman rule in
1877 and it hosted Theodor Herzl – the Visionary of the
Jewish State. He stayed there four nights during a visit
of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. He wanted to solicit
his help in securing a Jewish homeland. Later on, the
Stern family turned the room in which Herzl stayed
into a small museum.
The house became the focus of controversy during
reconstruction. The original plans were such that al-
most nothing of the original neighbourhood would be pre-
served. They called for the demolition the Stern House
amongst others. The demolition plans provoked outcry,
and an agreement was reached to preserve the House
as well as several other significant buildings.
Historic preservationists demanded that the building
should be conserved on its original site, and objected
to a plan that entailed disassembling the building and
reconstructing it on a nearby site. The legal challenge
reached the High Court; however, it was decided that a
full restoration could be carried out even after decon-
struction. The building was thus disassembled and its
stones were marked, numbered and moved to a storage
facility near the reconstruction site.
Only in 2006, with the end of prolonged litigation and
the reaching of a financial settlement, did works resume
in the frozen section of the project. Following this, the
45
Stern House was put back together after having been
stored for a decade.
A year ago, my parents moved into a new apartment in
Netanya near the beach.
A couple of years after I left art school, I moved to Am-
sterdam and lived there for four years. Then I lived in Ber-
lin for six years and after that I moved to New York. I have
been living in New York for six years now. I visit Israel once
a year. When I arrived this time from New York, it was my
first visit since I received my Green Card in October last
year. I stayed for a couple of months.
Antonio arrived in Israel ten days before me. He ar-
rived a day before the beginning of the Giro d’Italia in
Jerusalem, which was by chance a day before my younger
sister’s wedding.
Yael and Ilya had been dating for more than sixteen
years, since they were seventeen years old. They decided
to marry this year because Ilya had to move to Boston and
work there for a couple of years with his professor. It would
be easier for my sister to join him as his wife.
Civil marriages are illegal in Israel. Only religious
marriages – Jewish, Christian or Islamic – are possible.
Because of that, many Israelis get married abroad, and
the handiest place to do that is Cyprus – a half-hour flight
from Israel – on the Greek side.
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel used to raise obstacles
and create difficulties for Russian immigrants. They were
skeptical about the authenticity of their religious claims.
Ilya, my sister’s then boyfriend (now husband), is a Rus-
sian immigrant, and because of that treatment, he wanted
to have civil marriage. So the day Antonio arrived in Israel,
Yael and Ilya had flown to Cyprus and left him their apart-
ment in Jerusalem for a couple of days.
A.G. I reach Netanya the night of 5 May. I step off
the train and Moshe, Keren’s dad, is there to
pick me up. Netanya is a pleasant suburb by the sea. It is not
small at all, and it is made of many apartments blocks, all
of them surrounded by trees and a nice park. Something
about it that reminds me of the US, some Florida town, or
maybe it’s like I always imagined some new town in Brazil.
46
Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv are actually the only two major
cities in Israel. But today it’s difficult to understand this
country if you don’t spend some time in this kind of place.
Netanya is a new city, and most of it has been built over the
last few years. Wide streets, little traffic, big malls, every
building has its own private parking space. Lots of Rus-
sians over recent years have moved here or bought a holi-
day house here. But the biggest community is the French
one. There is a huge percentage of them. Also most of the
shops are run by French people, and in the streets you ba-
sically only hear French. For some it’s just a place to come
for winter and summer holidays. But many of them have
moved here for good, leaving France completely. It’s pretty
scary to see all these people abandoning one of the most
important countries in the world; it is a sign of something
strong. Nobody wants to leave the place where all their
roots have always been, and that basically has no specific
economic problems. This same summer I went in Portugal
for a show, again with Keren, and also there I noticed how
many French had decided to move there, opening com-
panies and businesses, and not just staying for holidays.
The two countries that close Europe geographically, one
on the south-east side and the other to the west, are filled
with people leaving the core of the continent. A major mi-
grational phenomenon that nobody talks about, however
meaningful, and even though it’s radically changing Eu-
rope’s demographic distribution.
K.C. Near my parents new apartment in Netanya,
there is a public sculpture of Shalom Aleichem
riding a goat.
Shalom Aleichem is the pen name of Solomon Naumov-
ich Rabinovich. The musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on
his stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first com-
mercially successful English-language stage production
about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
The Hebrew phrase ‘Shalom aleichem’ literally means
‘peace be with you’, and is a greeting in traditional Hebrew
and Yiddish. Shalom Aleichem was born in Ukraine and
later moved to New York and Geneva. I heard he lived
for a while in Jerusalem but that is not necessarily true.
47
He’s a historic figure in Israel – every time I pass by his
statue I feel giddy, like passing by a celebrity.
Once, at my parents apartment, I found a book of short
stories by him and I read one. Later, I couldn’t find the book
and couldn’t remember its name or the name of story, and
I could hardly remember the story itself, but anyhow I’ll
tell what’s left:
A German tourist arrives on a cold, rainy night at a
small motel in Jerusalem. He sees a man standing in the
reception behind the counter and he gives him his de-
tails and asks for a room. The hotel owner writes down
his name and hands him a key, and after the tourist goes
to his room, the owner walks back to the boiler-room
where he just came from. He talks to the technician who
arrived earlier in the evening from the other side of town
to fix the central heating and begs him to fix it tonight
because his niece is terribly ill and a guest just came, he
looks Dutch or Belgian, and anyhow please, something
needs to be done!! It’s freezing here! The technician ex-
plains that the heating can’t work without a missing
piece that he needs to get and it can happen on Sunday
after the weekend, when the stores are open – sorry.
The hotel owner was nervous and anxious because of
his niece who was lying in bed, ill to the bone, pail and
delirious. She woke up and then closed her eyes, mum-
bling mad words. When the owner walked the techni-
cian to the entrance door, they met the doctor who was
standing in the lobby. He had just arrived, cold and wet
from the stormy rain outside. The doctor was in a hurry
and asked where the patient was, and if it was possible
to have a drink because of the cold and because it would
be great to warm up a bit. The owner leads him to his
niece’s room and goes to the bar to fix him a drink.
The doctor examines the young girl for more than an
hour with great concern, and throughout the night he
gives her medicine, telling her mother to put hot tow-
els on her forehead and fresh leeches on her arms. He
doesn’t take his eyes off her – alarmed and alert, he ex-
amines her like a scientist. The hotel owner stays awake
too and pours hot tea into the doctor’s empty whisky glass,
because that night is exceptionally cold.
48
The niece’s condition stabilises and she sleeps in peace.
Her forehead cools and her breath is deep and warm.
The hotel owner and his sister order a carriage for the
doctor and go each to their rooms to sleep at last. At that
moment, the German tourist is packing his clothes and
leaving his room. He finds the reception empty, and leaves
his key on the counter. He finds in the lobby the exhaust-
ed doctor waiting for his carriage and drinking cold tea
from a whisky glass. The doctor offers the tourist a ride,
and when the carriage arrives he rests his head on the
window and falls into a deep sleep. A couple of days later
the tourist writes in his diary.
“Dear diary,
I stopped for a night in Jerusalem and couldn’t help no-
ticing the peculiar behaviour of its inhabitants. They
do not heat their rooms and their homes in the winter,
not even on a cold and stormy night! They stay awake at
night, drinking till dawn and fall a sleep in the morning.
Diary, those people sure know how to party!”
With ‘Dear Diary’
you begin the most intimate text.
A letter to someone you know best.
Telling a story to the only person who knows it.
When you write ‘Dear Diary’ you are on the same page.
When I write a diary it needs to be in Hebrew.
English is not intimate enough for a diary.
All my diaries are public.
15 May
Dear Diary,
My parents picked me up from the airport at 2 am. On
the flight, sitting next to me in the middle seat (I sat by
the window) was an arrogant but friendly young man
coming back with his friends (occupying all the rows
in front of us) from a bachelor party. I don’t remember
if I asked but I felt he wanted to tell me that he served
49
in the army in unit 8200. He told me that Israeli intelli-
gence is very good and now, after his service, he wants to
open a school for ‘ethical hacking.’ He told me that Israeli
intelligence units helped the Mexican marines to capture
El Chapo by tapping his phone. I asked him how they fol-
low people. He said that they tap their phones or break
into their computers to check for any suspicious activities.
He told me that the explosions in Syria that were on the
news the other day were the result of Israeli intelligence.
IDF destroyed Iranian posts worth half a billion dollars in
twenty minutes. He told me that they were waiting for the
Iranians to settle into position and struck at once. I asked
if they can guess the passwords and enter emails and he
said no – it’s too difficult. In order to get into an email, one
needs to ‘phish’ – to send an email with a link so when the
other side clicks the link, they can get into his email. He
asked to not to tell that to anyone.
Antonio was still staying with my parents and they liked
him a lot. He slept in the guest room and I slept on the
couch in the living room. We stayed with my parents two
nights. I slept with the balcony door open. I got a cold.
When we moved to Tel Aviv I was sick.
Now it’s 15 May.
Yesterday we got the best apartment so far (on Airbnb).
It has two floors with two bedrooms, showers and toilets
on each floor. On the ground floor there’s a living room and
a door to the backyard that we didn’t bother to open. The
landlord left a note and asked us to water the plants. I said
to Antonio that we’d do it later.
I took a picture of Antonio sleeping.
Today we are going to Bezalel.
I have a talk there – I don’t remember the title of the talk.
The woman that picks us up is friendly and honest. She
talks honestly. I understand that she got a girlfriend and
she’s bringing up her son with her. Her girlfriend’s son.
She speaks about the events in Gaza. Sixty people were
shot. I was breathing from my mouth. I had fever. A stu-
dent or a teacher picked the three of us up from a cross-
roads in Tel Aviv and we drove to Jerusalem. I fell asleep
on the way. When we arrived and got out of the car, I asked
50
Antonio to touch my forehead because I could feel a fever
coming on. He said that I didn’t have any.
The woman that picked us up – Irit Chemo – suggested
that after the lecture we might go to a talk with the artist
Gil Shani in the Israel Museum. She spoke with great re-
spect and enthusiasm so we couldn’t say no.
In the lecture room, they couldn’t connect my hard
drive to the computer, so I projected the movie directly
from the internet. I spoke about my work. I don’t remem-
ber what I said. The students were laughing. They were
amused. After that I received an envelope with money
from Irit Chemo. She told us that the lecture in the Israel
Museum was cancelled because of the demonstrations
or fear of a terror attack, I don’t remember.
We walked with her, once out of the Academy. The
atmosphere was tense. Irit tried to get a ride from people
leaving the academy, but no one was driving to Tel Aviv.
We straggled along after her – we had to catch the bus.
When we got nearer to the station, the bus just passed us
so we started running. My breathing was burning and
husky like the laughter of an old man. An old smoker. We
made it. We were on the bus. She spoke enthusiastically
about many things. She recommended places for us to
eat, and after that she quoted Corrine Allal and said she
loved her. I can’t remember the quote.
A.G. From Netanya I visit the surrounding areas,
like Cesarea, another town like Netanya but
more posh: a lot of private villas with gardens, a bit in the
California or Florida style and with fewer tower blocks.
Netanyahu also has his private house here. Cesarea was
an important city during the Roman empire, and the ruins
are a big tourist attraction, even though the local authori-
ties prefer to reconstruct everything rather than restoring,
so everything looks a bit fake, like a mall by the sea with
some old stones.
I also start preparing my Tel-Aviv stay. I arrange some
studio visits, and the first is with Hillel Roman. Hillel is
an old friend of Keren’s, and one of the most interesting
Israeli artists of the last generations. He invited both me
and Keren to come to the Hamidrasha Academy of fine
51
arts, where he teaches two distinct lectures during our
stay here.
His studio is in Florentin, in a block of buildings tucked
away in a fold of the city. They could have been built in
the seventies, and are a bit crumbling and in decay, like
many other buildings in the city. In the blocks there are
small workshops, companies, studios, and one of the best
galleries in town, the Rosenfeld Gallery. But around the
block you still see there is minor criminal activity, like
prostitution.
Inside the studio there are a lot of amazing drawings,
beautifully done, black and white, just using a charcoal
pencil. Some of them are really big and kept in rolls that
I help to unfurl. The subjects are a mix of images taken
from art history, modernist architecture and something
closer to political issues. But in general, the impression
is the same as what you might have from reading a novel,
which even if it talks about many different moments in
our past, a near or distant past, it is actually talking about
our present time.
We talk about architecture, and I briefly sum up my
idea for the speech at Hamidrasha and how I will also end
up talking about underground and hypogeum architec-
ture. He tell me that, when I return to Jerusalem, I should
go and visit the Shrine of the Book, the only complete
architecture made by Friederich Kiesler to show and pro-
tect the Scroll of the Dead Sea. It’s a hypogeum building,
a shrine that withholds one of the symbols of Israel.
Throughout my stay, also together with Keren, we
met several times with Hillel, and we had beautiful car
trips and dinners. Without his point of view, I would never
have been able to go beyond the surface of this country.
K.C. In Israel, men serve in the army after high
school for three years. Women for two years.
I was released after eight months. I was the family’s fail-
ure. It was a matter of shame. A couple of months later, I
started studying art at the Avni Institute – an art acad-
emy in Tel Aviv – in Jaffa. It wasn’t a good school. Very
few had heard of it. At a certain point, the teachers all
resigned and I left after a couple of years. I was a double
52
failure. After several months, I got excepted to the Ha-
midrasha Beit-Berl. That Academy is a long building on a
piece of grass situated between two cities – Kfar Saba and
Tira. It was far from everything and I didn’t have a driv-
ing licence, so it was difficult to get there. The teachers
refused to acknowledge my studies at the Avni institute,
and so I had to started from the beginning – right from
the first year. I was furious.
A few weeks after the year started, I found myself lying
on the grass, trying to enjoy the cold sun of spring and
feel like a student on a campus. I was listening to a con-
versation between a couple of students sitting not too far
from me. One of them had to move into an apartment or
maybe it was me who wanted to move, but we decided to
meet and check out the apartment. We didn’t become
flatmate but we kept in touch and went on to be very good
friends. A month later, I left the academy because I didn’t
want to repeat the first year. It was the third time in a row
I dropped out – I was a serial failure.
Hillel and I used to meet in his apartment – it was more
spacious than mine. He used to cook Asian food – Chinese
noodles with salmon and sushi that he learned from his
mother and would practise on me. I asked him if his moth-
er was a cook and he said no, she works at the zoo. Taking
care of the animals. We are still friends.
A note from 15 May
Irit Chemo is also a friend of Hillel’s. She met him like I
did – after hearing him talking and joining in the con-
versation. She said that he was talking about painting
so beautifully that she had to turn her head and see who
it was.
A.G. Nechama and Adina are the owners of the
Noga Gallery, Keren’s gallery in Tel Aviv, lo-
cated in a very nice space near Rothschild Boulevard. They
took me to many interesting places, and put me in touch
with the Bezalel Academy of Fine Art that I visited also
for the final show of the academy during the last days of
my stay. They introduced me to some of their artists, all
53
of them really good and already established in an inter-
national context, despite being still young.
The studio space of Shahar Yahalom – one of those
young artists – is in a area of barracks and small work-
shops in Florentin, near the Bezalel Academy. Shahar is
part of a little avant-garde group of sculptors working
internationally to try to get beyond the idea of appropri-
ation and readymades in the 3D language. I felt her work
to be immediately familiar, something between Medardo
Rosso and new artists such as Huma Bhabha and Thom-
as Houseago, yet bearing a very specific signature. I was
looking at real sculptural research, no doubt about it. Sha-
har is proceeding with strength along this path, making
no compromises, also experimenting with materials like
glass, stained glass and aluminium, which in the hands
of anyone else might sound kitchy. I tell her about the
Arturo Martini’s book Scultura lingua morta, and I un-
derstand how little the book is known outside Italy, and
how much people would love to know about it. I think is
a crucial book today, also to reconsider Duchamp’s legacy
and try to find new paths to go beyond the overused tactic
of decontextualising elements taken from reality.
On 15 May, we move in our new home, the only good one
we had besides Keren’s parents’ house during our stay in
Israel, right in the middle of Florentin. The area is famous
for being the new gentrified hipster place. It’s a half messy
and crumbling half fancy area in the south of the city. We
walk everywhere from here, taking very long strolls,
something Keren loves. We speak a lot about pretty much
everything, never too much about art. Tel Aviv is still a
patchwork city, and even between two expensive areas
you can still find the last surviving zones with barracks
and workshops of people working with metal, wood or
fixing cars. At night, these parts are completely dark but
you can walk around and feel completely safe.
I think probably for ideological reasons, safety in cities
in the Western world is fairly much off the intellectual
agenda, and not part of any interesting discussion, always
connected with ideas like repression and police-controlled
societies: all concerns that are completely understandable
54
and legitimate. But when I was there, walking in the dark
and speaking to Keren, I strongly understood how the
feeling of security and safety always brings freedom with
it too. I felt not only safe but freer than I had felt in many,
many years. We should always be aware that there is no
possible freedom without safety.
At the same time, the city is anything but completely
‘under control’. This safety somehow allowed people and
citizens to live a very Middle-Eastern informality and
easiness. Just recently buildings started to be properly
refurbished, also due to a new perception of their urban
heritage after the UNESCO protection of the Bauhaus
area. But everywhere is full of buildings in a very bad
state, almost crumbling, or where the stuff packed inside
the houses pours out the windows or balconies. Here and
there, many new ugly towers for people buying houses
in Israel are popping up. They are often awful, and made
very cheaply, despite being pretentiously fancy. But they
don’t ruin the atmosphere of a city that is always very
decadent and sexy, due to this strong feeling of freedom
you perceive there, where lot of things are out of control.
The country in general and especially Tel Aviv is a city
where the LGBT community is vibrant like in few other
places in the world. Israel is the only safe place for the
LGBT community in the whole Near and Middle East.
The colour of the skins can cover all the nuances hu-
man beings have had in their history, and the most beau-
tiful Middle-Eastern eyes can be found on a Russian face,
or the other way around, the greenest eyes I have ever
seen in my life can be on a body in which most of the
blood has been inside the walls of Sana’a for thousands
of years. Their being so sexy is boosted even further by
their fierce and strong attitude. I’m aware I’m moving
around stereotypes and banalities, and I have probably
already tripped over them.
The apex of all this was the bar/restaurant Port Said.
It’s a place suggested by my friend Immanuel Elbau.
I first went there on my first night in Tel Aviv. Keren
didn’t like it because it is too hipsterish, but I went there
every time I was alone, to eat, drink, write and work.
55
They always played amazing music, as well as a lot of old
Italian songs, like Lucio Battisti and Adriano Celentano.
It is in front of the big old Tel Aviv Synagogue, in Allemby
Street, the second most important street in Tel Aviv after
Rothschild Avenue.
Amid that huge number of young people, many are
wearing the uniform for the military service that here
takes a lot of time. Every street, every bus, every train
or Sherut is full of young people in uniforms, with guns
and huge automatic weapons on them. Probably it is also
a way for the country to give an idea of control to have
all these people in uniform around the place. I see young
girls holding a huge automatic guns. It moves you from
sadness to a perverted attraction to them, and the feeling
of guilt connected to all of this.
These young people in the army are somehow allowed
to keep their special haircuts, jewels or other classic fea-
tures that decorate a young body. These details, part of
the rituals of youth, communication and a seduction pro-
cess, make everything akin to some kind of dystopian
story where the Western world shifted into something
else. Since the level of education of this generation is re-
ally high, and since you can understand it from the little
details these boys and girls carry with them, a book in
one hand, when you are in Tel Aviv you have the impres-
sion of being on a huge Californian university campus,
which for some reason has been militarised. The idea I
formed of the Israeli army is one of young intellectuals,
artists, writers, photographers, actors, poets: something
weird if we usually think intellectuals in the rest of the
Western world never have anything to do with these kinds
of things.
Many of the people I met had this experience. You im-
mediately feel there is nothing nice or cool about it. All
of them are living it with great dignity and decency, but
you can feel it is anything but fun (I had the impression
that it would affect some of them dramatically for the rest
of their lives) even though none of them ever complained
about it to me.
I don’t know if this youth is better or worse than oth-
ers I have experienced, or of the one I grew up with.
56
But I had the feeling that this could be the youth of the
future, for better or for worse, also in the rest of Europe.
The best lines to understand art and literature’s compli-
cated relationship with politics were written by one of the
greatest writers of our time, who passed away on 22 May:
Philip Roth. That day I was visiting the Tel Aviv Museum
of Art when I read the news, and I was in front of some
of the best Soutine, Laurencin and Ernst I had seen in
my life, owned by that beautiful museum, so weird with
all those rooms that preserve all those jewels in such a
warm, southerly place, ones created at completely differ-
ent latitudes and in far colder cities.
In the book I Married a Communist, Roth wrote about
literature something that also works for art: “Politics is
the great generalizer and literature the great particular-
izer, and not only are they in an inverse relationship to
each other, they are in an antagonistic relationship. To
politics, literature is decadent, soft, irrelevant, boring,
wrongheaded, dull, something that makes no sense and
that really oughtn’t be. Why? Because the particulariz-
ing impulse is literature. How can you be an artist and
renounce the nuance? But how can you be a politician and
allow the nuance? As an artist, the nuance is your task.
Your task is not to simplify. Even should you choose to
write in the simplest way, à la Hemingway, the task re-
mains to impart the nuance, to elucidate the complication,
to imply the contradiction. Not to erase the contradiction,
not to deny the contradiction, but to see where, within
the contradiction, lies the tormented human being. To
allow for the chaos, to let it in. You must let it in. Other-
wise you produce propaganda.” In the Haaretz newsletter,
there is a memoire of him, underlining his complicated
relationship with Israel.
We go back to Jerusalem together with Keren, her father
Moshe and two friends visiting from Italy. The plan is to
visit the Vad Yashem (the memorial to the victims of the
Holocaust), the Israel Museum and the old city.
I want to visit the Israel Museum in order to see the
Shrine of the Book that Hillel suggested to me. The Shrine
is the wing of the museum housing the Dead Sea Scrolls,
57
 some of the oldest manuscript fragments of the Bible.
The building I think is the only complete architecture
designed in his life by Frederick John Kiesler. He did it to-
gether with Armand Phillip Bartos and Gezer Heller, and
it was completed in 1965, seven months before he died.
Kiesler was one of the main architects and thinkers
of the past century, and he designed some of the most
important exhibition spaces in art history, like Peggy
Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century Gallery art salon
in 1942. Since the beginning of modernity in architec-
ture, there has been a school of thought that refuses the
hyper-rationalist and hard-edged attitude perceived as
the mainstream, in favour of a more organic – and ini-
tially surrealist and Dadaist – approach. And Kiesler is
probably the main figure, especially among architects,
who worked in close connection with art and artists.
He was born and raised in Vienna, but moved to New
York in 1926.
The Shrine “is built as a white dome, covering a struc-
ture placed two thirds below the ground, reflected in a
pool of water surrounding it. Across from the white dome
is a black basalt wall. According to one interpretation, the
colours and shapes of the building are based on the im-
agery of the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against
the Sons of Darkness; the white dome symbolises the
Sons of Light and the black wall symbolizes the Sons
of Darkness. As the fragility of the scrolls makes it im-
possible to display all of them on a continuous basis, a
rotation system is used. After a scroll has been exhibited
for three to six months, it is removed from its showcase
and placed temporarily in a special storeroom, where it
‘rests’ from exposure.”
Kiesler’s round, organic architecture, which will be
always connected with his Endless House project, is prob-
ably the most up-to-date vision of a society often banally
defined as ‘fluid’, where borders also in architecture are
basically gone, where the idea of sharing also in the way
of living is the basis of everything. And even where the
idea of presenting thoughts, texts and ideas is no longer
connected to the limited pages of a book, it is almost al-
ways based on the shape and movement of a scroll.
58
K.C. When a man visits the beaches in Brazil, he
knows he’s looking at the beaches in Brazil.
When he visits the Coliseum he thinks about the Coliseum.
When he visits New York he understands that there’s noth-
ing similar to American culture but American culture.
When a man visits Israel, he’s using it for his needs.
Those of spiritual or political consumption. A trip to Jeru-
salem can provide an easy act of redemption or of anthro-
pological study. It’s an experiment, and the results must
serve the visitors, travellers and tourists. I didn’t meet a
tourist who knew Allenby is not only the longest street in
Tel Aviv but that he was also a military commander who
occupied parts of Israel and Jerusalem while they were
under the control of the Ottoman Empire. To be honest,
nobody knows it. Even I needed to look it up on Wikipedia.
When a tourist walks along Arlozorov Street, he doesn’t
wonder who murdered Arlozorov and his wife while they
were strolling down the beach.
My argument is weak but valid. A man returns from a
visit to Israel with an updated image of himself.
A.G. During our walk in the old city, we also vis-
ited the Armenian neighbourhood, which
I hadn’t seen the first time I was here. It’s to the side
of the city, not far from the Jaffa Gate. There are some
nice ceramic workshops, an important tradition for the
Armenian community.
What caught my attention here was a series of posters
on the walls, with a map of the area that depicts Turkey,
showing the main dates and places of the murders, depor-
tations, deportation routes etc. of the Armenian Genocide
that took place between 1915 and 1923. The Armenian
Genocide is one of the most dramatic events in human
history. Hitler appears to have taken it as an example of
how global opinion and institutional powers are not so
sensitive to genocide, since there were basically no conse-
quences for the Turkish government of the Ottoman Em-
pire after that. Below the map, a text titled RECOGNITION
CONDEMNATION PREVENTION sums up what happened.
All the posters, and I mean all of them, are ruined,
scratched and overwritten. I don’t see a single one left un-
59
touched. I read a lot of handwritten references to Turkey
and the Ottoman Empire, and some Turkish flags drawn
here and there. In some I read ‘IT’S A DREAM’. This is the
thing that struck me most: a dream.
One of the crucial issues in all these historical events
is collecting proof and evidence that can show what actu-
ally happened or did not happen. It’s true for the Arme-
nian Genocide like for the Jewish Genocide that both are
denied every day by many people. This uncertainty of
something like history that we think should be certain
is disturbing in a historical perspective, but it might
be even worse in the future. If it’s so difficult to prove
and bring evidence of facts that happened in a time of
material artefacts, when books and photos were printed,
and when the scope for modifying images and objects
was so small, what will happen in a near or distant fu-
ture, when pretty much everything may be modified or
created ex-nihilo while seeming entirely authentic? Are
we so sure that those kinds of crimes could never hap-
pen again?
Let us consider legislation. We know how just the
moving of a comma before or after a word can completely
change the meaning of a law. Over the last few centu-
ries, there were paper books to which we could go back
to check if the rule was written in a specific way. What
might happen when there will no longer be any printed
material?
We think this dematerialisation of our lives is con-
nected to the future, to progress, and every time I talk
about these topics I sound nostalgic and a bit conserva-
tive, even to myself. But at school, we were taught that
one of the biggest steps in human history occurred when
they started using stone, paper, or other such material
supports to write down laws and other things that up
until then had only been handed down orally. That was
important because when they were maintained in a fluid
and immaterial way, the laws were more easily interpret-
ed and bent to suit the elements of society that were in
power, or that were in a strong position. So, it’s not the
first time in human history that information, communi-
cation and rules have been ‘fluid’ and unstable. Maybe it
60
is also wrong to consider dematerialisation as a step into
the future. It might just be more of a partial regression.
I was reminded of a text by Jonathan Franzen in which
he speaks about ‘material books’ and digital ones. “Maybe
nobody will care about printed books fifty years from
now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific
object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I
take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing –
that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make
the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They
were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A
screen always feels like we could delete that, change that,
move it around. A sense of permanence has always been
part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid,
but here is this text that doesn’t change. I don’t have a
crystal ball. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard
to make the world work if there’s no permanence like
that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible
with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”
K.C. During this visit I wrote and shot a short film.
It was a script that celebrated my birthday a
year late. By then I was closer to forty-one. Since I left
the country, I follow my friends that I grew up with from
a distance. We are going through the same difficulties
at exactly the same time, because we were born in the
same year. All my closest friends in Israel were born in
1977. Just like me.
Every time I visit the country, I feel ever more distant,
and at the same time more sentimental. Romanticism
is created by distance, alienation and perhaps misun-
derstanding. When I visit Israel, I arrive more arrogant,
heavier. I arrive European. I look down my nose at my
friends and other people. With love. I arrive a colonialist.
I knew I would film it in French. This language (despite
not understanding a word of it) expresses alienation, ar-
rogance, and romanticism – just where I am right now.
I called the movie Des trous (Holes) because I didn’t
have any more experiences to hold on to. Only memories,
or stories that turned into memories. Everything is fad-
ing to white nothingness or rotting to form black holes.
61
 DES TROUS
VOICEOVER:
Cela se produit quand on vous apparaît. Tout de
blanc vêtu, telle une mariée venue des colonies.
On se sent proche de n’importe quel humain, n’im-
porte quel animal, la moindre cellule. On arrive
en force, sans raison particulière. Et ça se passe
en français. 1
The sea. Water. The foam. Hillel is playing with his daugh-
ter. Their fit. Their face. (KORIN ALAL MUSIC.) Their
hands. Hillel is starring at the sun. The sun. Panning to
the sea. Water. Sentimental. Camera zooms out. People
are interfering the camera in the foreground. People play-
ing on the beach. Dogs are walking and running. People
are buying ice cream. The streets at sunset. The street of
Hillel’s studio. The staircase.
VOICEOVER:
C’est ce que l’on voit depuis l’atelier de Hillel. 2
Hillel in his studio. He’s moving the paintings from place
to place. He’s talking to the camera.
VOICEOVER:
Hillel est né en 1975. Récemment, il a remarqué
que les peintures de son atelier avaient été rongées
par des mites. Hillel enseigne à la faculté d’arts
d’Hamidrasha à Beit Berl. Il a une copine et une
1 It happens when we pay a visit. Dressed in white like colonialist brides.
We empathise with every human, animal and cell.
We come to you with force, an unapologetic gesture.
We come to you in French.
2 This is the view from Hillel’s studio.
At night this street is filled with prostitutes.
62
fille, un appartement et un atelier. Il a construit
lui-même son ordinateur et une machine à Ethere-
um. Il y a cinq ans, il a construit un observatoire
pour observer la voute céleste. 3
Camera on the works. Close-ups.
Dan and Tami’s Balcony. Daytime.
VOICEOVER:
Tous les films ont déjà été faits. 4
Dan is leaning on the wall. His hands are in his pockets.
He pulls himself from the wall and leans on the balcony
next to Tami. He tells her some thing.
VOICEOVER:
Dan est né en 1977. Il réalise des films documen-
taires. Quand il parle, le temps s’allonge. Se ralentit.
Il n’y a plus d’espace. 5
Part of Tami’s body is not in the frame. Her head is outside
the frame. The camera is on her head. She’s reading a book.
VOICEOVER:
Le moment d’alors devient le moment présent et
« nous » se transforme en « je ». 6
(She’s looking up. Above the camera.)
TAMI:
Regarde le ciel. 7
3 Hillel was born in 1975. He recently noticed that his paintings in his
studio had been eaten by moths. Hillel teaches art at Hamidrasha in
Beit Berl. He has a girlfriend. A daughter. An apartment and a studio.
He built his own computer and an Ethereum machine. Five years ago,
he build an observatory so he could observe celestial events.
4 All movies were made in the past.
5 Dan was born in 1977. He’s a documentary film maker.
When he talks, time gets stretched. Slower. Space is gone.
6 Then turns into now and we turns into I.
I find myself in the words I’m reading.
7 Look at the skies.
63
The Skies – VOICEOVER:
Mon esprit s’évade. 12
VOICEOVER:
Il tombe. 8 Shoot in the morning, the Draras.

Long shot. VOICEOVER:

Ma soeur va se marier le mois prochain. 13
An Interview with Korin Allal.
Hard quick cuts of the party – Yael’s wedding.
VOICEOVER:
Corinne Allal est une chanteuse israélienne. Elle VOICEOVER:
est née en Tunisie en 1955. Elle a immigré en Israël L’appartement de ma jeune sœur. Il y a dix-sept
à l’âge de 8 ans. 9 ans, je lui ai donné ce dessin. Elle ne remarque
pas qu’il s’estompe.
She’s playing music. The camera is on the streets in Tel C’était mon appartement.
Aviv. Camera is on Ronit. In the cafè. Il était à moi.
J’étais là.
VOICEOVER: Je suis parti.
Mon cousin Ronit est né en 1978. 10 Je suis mort.
Je reviens en fantôme. 14
My parents in their new apartment.
(Zoom out from Hillel’s paintings.)
Moshe is walking through the apartment. Watching TV.
VOICEOVER:
VOICEOVER: Rongé par les mites
Mon père Moshe est né à Tel-Aviv en 1946. Ma mère Mon esprit criblé de trous.
Batya est née à Tel-Aviv en 1948. Ils ont emménagé Des trous de l’esprit. 15
dans cet appartement il y a un an. 11

Parts of the apartment.

The view from the balcony. 12 My mind is drifting. My sister is getting married next month.
13 My sister is getting married next month.
14 This is her city.
This is the view from her window.
This is her apartment. My younger sister’s apartment.
Seventeen years ago I gave her this drawing.
She doesn’t no-tice it’s fading.
That was my apartment.
8 They are falling. It was mine.
9 Korin Allal is an Israeli singer. She was born in Tunisia in 1955. I was there.
She immigrated to Israel at the age of eight. When she talks, I left.
I turns into she. When she sings, foreign memories rise like I died.
documentaries and footprints are erased. I return as a ghost.
10 My cousin Ronit was born in 1978 – her laughter can swallow the world. 15 Eaten by moths.
11 My father Moshe was born in Tel Aviv, 1946. My mother Batya was Holes clustered in my mind.
born in Tel Aviv, 1948. They moved to this apartment a year ago. Mind holes.

64 65
Hillel’s observatory. VOICEOVER:
The stars. L’histoire. 20
-
Dan and Tami’s Balcony. Night time. (MUSIC) VOICEOVER:
Je regarde ces images, encore et encore jusqu’à ce
VOICEOVER: qu’elles deviennent miennes. Des trous de l’esprit. 21
Je regarde d’étranges souvenirs encore et encore
jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient miens. 16 Dan leans on the wall next to Tami.
He tells her something.
Dan is leaning on the wall. His hands are in his pockets. Part of Tami’s body is not in the frame.
He’s pulls himself from the wall and leans on the bench Her head is outside the frame.
next to Tami. He tells her something. The camera is on her head.
(She’s talking partly to the camera, partly to Dan.)
VOICEOVER:
Dan travaille sur un documentaire sur Benjamin TAMI:
Netanyahou. Il décrit sa vie. Son ascension et sa Viens à moi. 22
chute. 17
There’s a glass of wine on the balcony.
Part of Tami’s body is not in the frame. Her head is outside She’s touching the glass with her finger.
the frame. The camera is on her head. (She’s talking partly Close up on the finger.
to the camera, partly to Dan.)
VOICEOVER:
TAMI: Mes amis. 23
Il pense au montage du film. 18
The book is closed on the window sill.
There’s a glass of wine on the balcony. She’s touching the
glass with her finger. Close-up on the finger. VOICEOVER:
Ma famille. 24
VOICEOVER:
Les coupes. 19 VOICEOVER:
Le moment présent devient le moment d’alors et
The book is closed on the window sill. « je » devient « nous ». Nous nous perdons dans les
images que nous regardons. 25

20 The story.
21 I look at those images over and over again until
they are mine. Mind holes.
16 I watch foreign memories over and over until they are mine. 22 Come to me.
17 Dan is working on a documentary about Benjamin Netanyahu. 23 My friends.
He describes his life. His rise and fall. 24 My family.
18 He thinks about the editing. 25 Now turns into then and I turns into we.
19 The cuts. We lose ourself in the images we watch.

66 67
Dan leans on the wall next to Tami.
He tells her something.
A.G. I follow Keren and Hillel the day she also has
her lecture at the Hamidrasha. She presents
Part of Tami’s body is not in the frame. a selection of her videos, and describes them each with
Her head is outside the frame. just few words in Hebrew that I do not understand. The
The camera is on her head. works keep their strength also outside the exhibition
(She’s talking partly to the camera, partly to Dan.) space, and it’s refreshing to see them again after, in
some cases, many years.
VOICEOVER: There is a line in a movie that talks about the non-ex-
Nous sommes des fantômes. 26 istence of the past, and how we can only face the present.
It will stay in my mind for a long time, and I will think a
There’s a glass of wine on the balcony. lot about it. The question for me is the importance of the
She’s touching the glass with her finger. ‘present’, in all its meanings, also coupled with concepts
Close-up on the finger. such as physical proximity, closeness, bodies and skin.
The present is important in order to be in the ‘presence’
VOICEOVER: of people and things, to be close to people and things.
Nos empreintes laissent des marques sur la langue And by ‘things’ I mean above all being in the presence
que vous parlez. 27 of artworks, real art, not images, because art is not an
image: it’s an object with specific limits, sizes, weights,
The book is closed on the window sill. colours and a certain rate at which it ages. Being in a
presence as a way of sharing responsibility, responsi-
VOICEOVER: bility for existence and reality close to us. Being present
Nos pensées laissent des traces de pas au sol. 28 as a rejection of absence, absence as a precondition of
absolution. Being present as the only condition to really
-- act or not act over reality, make it better, sometimes fail-
Titles. ing, and always taking back responsibility for our deeds
and those we didn’t do even though we were there. The
Dan’s wedding. ‘present’ as the only possible time in politics.
Nir’s Bar Mitzva I always thought that thinking too much about the
Noa’s Birthday past is dangerous also in political issues. And its also
dangerous to be too obsessed with the future, plan-
ning for it too carefully. No one has the crystal ball. The
thoughts come into my mind a lot also due to my being in
Israel, and in a moment of great turbulence, one of the
strongest of recent decades. The US Embassy moving
to Jerusalem, POTUS Trump visiting, the friction on
the Gaza Strip, along the Palestinian borders and also
on the Golhan Heights. Why in all of these discussions
about these places in the world does the past have such a
specific weight compared to the present state of the coun-
26 We are ghosts.
27 Our fingerprints leave marks on your language.
tries in this area? Why do we think that considering the
28 Our thoughts leave footprints on your soil. past so much might affect the near and distant future?

68 69
How can something we didn’t experience directly be
more important than things we see every day around
us? Is it a syndrome of refusing reality? Of avoiding
growing up, and facing – i.e. being in the presence of
– reality?
In Tel Aviv I also visit the studios of two artists I already
knew and have always loved, really different from one
another.
I reach Guy Ben Ner at his house on one of the few
very hot days there were during my stay in Israel, in
probably the coldest May of the last century. I walk down
a wide street outside the centre and I reach the place
completely sweaty and exhausted. The block where he
lives is really in decay. The names on the doorbells are
in Hebrew, and later I would discover they didn’t even
work properly. But asking around, I manage to reach the
correct floor and door. I knock and a dog starts bark-
ing aggressively. Guy comes to open and I make friends
with his super-sweet dog. He has no studio, and we have
an amazing conversation about his latest projects with
migrants in Israel. The meeting is, as I had imagined,
a warm and intense conversation about things in be-
tween life and art. We study each other, every word is
uttered carefully, and the impression is one of a time
with heightened intensity. The house inside is beautiful,
a bit messy, lots of books and pics of the children. The
visit doesn’t last too long, after which I leave and plunge
myself back into the heat.
That same day, I visit one of my favourite painters
ever, Avner Ben Gal. His studio is on a major avenue in
central Tel Aviv. I reach the corner of a big building, a
former bank with big windows covered in colours and
signs. I understand it’s his studio. Once inside, he tells
me a friend of his left him the space until he decides
what to do with it. Avner got in, with a few pieces of
furniture, his paints, canvases and paper, and began to
use it just as it was: basically empty. All around there
are amazing works, with beautiful dream-like figures,
warm colours and eye-catching signs. We talk for some
hours about painting, and how the system has changed
70
since he started. Then he shows me a big album of draw-
ings and I’m in heaven. He is one of those people who is
able to recall the past with great love, yet at the same
time who is never nostalgic, and who looks to the fu-
ture with great physical, mental and soulful desire. He
smokes a lot, speak in a soft voice, and never goes too far
into the explanation of his art. His art actually doesn’t
really need it, and it’s also something I have found in
the past with all the great artists I have had the chance
to meet.
A few days later we go out, the three of us, Avner, Ker-
en and I, and we end up drinking in Allemby Street in
a old-style bar, one that was important for the artist
community in the past. Keren and Avner get along really
well, and I’m happy. They speak about everything and
I basically just listen to them, thinking and not speaking
too much. I’ve always loved listening to artists talking
among themselves, and it’s magical when they warm to
each other. We drink non-stop until late into the night,
and I go back home completely drunk.
K.C. If I talk about something without talking
about myself, it means I’m using reality wrong.
2 June
Dear Diary,
the hardest part just started.
I’m thirsty.
There’s juice in the kitchen cupboard but I just started
writing so it’s not the time to drink.
It’s so hard to type in Hebrew. I haven’t done it for a
long time – seven years. I type so slow. So so so
so so so. Why so so so all the time?
I’m thirsty – so so so so sad – I said it before.
If you read what I write at my typing speed, you would
fall asleep or commit suicide or simply stop reading
it and mock me: “Can’t you write? You stupid woman.
A stupid woman who can’t be even a secretary. What
71
kind of a woman can’t be a secretary? Only a stupid
woman…”
Let’s start.
From trouble to light.
From nothing to something.
Let’s see what I promised:
Yesterday I visited my cousin with my sisters. I had
a month full of social activities and family reunions. I’m
happy I visited her. Her name is Rona and she’s the cous-
in I like the least. She visited me once in Berlin eight
years ago, and we didn’t get along. She got angry at me
the last time I saw her, because I didn’t really pay any
attention to her. She said so to Ronit, my other cousin.
This time it was important for me to visit her because
she had breast cancer and she’s got no one. She’s an or-
phan with no brothers or sisters, no husband or wife.
She’s my age – forty years old with no children. So our
disagreements are not relevant.
We visited her and gave her leftovers from my young-
er sister’s wedding. We sat in her house for more than
an hour. I noticed she’s physically and mentally weak.
Her mother died of breast cancer and her father died
from heart attack couple of years later. She lives in their
house – her childhood home. When we left the house, my
sister opened the gate of the front yard and I pointed on
a large cactus in the corner of the yard and said, “Pretty
cactus.” My sisters agreed.
I got my period.
Now I’m calculating they days of my period.
Not because of control or a fetish for numbers.
Everything has a reason.
Nothing is cute.
Today is tomorrow’s previous paragraph.
I’m going to stay at my cousin Ronit’s place.
I get along with her.
I need to film her for the video. Tomorrow I’m plan-
ning to meet Hillel and Dan for the last time, and they
will bring me materials for the video.
72
After that I will host a Chinese artist I met six years
ago – I’m not excited.
It seems to me that Ronit is not excited to see me.
I don’t care – we are family.
I’m lying exhausted now on the couch in her apart-
ment in Tel Aviv.
Later on I will pass by Dan’s and pick up his wedding
video.
I knew the wedding would be part of my video when
I shot it. I imagined myself as Pasolini, and panned the
camera in generous round movements, following the
groom and the bride; the guests and the little girls that
spread pink petals around the couple’s feet under the
chuppa, and when their baskets were empty, they picked
up the petals from the floor and spread them again. I felt
an arrogant compassion or compassionate arrogance
just like Pasolini felt when he shot his documentaries.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.
After I pick up the footage from Dan, I will go to Itzik
the Great and host Yan Xing – the Chinese artist I met
in Beijing. He asked me to find a restaurant that is the
most Israeli and authentic. Itzik the Great seemed fit
because they serve a lot of little salads and skewered
meat and this is an Israeli restaurant. It’s so Israeli no
one thinks about it.
Everything needs to be judged.
Antonio didn’t like the little salads and it killed me.
I say to his credit that it wasn’t just a matter of taste
but a principle, and that’s easier for me to understand. On
the second day he was offered salads, he refused and said
“They are boring.” That’s why I think it’s a principle for
him. He refused because of their dominant appearance
and taste. He wanted to control his eating habits. He
was guarded.
It’s all and nothing.
All the time.
What’s more important – the forgotten or the remem-
bered?
73
 The evening with Yan Xing was crazy. We went to
Itzik the Great and enjoyed the salads as expected or
as I had hoped. Then we went for a drink in Jaffa and
he wanted to continue. He wanted to go to a gay bar. He
had an app for gays and there he found a place in Jaffa. It
was just a black door. We rang the doorbell and entered.
We sat with some people that spoke to us. They were all
amused by him. It wasn’t a gay bar, but it was gay friend-
ly. He asked the bartender if gay Muslims visit too. She
didn’t know but said it’s Muslim friendly but gay Mus-
lims are not so open about it in public. We kept drinking,
and later we joined Dan and his friends in a swanky
bar in Tel Aviv. Yan Xing asked a friend of Dan’s “Have
you ever tried an Asian?” and the friend said, “Maybe
tonight’s the night.” Yan Xing was laughing hard.
I wake up on my cousin’s couch.
She has an apartment with two floors in Hamedina
Square. One floor with a roof that looks over the city.
She and her boyfriend are smoking weed. Everyone in
Tel Aviv smokes weed. Except Hillel.
7 June
I just arrived in Basel. Fabian and Susie were waiting for
me at the airport. We landed at exactly the same time –
3:45 pm. I arrived on the EasyJet flight from Tel Aviv and
they came in from Berlin. They were waiting for me in the
luggage area. It softened the impact of the landing. Samuel
Leuenberger (the curator) was waiting for us at the exit on
the Swiss side. There are two more exits – German and
French. Basel borders two countries, and one can reach
France in twenty minutes on the metro.
Fabian designed a postcard – an advertisement for a
play. I asked Lara from the gallery to send ten posters so
we could post them all over the city.
Our apartment is big and spacious. I have a bedroom
with a living room.
My suitcase is lying messily the floor, like a dead cat on
a highway. My clothes are coming out of it, spread around
like innards.
74
From the day we arrived, Susie and I suffered from
headaches. We thought it was because the air in Basel is
too pure and clean. Maybe there’s something wrong with
the mountains – our brains couldn’t handle it.
I had great hopes for the first performance. The rehears-
als were excellent, the atmosphere was good and may peo-
ple arrived in the city. There was a circus in town. A
real circus. (We considered buying tickets but as the day
went on it slipped our minds.) We were thrilled. I said
to the actors, “Don’t get too excited – only a few people
will come to watch. Don’t expect much.” But I hoped
that many people would come. I wanted the theatre to
be packed. Unfortunately I was right – less than twenty
people showed up. Half of them left in the middle. Every
ten minutes someone walked out of the theatre. Even
when they entered, they didn’t sit down: they just kept
chatting, standing next to the chairs. I was standing
where a technician was sitting and didn’t dare to watch.
The technician muttered, “Don’t art folk know they’re
supposed to sit down in the theatre?” After they sat down,
the show started. Susie and Fabian forgot their lines. It
was bad. They added personal jokes to the script. I was
furious. I was insulted. It was dark.
12 June
I’m not furious anymore. I woke up depressed the next
morning. Susie wanted to go to a champagne breakfast at
the fair – something that was promised on the VIP card.
I was lying in bed thinking “It disgusts me, it just dis-
gusts me! Who needs these people? All they care about, all
they want is money, food and alcohol. Dumb pigs. They
agree with everything. They always take the easy way.
I hate them. They can’t feel love; they have no discipline.
Just can’t say no to broiled fish. Can’t sit down for more
than ten minutes. Stupid people! Ugly puppets! What a
horrible world!”
Then, without a second thought – I got out of bed,
brushed my teeth, got dressed and joined Fabian and
Susie. My mood swung aimlessly, for no reason. I got
drunk quickly but not too much, and it was fun.
75
 We took pictures of ourselves eating oysters and drink- Abrielle is taking a shower. I edited half of the film.
ing champagne – the good life. My anger vanished after It’s exciting. The footage of the Draras, my parents’ apart-
the first sip of alcohol. We started fooling around and ment, the beach. Everything looks alive, and with the
enjoyed whatever we could. French it’s not embarrassing me. It looks colonial – it’s
looks dignified. Abrielle gets out of the shower. She’s
13 June wrapped in a towel; she looks good. I still type slow.
The keyboard is new to me, to the habits of my fingers.
Susie found out that the coffee we had been drinking It’s not fun.
was decaf. It made me happy.
17 June
14 June
Yesterday we did our final performance. It was the
Today I bought some regular coffee and we’re all feeling only performance that was advertised by the festival
the difference. Our headaches stopped. I hope today the so the place was packed, but there was no air con-
show will be better and more people will come. I wish. ditioning so the air was humid and hot. Twenty min-
I can’t sit still. I’ll go for a walk. utes into the show, my shirt was wet, sticking to my
body. I didn’t dare to look. I was impatient. The heat
15 June was unbearable. Forty minutes into the play and peo-
ple were fanning themselves with pieces of paper. Su-
Not many people came yesterday either. sie told me later, after the play ended, that the audi-
My heart is sinking. ence had suffered. They could see it in their faces.
It’s a shame. At one moment in the play, the house lights come on
Men love men. while the actors keep talking. Susie said that when the
Life is average and that’s the way it’s going to end. light went off again, all the lights of people’s mobiles
It’s morning now. could be seen, and they hurried to turn them off and
The End. hide their phones.
We were not happy. We were depressed. We went for
Now I’m getting angry. a drink but drank very little. The next day, Susie and
I need to break free. Fabian went back to Berlin. I stayed with Abrielle an-
If that’s the art scene, other day to enjoy Basel. There was a dinner and drinks
then I’m not an artist. before the dinner and the last day of the art fair. Not in
Life is going to get wilder. this order.
I said it before. Not here. There. I’m sitting in front of the laptop. We just came back
And there I should be. from the fair, I took off my shoes so my toes are now
There I should go. breathing, splayed wide open.
I need to stop time. We are going back to the fair. For the drinks and the
Then space will vanish. dinner.
Abrielle is arriving today. I’m one of them now.
I will stay at home today and edit the video. It’s a shame.
Fabian and Susie are going to visit museums. My toes go back to the shoes.
I’m working now. Back to the cell.

76 77
 18 June
Last night was fun and horrible at the same time. I don’t
remember the reason for the horror – we arrived late to
the fair and Benjamin gave us an invite for two. I wasn’t
invited to the dinner but he said he would arrange it. So
why the horror? Because I got drunk and bloated and
I was loud and heavy and vulgar. Now I’m awake and
all I can hear is the sound of the people at the dinner –
hundreds of people shouting, socialising and my voice
too – I’m one of them. I’m talking and talking, and every
time I open my mouth, I open myself and they see and
hear all my bad taste spilling out.
Maybe that’s the reason for the horror.
My ears are ringing.
Now I’m editing my sister’s wedding and her apartment
in Jerusalem. It’s so nice to see my father starring into
nowhere, and then he notices my cousin and they hug. His
youngest daughter just got married. He seems pleased and
happy. Everything was so nice in Israel and everything
is so cold outside Israel. So tight.
So stressful. Hateful. Everything is so so so lonely. This
morning I’m in oblivion again, asking to stop it. Stop time
and space and everything that moves against me. Star-
ing at the computer – empty on the inside, empty on the
screen – and typing.
78
KEREN CYTTER
(Tel Aviv 1977) is an Israeli visual artist and writer
living in New York. In particular, she creates films
and video suites that adopt a nonlinear narrative
to represent social realities. The artist specifically
plays with the notion of the real and the fictitious,
using nonprofessional actors and balancing her
work between performance and theatre. Language
plays a central role in her work, with plot lines and
structure influenced by the formal devices of poet-
ry. In addition to her video and performance work,
Cytter is also a critically acclaimed writer: she
has published three novels and poems as well as
excerpts from her diary. Selected solo exhibitions
of Cytter’s work include that at Museion, Bolzano
(2019); SCHLOSS, Oslo (2017); Künstlerhaus
Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz (2016); Museum
of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2015), Kunsthal
Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014); Tate Modern
Oil Tanks, London (2012).
ANTONIO GRULLI
(La Spezia 1979), is an art critic and independent
curator living in Bologna, where he is in charge
of the contemporary art activities of Palazzo Ben-
tivoglio. His major projects are focused on art
criticism and curating as an authorial language
through projects mainly based on spoken lan-
guage, round tables, lectures and dialogues, held
in private and public institutions. Over the years he
has written for Flash Art, Mousse Magazine, Cura
Magazine, ATP Diary, Artribune, Boite, Exibart
and Arte e Critica.
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