TIKUNLEV / YELLOWTABLE

DIPTYCH VIDEO WORK
2003-2007

​video’s stills and texts
from the ​screening catalogue

Screening: Feb 10, 2009
CENTRO CULTURAL DE ESPAGNA
Spain Cultural Center, Lima, Peru

Jorge Villacorta - Curator
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​A synopsis of the vídeo
YELLOW TABLE : the first part of the diptych TIKUNLEV


Six faces, six voices, recite a poem to the camera in different languages. Their presence challenge us, as their gaze crosses ours., and they wrap us in a delicate weave which is semantic, sonorous and visual. The poem is presented as an immersion in the world of memory: an experience is recuperated and blossom. The childhood view becomes an epiphany, a revelation that acquires its true form with the word. The video is a point of encounter: the autor opens a window to her life and summons others to join and share; and each comes with a path to evoke, from the nakedness of speech, the intangibility of memory.


JORGE VILLACORTA
Lima ,Oct. 2008

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A SYNOPSIS OF TIKUN:
​LIORA ENGELHARD’S VISUAL DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME

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Engelhard’s vídeo work TIKUN explores the relation of one woman with the perceptual world surrounding her. As a diptych or two part invention, it interweaves image and text in a closely knit structure that remains, however, open ended. So that the spectator witnesses the unfolding of a suite of segments or sections, almost vídeo- moments of being, in which woman’s sensibility poignantly grapples with Time and Space, and with Language, be it of poetic utterance; music in a variety of genres; or dance as a language of the body in the cosmos. Above all, with a visual language as a construction of her own, very simplified yet passionate, in her handling of the video medium.
In the part that bears the title “TIKUN”, through eighteen fleeting visions, Liora Engelhard introduces the spectator to a landscape of memory, in which, contrary to much modern day art practice, no dark secrets are revealed, but in which deep yearning, perhaps even mourning, for a time spent and lost is keenly inscribed as visual discontinuity. After recovering from the surprise (and relief), that in Engelhard’s vision no actual images of memories surface, one begins to observe that everything is embodied in a crisp and sunny or desolate and forlorn visual patterns and motifs, as possible alternate textures of the present, made possible by its capture through the medium of video.
Thus, the Peruvian coast, the rising tide, the waves crushing on the rocks, a sandy beach and an island, are presences not symbols, that allow for the drawing of a cartography of a mind, in the sense that, as physical landmarks chosen by a particular psyche in solitude they throw into relief the underlying design. The Wordsworthian symbol of ‘Child as Father of Man’ is re-embodied in a new experience (the artist’s daughter’s body allows the enactment), and emerges as a light, lyrical, emotionally charged interlude, with emphasis on a broken sequence of movements that keeps the symbolic at check. A sense of the past accrues only as each segment- section comes to an end and blackout, and an inter-title suggests the nature of the ensuing visual meditation, but there is no weightiness and no sense of fixed, sealed, unmovable destiny, almost as if memory -within certain limits-, could be re-worked and
re- cast. Engelhard appears to follow
St. Augustine footsteps, when in his Confessions, he renews the outlook on his past, presenting the reader with the construction of memory in terms of re- interpretation, whilst constantly reading- affirming its significance as echo-chamber of identity.
The reading of the poem “Yellow Table”, the other part of the diptych, confronts the spectator with the embodiment of poetry in verbal utterance as it emanates from a particular body, observed at close range. The face is the canvas upon which words act ephemerally. With each reading a face, a being, comes briefly into focus and seems to make sense, only to fall into the unknowable, into an unspeakable mystery, when it disappears. With each new reader the poem becomes a form re-casted in different language, even unto silence.


JORGE VILLACORTA, 2004-2005

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THIS VIDEO IS A WORK OF LOVE. IDID IT WITH LOVE, ITS PARTICIPANTS ALL COLLABORATED WITH LOVE, AND WITH LOVE I WANT TO SHARE IT WITH YOU.
IN THIS JOURNEY, A LIFE CHANGING JOURNEY,
THE VIDEO CAME TO ME AS A GIFT, AND AS A GIFT I OFFER IT TO YOU.


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“BY ALLOWING THE IMAGINATION TO WANDER THROUGH THE CRYPTS OF MEMORY “

BACHELARD, THE POETIC OF SPACE.
CORNERS, p. 141

​TIKUN
A CABALISTIC -HEBREW TERM FOR REPAIRING , FIXING, MENDING , REVISION AND CORRECTION.


The project emerges with a poem I have written - “ Yellow Table “ - and serves as a platform for revising a number of issues . One important issue is translation - the trans/formation and migration from one language to another while perceiving the Video Medium as a language of its own. The translation of the poem to the audiovisual is through a metamorphosis so it becomes inherent to this very language. The interest in the relation between this process and the one of translation of poetry , is an integral part of this conversation. The video language - apparently a universal one - is equally perceived as a very personal and intimate process. I pose myself these questions: how to give shape and “write” poetry in the audiovisual language; What is a lyrical video poetry; Thus, within and inherent to this visual language, there is an attempt to shape and institutionalise the ephemeral.
The internal “compressed” instant- a sensation frequently found in poetry - and the attempt to express it in visual terms; kneading and reworking the frame rate is one tool; intentional random as a representation of the “Miraculous”/
the coincidence no- accidental / leads me to investigate yet another tool: The Modular Edition at Random- 40 and 80 seconds of audiovisual units serve as the “Lego Blocks”. While picked up at random a program will enable different possible videos to materialise; the duration will also be variable- using a part or the whole of these Modules.
I will strive to create and shape a reality in which the viewer is being invited to accompany a process ; a process that evokes those sensations that bring us closer and give access to our past memories ; being the owners of our past - a re-visited and amended one - enables us to become masters of our future, and offers us a possibility of being “Here and Now “ in the Eternal Present Moment.

Liora Engelhard Averbuch, 2003
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