Roee Rosen, Buried Alive

The Buried Alive Group, a collective of ex-Soviet artists, writers, and filmmakers based in Tel Aviv in the early 2000s was founded by Maxim Komar-Myshkin (pseudonym of the fictive Russian poet Efim Poplavsky, 1978 – 2011). Suffering from acute paranoia, Komar-Myshkin believed that Putin had a personal vendetta against him, and so dedicated his lifework, Valdimir’s Night, as a form of retaliation. The Group also declared its own twisted version of an avant-garde manifesto, looking backwards rather than forwards, to reflect on their positions as self-colonizing, becoming-Israeli artists. The Buried Alive Videos are testament to the collective’s endeavors.

The film screening is preceded by Roee Rosen’s performative narration of Vladimir’s Night (2014). At one point the artist considered turning the book into an opera, and tonight's narration includes a live performance of excerpts from this unfinished opera. A talk with curator and writer Ekaterina Degot will close the evening.

Singer: Inbar Livne Bar-On; pianist: Udi Bonen; composer: Igor Krutogolov

Ekaterina Degot began her five-year tenure as Director and Chief Curator of steirischer herbst––interdisciplinary festival for contemporary art in Graz, Austria––in January 2018. In her work, the Russian-born art historian, researcher, and curator focuses on aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in Russia and Eastern Europe from the nineteenth century to the post-Soviet era. From 2014 to 2017, Degot was Artistic Director of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne. Before that she was one of the curators at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, art columnist for the newspaper Kommersant, and Senior Editor of openspace.ru/art. Amongst other shows, she curated the First Ural Industrial Biennial in Yekaterinburg (2010, with Cosmin Costinas and David Riff) and headed the first Bergen Assembly together with David Riff (Monday Begins on Saturday, 2013).

Inbar Livne Bar-On is studying operatic singing for the second year at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music. Inbar is a graduate of the prestigious high school of arts "Thelma Yellin". She is a recipient of many scholarships, including the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the Ronen Foundation, etc. She reached the final of the competition "Paul Ben-Haim". She participated in the International Summer Workshop in Tel Aviv (IVAI) and Jerusalem (IMVAJ) Inbar participated in the production of the Israeli Opera Orfeo ed Euridice and also took part in a new Israeli opera written last summer. Inbar is also singing regularly as a soloist in Oratorio music in Israel. Inbar has experience in performing contemporary music. as part of the repertoire she sings the works of Morton Feldman, Moondog and etc.

Udi Bonen is a graduate of the Buchman-mehta school of music in Tel Aviv, and the postgraduate program for sound art and experimental music at the Musrara School in Jerusalem. He has played recitals and chamber music in Europe and also recently in Canada.