Even, Shoshan
Berlin - 2010, 16:9 HD, 5:00 min., original duration: 20:49 min. (loop projection)
DoP: Lior Levy
Editor: Ayelet Albenda
Music: Alex Kosovski soundcloud.com/​alechkos
The film presents a series of "real life" episodes from the artist's life in Berlin. Accompanied by his Hebrew - Hebrew dictionary, deals the artist with his integration and translation challenges.
The structure of the video as an opening sequence for a film that never begins increases the feeling of disorientation. The translation takes over the content; the translation becomes the content.
Detailed introduction:
We expect the foreigner to deal with such difficulties using a guide book or at least a German - Hebrew dictionary, but the protagonist here chooses to deal first with his mother language patterns. This choice may suggest that being a foreigner is not necessarily a question of geography, but rather a state of mind by default.
There is no narration except for the library scene, where the protagonist takes a German book from the shelf and leaves his Hebrew dictionary. However when he leaves the place he holds his original book again. The film never begins, but the translation process is a film itself. The titles contain the essence of the "plot" and the credits for the production personnel, mediating between the author and the viewer i.e. translating.
The master loop of the film is built in its turn from several loops as well, which diverse from each other just in minor changes. These distortions as well as those created by the music and the black "holes" of the editing reflect the side effects of the translation process.
The title of the film "Even, Shoshan" is derived from the surname of the author of the first Hebrew - Hebrew dictionary (Avraham Even Shoshan). The comma that was added between the two words that compose his surname creates two nouns. The first one means «stone», Even, and it can be associated with a stiff static quality, an indication for the limits of our mother tongue, while the second means «rose», Shoshan, suggests a concept of an unreachable, temporary beauty. Like the swan, the forest or the church, the rose is another symbol for the protagonist's attempt to become "European". But these objects of desire are impossible to possess or to take away: the other culture's beauty remains on the shelf.