As a reaction to the ever-increasing Israeli colonization, and in the very specific context of the planned annexation by Israel on July 1 2020, I made a video from an installation entitled “About hope in concrete”: a trio sonata for concrete mixers performing the Israel’s national anthem.
The music, divided into three frequency bands converted into electric signals, intermittently powers the motors of the concrete mixers painted in the colors of the Israeli flag in order to give back to this song its real dimension, far from misplaced lyricism to say the least. The original anthem is only present through the display in rhythm of the lyrics of the song.
The hope (hatikva) of the Jewish people to live on “their” land that the song is about is put in direct confrontation with one of the tools of its implementation, namely the concrete of colonization. This re-contextualization operates a shift from the pure propagandist and segregationist register of this hymn — from which the Palestinians are obviously absent — to the mechanical and calculated coldness of a long work of ethnic cleansing.
Jérémie Pujau
Born in France in 1982 and currently living in Berlin, Jérémie Pujau works in the film industry mainly as DIT, editor, and colorist alongside his personal artwork, where performance, video art, sculpture meet one another. Politics is the core of his art practice or in other words, he uses art to do politics. In this sense, each work can be seen as a political action. Learn more about this work at jeremiepujau.com.
