Pre-Conditioned Tracks

21st Nidbach series

The City Tower (Migdal Ha’Ir), standing adjacent to both the Jerusalem Artists’ House and the artist’s current residence, is a recurring motif which functions as a case study in Dan Robert Lahiani’s first solo exhibition. In the show’s central piece, The Orphan’s Gifts, the tower’s space is deconstructed into axes of movement and gaze, activated by the caméra vivante (“The Living Camera,” as the artist calls it).

Other than reproducing and representing the world, Lahiani’s caméra vivante sets the world around it in motion, generating impossible, unstable vantage points and axes of motion, while the sounds synchronized into the camera movements validate them momentarily, meeting our need in signification and order and bring in a family story of intergenerational immigration and refugeeism, which is the narrative axis resonating in the work.