Conversation, Panel

We tend to tell the stories of our political history through what we assume is the objective—a single, imposing narrative that relays the “truth.” This way of passing down history is risky; in claiming a neutral position, it becomes increasingly difficult to grasp the complexities of the events that make up our past.

Roee Rosen is one of a growing number of artists dealing with the political who break down this superstructure narrative by exploring the ambiguous and often contradictory nature of our constructions of self. This provocation towards the indefinite and the unresolved acts as an essential reminder of how our personal identifications and concepts of self both inhibit and inform our perception of the world around us. This program explores personal simulation, disguises, and alter egos as political acts, revealing the complexity with which we construct our sense of the self and our sense of the other.

Born in Israel in 1963, Roee Rosen has been pursuing fake personae, multiple voices, and provocative shifts in identity throughout his career. Through multi-media installations, Rosen’s work engages the political by providing a way to acknowledge the multi-faceted subjective experience. The introduction by Roee Rosen (as artist!), is followed by the screenings of three of his video works, and concludes with a discussion between Rosen, art historian Roger Rothman (Bucknell University), and Ariella Azoulay, photo historian and author of Death’s Showcase: The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy (MIT Press, 2003).

Video Works:

1. Doctor Cross, 1994, English, 12 minutes

2. Two Women and A Man: Joanna-Fuhrer-Ha’sfari on Justine Frank, 2005,
Hebrew with English subtitles, 15 minutes

3. Excerpts from The Zionist Ventriloquist, 2004, Hebrew with English subtitles, approximately 35 minutes

Roee Rosen was born in Israel in 1963. After initial studies in philosophy and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University, he turned to the visual arts and, in 1989, graduated from The School of Visual Arts in New York. After further studies at Hunter College, he returned to Israel in 1991, and has been teaching at Hamidrasha College for Visual Arts since. His work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions in the Middle East and Europe, and was included in the exhibition The Gift that traveled in the United States from 2002 to 2004.

Roger Rothman is currently the Samuel H Kress Professor of Art History, Bucknell University. Dr. Rothman has published essays on the works of Roee Rosen as well as on Francis Picabia and Wassily Kandinsky. He is currently at work on a book entitled, “Illusions of Modernity: Surrealist Painting and Urban Deception”.

Ariella Azoulay teaches visual culture and contemporary philosophy at the Program for Culture and Interpretation, Bar Ilan University.