Nama Tsabar – Babies (2008)

Naama Tsabar – Babies (2009)

For one day only this rarely screened film from installation and performance artist Naama Tsabar will screen continuously at KinoSaito

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The work features a band of young women performing a song by the British band Pulp on a stage situated in an emptied, light-bathed industrial space. The band’s lead vocalist, the artist herself, sings in a low, throaty voice, which later evolves into a broad vocal range. Conveyed in the first person, the song recounts a deep yearning for a woman. As the song develops, the artist takes the guitar off her shoulder and begins to bang it against the stage floor. What appears initially as an imitation of a hackneyed male rock’n’roll gesture, becomes, as the scene continues, an ostensibly unrestrained assault, only to eventually crystallize into a powerful independent act, with a separate, inner logic, which opens a conceptual gap in the performance’s structure. The artist strikes and beats, pounds and hits, tires but goes on, until the stage’s wooden floor begins to crack. The guitar, which is cast from a clearly durable material, remains intact, while the stage breaks into pieces and entirely disintegrates around her. In the background, the band members continue playing, gradually increasing their speed, until the artist finally collapses exhausted amidst the fragments of the floor, the guitar by her side. (Text by Hadas Maor)