Tomer Fruchter ~ KORBANOT – An act of faith
Tomer Fruchter's "KORBANOT – An act of faith" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 2, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.
Here you will find the documentation of Tomer Fruchter's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Bethany Crawford and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.
KORBANOT – An act of faith
Tomer Fruchter's question: If you already know, why are you in this room?
Tomer's introduction: A performer enters the room carrying a clumsy luggage piece; swiftly unpacks the entire suitcase contents on the concrete floor, disclosing an assortment of personal offerings: drawings from across the century, what is seemed to be a peculiar stool, freshly printed zines and a blunt knife.
The Hebrew language places both the words Art (OMANUT) and Faith (EMUNA) in a shared field of meaning, suggesting a worn-down yet overlooked proposition: the artist’s role is that of an everlasting believer making sacrifices in the face of an unknown outcome.
While most European cultural worlds have thrown art out the window as it proved insufficient in mobilizing social change, Israeli artists of today are holding onto the artistic act and its faculties in a collaborative quest for spiritual survival. Retreating into an ancient collective imagination as a project of breaking through one of the most horrifying and deadly loops of our times.
Bethany's report: The performance begins as three performers enter the room, each carrying suitcases, boxes, and packages filled with an eclectic mix of equipment and materials. One of them carries a luggage piece, which is quickly unpacked onto the concrete floor, revealing a curious assortment of personal and artistic offerings: drawings spanning across the century, a peculiar stool, freshly printed zines, and a blunt knife. These objects, seemingly disparate, resonate with an unspoken narrative.
The performers start arranging the unpacked items around the room. Gloves are put on, and they appear to begin a construction process. Construction materials emerge such as cellotape, poles, and plastic sheets. A large plastic sheet painted in black is rolled out and handled with precision, but as they attempt to suspend it over a beam pole using cellotape, failure repeatedly interrupts their efforts. They tangle, struggle, and reattempt, embodying a careful and methodical process.
The audience, at first stationary, watches these acts of assembly and disruption unfold. Anticipation builds as the painted plastic sheet, associated with political slogans, is slowly raised. The tension is mirrored in the performers’ actions and the objects’ ambiguous meanings. At this point, the space itself begins to transform as the performers take chairs from the audience's front rows and move them to the back, prompting people to stand and wander. The act destabilizes the audience's position, inviting them into a more participatory relationship with the unfolding scene.
Plastic sheets bearing abstract symbols—possibly land outlines—are suspended, while drawings and fragments of text are placed around the room. On a window ledge, newspaper clippings with fragmented headlines are taped and folded, creating a visual language of disjunction. Sketchbooks filled with portraits and drawings are added to the evolving composition. The room transforms into a live exhibition where objects are assembled, rearranged, and displayed in real-time.
A colophon at the entrance anchors the work, revealing that these artistic and cultural artifacts are contributions from Israeli artists and practitioners. The performance draws on the Hebrew linguistic intersection of omanut (art) and emuna (faith), suggesting the artist's enduring role as a believer making sacrifices in the face of an unknown outcome. As the performance concludes, the room, now an exhibition, invites the audience to roam freely, encountering the artistic works.
Ramon Amaro: Ramon began by thanking Tomer for immersing the audience in such a unique experience. He noted the composition’s interesting combination of performative elements and the replication of a world that felt simultaneously familiar yet abstract, describing it as “a type of world in which you’re gaining sort of entry to which you kind of know.” He found this layering of subject matter an engaging starting point for an installation and highlighted the challenge inherent in putting works like these into motion.
He observed that the performance approached this challenge by leaving the objects themselves relatively static, instead circulating the audience’s movement and emotions to animate the subject matter. He described this as a “sophisticated” approach that brought a strong sense of intentionality to the work.
Ramon then shifted to a personal reflection, sharing a story about his connection to Fanon’s work. He described how Fanon’s early text, Black Skin, White Masks, resonated with him deeply, particularly in its focus on humanism—something often overshadowed by Fanon’s later writings on colonial violence. He recounted a pivotal moment in Fanon’s life when, as a young man from Martinique conscripted into the French army during World War II, he experienced a profound instance of racial alienation. While in uniform on a train, a young child pointed at him, called him a racial slur, and recoiled in fear, leaving Fanon to unravel the implications of such a deeply ingrained association of fear, skin color, and language.
This moment, Ramon explained, was the beginning of Fanon’s ontology. Fanon later observed the alienation that colonial subjects experienced, as their identities were reduced to the most superficial characteristics under oppressive ideologies. Ramon linked this to the broader themes of the performance, reflecting on how it grappled with the relationships between the individual and larger narratives, identities, and systems of meaning.
He noted Fanon’s discovery in his psychiatric work that similar treatments didn’t yield the same results for French and Algerian patients, despite their shared neuroses stemming from violence and war. This led Fanon to theorize that individuals are often detached from their humanity, reduced by societal systems to the most basic, superficial categories. Ramon underscored this idea by referencing necropolitics, explaining how such reduction can subject individuals to life or death based on arbitrary characteristics.
Returning to the performance, Ramon suggested that the work demonstrated an awareness of these dynamics. He appreciated how the narrative positioned the performers within a complex web of subjectivities and ideologies, inviting the audience to reflect on their own relationship to these forces. However, he acknowledged the difficulty of the task, noting the performers had layered many narratives into the space, which required them to navigate multiple pathways and interpretations.
Ramon concluded by emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and humility when engaging with these complex systems. He encouraged the performers to embrace the resistance that comes with changing paths, both within themselves and in the world. He described this process as necessary for understanding and growth, likening it to the idea of recognizing which “train” one is on and deciding whether to stay on it or change tracks. He praised the performer for creating a space that allowed for both reflection and discourse, expressing hope that this work would inspire further exploration of these ideas.
Antonia Majaca: Antonia began by thanking the performers, describing the work as "heuristically captivating" and noting its effectiveness in activating the space. She remarked on how the performance created a sense that the room was filled with more people than were actually present, suggesting this might have been intentional. This evoked, for her, a feeling of aloneness, mitigated by the performers’ act of bringing other artists from their context into the room. She described this as an effort to "stand the ground" together in a shared struggle or challenge, which she saw as a powerful strategy within the history of art.
She observed that the performers clearly had something to say and were wrestling with how best to articulate it. She framed their actions as a way of arming themselves with the presence of others who shared a common difficulty. This, she noted, was not an unknown strategy in art history but rather one that has often been employed as a means of addressing adversity.
Antonia praised the attention given to the space, noting how the performance engaged with the legacy of "suitcase art"—work created under challenging conditions or on the move. She connected this artistic gesture to diasporic experiences and wondered aloud whether the artists brought into the space were themselves diasporic. She clarified that this was a question, not a critique, and noted that the answer could influence how the project might be interpreted.
She reflected further on the summary of the project provided in the booklet, particularly its reference to Israeli artists holding onto the artistic act for "spiritual survival." Antonia posed a question to the room, asking what this concept of spiritual survival actually meant in the context of the performance. She highlighted the two Hebrew terms mentioned in the summary, omanut (art) and emuna (faith), as expansive and complex ideas. She drew a parallel to the Russian avant-garde, specifically Malevich’s Black Square, which replaced religious icons in the gallery space to signal a new ideological and political project. In that moment, art took on the role of faith, not in a religious sense, but as a belief in a political future.
Antonia expressed concern, however, about the risks involved when art takes on such a role without a clear political vanguard. She warned that art, in such cases, risks falling into the "aestheticization of politics." She invoked Walter Benjamin’s distinction between mythic and divine violence, emphasizing that Benjamin was referring to revolutionary processes rather than messianic or apocalyptic visions. She saw this as a call for radical transformation rather than passive anticipation of change.
In closing, Antonia acknowledged that the performance had opened up important questions and offered a compelling perspective on the intersections of art, faith, and politics. She appreciated the intelligence and ambition of the work, while leaving space for further reflection on the challenges it raised and its broader implications.
Inti Guerrero: Inti began by acknowledging and building on previous comments, including reflections on Frantz Fanon and remarks from the day before about Freud. He noted the relevance of Fanon’s biography, emphasizing how life experiences often lead to moments of being "brainwashed" by power structures, ideologies, or family values. For Inti, this process is an essential part of the human journey, and he saw connections between Fanon’s perspectives and the themes explored in the performance.
He mentioned Fanon’s francophone context, particularly its resonance with francophone literature and the works of (missed the reference name) whom Fanon often referenced. Inti tied this to the historical moment after the liberation of Paris and the years leading up to the formation of Israel, noting that this seemed to echo the performance’s subject matter. He found it thought-provoking to consider the work in light of these historical contexts and connected it to broader questions about representation and authorship.
Referencing discussions from the recent Documenta exhibition, Inti highlighted the critical issue of "who has the license to produce images of violence and derogatory imagery" and how those images can be used intelligently to communicate something meaningful about global realities. For him, this was about the ethics of representation: who gets to speak, who they speak for, and how these dynamics shape the conversations we are having.
Inti drew then referenced through association, the work of Rius, a Mexican cartoonist known for creating politically charged and socially conscious comics rooted in Marxist and feminist traditions. He described Rius as an incredible designer and publisher whose work transformed complex revolutionary ideas into accessible parables. Inti saw value in drawing such references into the discussion, as they offered a lens through which to think about the performance's themes and methods.
AEROPONIC ACTS 2024 ~ Chameleon Orbit
About: Tomer Fruchter