Yael Bartana

Bartana’s video work 'The Undertaker' is interlinked with Bartana’s performance 'Bury our weapons, not our bodies!', performed in conjunction with her solo show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2018. 'The Undertaker' explores a parallel reality in which the rallying cry to eliminate systemic violence and repression is met with action. Amplified by setting the film in Philadelphia, city of brotherly love and the birthplace of American democracy, the film’s “historical pre-enactment” – a methodology conceived by Bartana– lays bare the destructive, displacing current of violence than runs through our history and present. Calling to mind military aesthetics and rituals that celebrate war, 'The Undertaker' assumes these militaristic expressions to call for an end to violence. The film follows an enigmatic figure leading an armed procession through the city centre of Philadelphia. The procession culminates in a ritualistic weapon burial at Laurel Hill cemetery that interweaves elements of Israeli movement-composer Noa Eshkol’s (1924-2007) 1953 choreography to commemorate the Holocaust. Eshkol’s work evokes military choreography, whilst focusing on life, loss and the attempt to move through grief. Non-narrative and without dialogue, The Undertaker firmly focuses on the bodily and physical. The procession, ritualistic burial and choreography meld together to form a monument to the living, built on the ghosts of the past. 'The Undertaker' also shows the progression in Bartana’s recent work which explores political movements and actions and tackles an array of possible scenarios through performance. Showing parallels to Bartana’s trilogy And Europe will be stunned (2007-2011), The Undertaker also lifts elements and characters from her 2017 performance 'What if Women Ruled the World'. The often public enactments link her various projects together in their investigation of potential future outcomes and historical realities and sum up the “historical pre-enactment”: experiments that make present seemingly impossible futures.