Churning Formation(s) ב; Breath Machine is one of several works culminated from creating bricks as figurative representations, made from a variety of signicant material ‘elements’, clay straw, beeswax, concrete, newspaper and resin.The brick constructions began in the wake of the Covid epidemic, paralleled with elevated outbreaks of global warfare, emerging dictatorships and notions of Empire—all of which steal breath from humanity.Laden with immersive processes, the workof art it functions as verb more than noun. Manifested as a substance and a sound, this work conceptualizes the formation of a human body as a material abstraction, focused on the sacredness of breath.

The ‘Churning Spoon’, A looped Vinyl Record:Churning Formation(s) ב; Breath Machine is a vinyl record sound installation, framed with allegoric elements and material constructions.The initial conceptfor the sound aspect is perpetuated from a meditation with drawing a circle with constant repetitive motion.Nestled within a rectilinear form with a humanoid scale, the persistent circular motion of a vinyl record, a ‘churning spoon’, unravels an atmosphere of mysterious objects and voices, an incantatory command for a sonic ‘breath machine’, exhaling life into the static formation.

A Material Evolution.The bricks are bodies, shaped by the gravity of traumatic circumstance, pressure and despair, yet formed with the desire for renewal and rebirth.Layered with history and material meanings, the bricks adopt different character traits.Some are made to be vulnerable and delicate, where each is uniquely and intimately hand-formed from pure clay/soil.Others are more uniform, strengthened with straw, yet pressed into submission with a mold. Some of the bricks are from a factory, manufactured products forced into labor and conformity.A forensic puzzle, some of the bricks are exploded fragments from the heat of a fire, matched and reassembled with awkward repair.Some bricks are ash reductions, reformed and preserved, while others are newly born into an entirely synthetic substance.Some bricks are sturdy, some are frail.Some are dull and lifeless, where others are glowing with light.The bricks are inscribed with binary codes translated to”truth” and “death”.(The mystical commands that give life and death to a golem, an inanimate object).The stacked, interlocking brick bodies, culminate with the creation of a larger form resembling the same brick-like shape and proportions,now transformed to a humanoid scale.Simultaneuosly,the persistence of the vinyl record,’a churning spoon’ breaths with a sound and exhales life into the static formation. Churning Formation(s) is designed to reveal a process of material evolution. With this, I hope to confront the viewer with a transformative shift from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, to convey an experience of individual and collective metamorphosis. What began as single fragile lump of clay, a metaphoric body molded by trauma, is now an ecosystem of synergetic parts, with its strength in unity and a sense of self repair.

01110100   01100100
01110010   01100101
01110101   01100001
01110100   01110100
01101000   01101000

מת         אמ

A process, a meditation, a motion. Behind the work:Literary influences.As an going series of different site specific installations, Churning Formation(s) re-approaches the golem, a recurring subject in my work, the golem/golmi/galmi (literally meaning the unformed/incomplete).In tradion golmi An icon of Jewish folklore, the golem is commonly depicted as the clay/mud body brought to life through ‘magical’ incantations, often instructed by mysterious texts from HaSefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation/Creation).In most accounts the earthen android was designed to perform a specific task, usually to protect a community from deadly adversity, or to ease harsh survival conditions by performing hard labor. This portrayal is very familiar to Yiddish folklore and mystical story telling or accounts associated with the mystical rabbis of Germany(Eleazer of Würms), Central and Eastern Europe(The Maharal of Prague R. Yehuda Loew, for example).However,The creation of Churning Formation(s) ב; Breath Machines was deeply inspired from a less familiar perspective associated with some of the Medieval Sephardic Kabbalists(R. Avraham Abulafia, R.Joseph Gikatilla, R.Moshe Cordovero, etc.)whose interpretation of the golem was non-literal.Their perspective was a concept, an intellectual mindfulness and meditation source.One golemic ritual associated with the Sephardic mystics resulted in churning a spoonful of earth and water into mud. This meditation demanded unwavering focus with circular motion, contemplation on the Ten Sefirot and creation of the human being and/as the universe, culminating with the attempt to recite the entire Sefer Yetzirah in one final concentrated breath. As a process oriented work,Churning Formation(s) specifically references this ritual of the golem as a meditation, an action of motion with material mindfulness.