RUTI SELA & MAAYAN AMIR

Israel

Ruti Sela was born in 1974 in Jerusalem. She lives and works in Tel Aviv. She graduated with BFA in Art and Video Studies from the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in 2001 and with MFA from the Film Department, Tel Aviv University in 2004. Her work has been shown internationally including: LA Freewaves Film Festival, Los Angeles, 2006; Sidney Biennale, 2006; ‘Dreams and Trauma’ - Moving Images and the Promised Lands, film festival at the House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany, 2006; Naples XII Biennale, 2005; ‘Transmediale’, Film festival, Berlin, 2005…

Maayan Amir was bor in Hedera in 1978. She lives and works in Tel Aviv. Currently she is a Phd candidate in cinema, Film Department, Tel Aviv University. In 2005 she graduated with MFA Film Department, and in 2001 with BA in Literature from the same University. Recent exhibition include: Sidney Biennale, 2006; ‘8th Annual Video Marathon, Art in General Gallery, New York, 2006; ‘Serial Cases’, Exchange program between Israel, Croatia, Belgium, Austria, Turkey, Czech Republic & Romania, 2006; ‘Gazza’, The Minshar Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2005…

RITI SELA & MAAYAN AMIR
Beyond guilt - The Trilogy, 41 min, 2003-2005, video still
Courtesy of the artists

The series "Beyond Guilt" addresses the undermining of the power relation between photographer and photographed, men and women, the public domain and the private sphere, object and subject. As the film's directors, Sela and Amir take an active part in the occurrence. They seduce the interviewees on the one hand, and turn the camera over to them, on the other, as part of the aforesaid undermining of power relations between photographer and subject.

The choice of pick-up bar services or hotel room as shooting locations strives to represent an underworld with its language and signifiers.
The quick encounter before the camera calls to mind the ephemeral nature of intimate relations, but most of all the works allude to the influences of the occupation, terror and army as constitutors of an Israeli identity even in the most private moments, The sexual identity and the military-political identity seem intertwined inseparably.

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