Les Complices* are delighted to announce the release of the publication Unmade Film by Uriel Orlow. The publication was developed in close collaboration between the artist, Les Complices* and edition fink, Zürich.
The works assembled under the title Unmade Film take as their starting point the mental hospital Kfar Sha'ul in Jerusalem. Initially specialising in the treatment of Holocaust survivors – including a relative of the artist – it was established in 1951 using the remains of the Palestinian village Deir Yassin that had been depopulated in a massacre by Zionist paramilitaries in April 1948. Unmade Film probes the spatial and narrative layering of the Holocaust and the Nakba, addressing conflicting narratives without comparing them and engaging with blind spots of remembrance and psychological aspects of trauma and haunting.
Unmade Film was developed over a two-year period of research and production between 2011 and 2013. The work and its different elements evolved out of exchanges and collaborations with psychologists, psychiatric nurses, historians, musicians, pupils, amateur actors, curators, artists and others.
An on-going dialogue between Andrea Thal and Uriel Orlow led to the development of a publication in parallel to the making of the work. Three modular and expanding editions have preceded and culminate in this publication, each accompanying exhibitions of Unmade Film at Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Centre culturel suisse and Les Complices*, respectively. The publication thus continues the questions and discussions raised in the context of Uriel Orlow's exhibition The Production Office and the Workshops connected to it that took place at Les Complices* last year.
In addition Uriel Orlow will present his lecture performance Unmade Film: The Proposal. In this last work of Unmade Film, the artist returns to the very beginning of the project, looking backward and forward at the same time. As a film proposal, it connects his own family history, the village of Deir Yassin and questions around narrative structures and the eventual impossibility of making this film. The live format combines story telling, autobiography, and interrogation with the act of witnessing on the part of the audience.
Unmade Film
Uriel Orlow
Edited by Andrea Thal and Uriel Orlow
Texts by Erik Bullot, Yoa’d Ghanadry, Avery Gordon, Esmail Nashif, Ilan Pappé, Hanan Toukan, Andrea Thal und Uriel Orlow (dt./engl./franz./arab.)
Design: Georg Rutishauser, Sonja Zagermann
272 text pages, 24 x 17 cm, 164 image pages, 28 x 22 cm, 2 volumes
edition fink, Zürich
Contemporary Art Publisher
www.editionfink.ch
ISBN 978-3-03746-178-5
The publication was made possible with the support of Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council, Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Centre culturel suisse, Les Complices*, george foundation, Bergen Assembly, John Hansard Gallery, British Council, University of Westminster and Erna und Curt Burgauer Stiftung.
