V-MUMU

“The portrait-photograph is a closed field of forces. Four image-repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art”.
The act of photography brings us together with the other in a new space, where the gaze is turned into a physical, metaphorical and self-conscious presence. As Ronald Barthes phrased it, in the portrait-photograph, the gaze of the photographer, the photographed individual, and the eye of the lens come together in an ever-changing net of perceptions, spectacles and forces, constructed from the conscious and the unconscious, from the controllable and uncontrollable.
The virtual exhibition “Smoking Mountain” presents photographs and video works documenting an exceptional meeting which took place in the winter of 2019-2020. It now seems like a different time, right before the Coronavirus altered our lives and our existence on this planet, and the possibilities for face-to-face encounters between people from different countries – let alone continents – were abruptly diminished. A team of five representatives from the Musrara School, we left Jerusalem for the United States on what we believed to be a formative journey of growth and change. We were to be hosted by Native Americean groups in Oregon and Washington, within the framework of the Communities Connecting Heritage (CC) program, a remarkable international initiative dedicated to preserving the cultural legacies of endangered communities around the world and to forming connections among international organizations. The Musrara School was the first educational institution in Israel selected to participate in the CCH. On the American side, the meeting was arranged by Wisdom of the Elders, a Portland-based organization for the preservation of the area’s Native American cultural traditions.
“The Smoking Mountain” is Mount Saint Helens, called Lawetlat’la in the tongue of the Cowlitz tribe and the united tribes of the Yakama Nation, which have considered it sacred for thousands of years and as marking the place of their forefathers. The countless stories and tales associated with the mountain over the years express its perception as a supernatural entity, which releases forces of destruction and revival; to this day, Native Americans arrive at the mountain as part of a personal quest or traditional community rituals. With Chesga, Tim, Kunu and Duane holding us by the hand, we arrive in vast areas with spectacular views: snowy mountains and thick forests gleaming with magic and secret. The Smoking Mountain emerged in every place we visited, anciently beautiful, guarding the life secrets of the Native Americans, erecting as a witness to their existential tragedies, but also to their hope and healing.
We decided to shoot most of the portraits of our hosts after the traditional reception ceremony held in our honor. We established a temporary photography set in the spirit of Irving Penn’s touring studio. We created a circle of branches of the cedar tree, which is sacred to them, and asked them to stand in it, each in a position and clothing of their choosing, sometimes individually and other times in pairs or groups of three. We sought to make present photography as an act that brings us together, as Levinas phrased it, with the “wholly Other”, the infinite Other who is also our ideal. These photographs are presented in the entrance hall of the exhibition, in conjunction with the landscape photos. In the room on the left is a portrait of a native storyteller, alongside a video work where she is documented, and some of the portraits of the natives. The terrace space is dedicated to an archive of documentary films created by our hosts, which document their lives and legacy, alongside our documentation of the journey.
It is a journey that had, to some extent, a sense of certainty – as we prepared with e-mail correspondences and historical and cultural research – but also much uncertainty: how does an outline that includes names and dry information consolidate into a living, growing organism, which makes the journey tangible? What tools from our practice – which combines art and a social perspective – do we take with us to such an encounter? And how do we articulate what we unveil by video footage? Maurice Merleau-Ponty described the gaze as a corporal experience, and the gaze of the other as giving existence to the I, the subject. What does it mean when we observe portraits that our hosts lay before us, which are documentary as much as theatrical? In which ways do they challenge our possibility of seeing the other, but at the same time introduce us to an aesthetic, ethical space, as we are called to return the revealed gaze, which opens up to us and invites us to engage in dialogue where we are required to assume responsibility for others as well as ourselves.
The most significant nature experience for us occurred in the fishermen’s town of La Push, on the Quillayute River, on the banks of which the descendants of the Quillayute tribe live. The photographs from the coastline belonging to the tribal reserve capture the moments we spent there: the ocean waves stroking our feet as we walk on the sand, which reflects our image as an approaching and disappearing mirror, as if we were walking on thin, fragile glass; the temporality of life, interweaved with a breathtaking and despondent beauty. As we take in the sight of the water, from which small, tree-covered islands emerge, the 1818 painting of Casper David Friedrich “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” comes into mind, which focuses on the tension between an awe of nature and the desire to control it, in the figure of the European man who stands rulingly on a mountaintop, watching the mountainous landscape in all its glory. In another painting, “The Monk by the Sea” (1801-1810), Friedrich depicts the nothingness of mankind against nature in a tiny figure of a man, who is nearly consumed by the sight of the sea, the sky and the earth before him.
We pondered on the intensity of the encounter with our hosts, who do not wish to control nature but rather merge with it, living on the rivers flowing from east to west; their stand does not juxtapose finiteness and infinity, awe and nothingness – but rather expands, emotionally and ethically, the essence of their own human existence. In the virtual exhibition, nature obtains an almost fantastical dimension, as the edifice of the school seems to exist in another space rather than that of Jerusalem, flowing within sights of nature from the documentation of our journey, objects and sites sacred to our hosts flashing every once in a while.
We are immensely grateful to the wonderful people, the descendants of the First Nation, who turned their catastrophe and extinction attempts into a conscience of power and inclusion. The residents of the riverbank and coastline, men, women and children, each of whom felt as a spiritual temple open just for us, took us in and shared their voices of the past, generosity and love. For years over years they have been holding on to their rich legacy, self-healing, and thus healing us too in the space of our mutual encounter.
“li?a’tskal?axw”
(Thank you from the bottom of the heart in the tongue of the Quillayute tribe)