Action, Documentation, Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), Israel 2023

The Kinneret basin is known as an area where strong winds blow almost year-round. The winds raise waves on the lake and create instability. The instantaneous intensity (that measured at a given moment) can reach 20–30 knots (36–54 km/h). The wind’s intensity, and the length of time it persists, is referred to in professional jargon as the thermocline, and they influence the water’s movement and drift.Inspired by the conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, I wondered: if I were to drift on the waters of the Kinneret, how long would it take me to reach the opposite shore? I built an improvised vessel. The photograph documents the moment of departure from the beach of Kibbutz Ginosar. After a few hours, when I had disappeared from sight, Maya, who assisted me during the action, called in a rescue team from “Kinneret Watch.” I had drifted and was rescued north of the Orthodox church.This is not the way an artwork imitates reality, but the way the author–narrator describes the events presented to the audience. The documentation of the action becomes an integral part of formulating the action itself. The opposition between “mimesis” (Aristotle) and “diegesis” (Plato) places the eye and the gaze above the body, establishing a conceptual hierarchy between my capacity to know, show, and prove, and, alternatively, my capacity to feel, describe, and tell. Women who reported “invisible” symptoms were diagnosed as suffering from hysteria. Their telling of bodily sensations did not align with tangible evidence appearing on the body.Assuming that the pursuit of truth, or “what really happened” is the aim of research, the essence of this work lies in the drift that occurs outside of me, when I am passive and carried along by moods (in Hebrew, mood is matzav ruach, ruach also means “wind”). This is an action that takes place outside the museum, and all that will ultimately be brought before the audience’s eyes will be traces of something that unfolded outside, or perhaps did not occur at all.