Sabbath 2008: Nira Pereg

Metal dragged across cement produces a grating, clattering cacophony, at once irritating and strangely satisfying. The intermittent sound dominates Nira Pereg's stately video Sabbath 2008, a seven-minute single channel projection currently on view in one of the small project rooms at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The sound, however, diminishes in importance as you experience Pereg's attentive framing and editing in her delicate but powerful depiction of a weekly ritual within an orthodox neighborhood in Jersualem. Each week on the eve of the Sabbath, Jewish men and boys drag barriers into the streets surrounding Ramot Polin, blocking cars from entering. Pereg captures both the sense of repetition in the ritual activity, as well as the nuances of power and potential conflict in small gestures, as when an older boy pushes a younger boy away. Pereg frames her shots from a distance with an unmoving camera, capturing the wide expanse of the often desolate streets and contrasting the flimsy, sometimes broken barriers with the power of the cars that zoom nearby. The resulting images are photographic, and invite contemplative scrutiny as we ponder not merely the activities of a particular orthodox community, but the broader mix of visible and invisible geographies that orchestrate the spaces we inhabit and our attempts to make these spaces our own.
the details
Sabbath: Nira Pereg
through April 17, 2010
Santa Monica Museum of Art