Makom-Al-Makom_catalog-new

E14 a disorienting spatial ambiguity that recalls the architectural conundrums of M.C. Escher (1898-1972). Note that Ullman is positioned simultaneously atop and beneath a floating layer of earth, while obviously, the gallery floor can only be seen from above. Sharabani intensified this effect of disorientation through a series of spatiotemporal and acoustic disruptions. The video opens with a view of an empty gallery space, save for three mounds of soil piled on the floor. The sound of grinding, issuing from an invisible source, precedes Ullman's entry by ten long seconds. An additional nineteen seconds elapse before the action that actually explains the grinding sound begins. Over its entire duration, Card is unsettlingly dissonant. The paradoxical spatiality of the video culminates inUllman entering the space upside down, as it were (figure 2), a whole second before his upright mirror-self walks in. What is more, Ullman's movements are not in sync with those of his flipped doppelgänger. Indeed, the video ends with Ullman leaving the space, while his "underground" double lingers behind. Miguel Hernández-Navarro has suggested that migratory experience unfolds within a "temporal space which is not Euclidian, but rather möbian." 8 In light of Navarro's concept of migratory space- time, Sharabani's uncannily flipped cell might qualify as a spatiotemporal Möbius strip. It is a disorienting space-time conundrum that taps into the uncertain status of ground in Israeli art. 8 Hernández-Navarro, Miguel. 2011. Out of Synch: Visualizing Migratory Times through Video Art. In Art and Visibility in Migratory Culture: Conflict, Resistance, and Agency . Edited by Miguel Harnández- Navarro and Mieke Bal. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 195. Figure 2: Ronen Sharabani, Card , 2014, Video, 4 min