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Through colors, rhythms, and sounds, the video work and installation 5846, 5851, and 5852 vs. the Population and Immigration Authority portrays an Israeli supreme court’s decision regarding three people requesting not to be sent to the Holot Detention Facility.* Truths embedded within a given language are explored in relation to the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants in Israel as the work attempts to propose a way in which legal jargon can be translated into a visual language.

The work’s point of departure is the examination of the gap between the worlds of law and art; between translation, interpretation, and explanation; between the legal languages used by the court and the theoretical and legal research on the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants in Israel; between experts and laypeople. A new codification of a legal document is proposed through the creation of an original visual sign language; a musical interpretation; and through the voice of Mutasim A. Ali, an activist and asylum seeker himself. The work’s visual translation of legal concepts brings to mind the reading of musical notes, movement notation, or sign language.

* The Holot Detention Facility is a prison for African asylum seekers located in the south of Israel. According to the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants (founded in Tel Aviv 1998), in 2017 about 35,000 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan were living in Israel.

Avi Feldmam.

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The video was made in collaboration with Asaf Weitzen and with support of Artport Tel-Aviv and Ostrovsky Family Fund. Exhibited with the kind support of the Artis Grant Program

The exhibition is organized by The Agency for Legal Imagination operating throughout 2018 at MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38.

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