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About this work
During 2015, Israeli artist Jonathan Goldman has built a big raft out of recycled wood, plastic barrels, a sail made out of cloth and sailed into the open sea.This nautical-fictional journey is telling a partially documentary partially fictional story of a scientist, who plants and grows mountains or floating islands as an alternative environment for life.
The project "The West Border" started as a response to a specific Isareli Kibbutz located beside the border between Israel and Gaza. this settlement was founded in 1936 and was obligated to relocate in 1943 to the south.
Contemplating the migration of the kibbutz members south, along the Israeli coastline, ignited J Goldman’s imagination, and thus was born the idea for an aquatic, personal and political journey along the Israeli coast. It is a journey that provokes questions about the relocation of “the home”, the western sea border and the “costs” of existence in a conflict-ridden area.
During this journey pseudo scientific activities were conducted as part of Goldman’s ongoing occupation of the scientific methods expressed in his art. a “lab” for fertilizing and growing “mountain embryos” - imaginary figures whose unique growing conditions combine lights and sounds created at his artistic lab, was erected on the raft .
The mountain embryos were planted during this voyage, along the Israeli coast in the abyss of the sea, embodying the potential to cultivate landmass, creating an alternative existence or expanding on the existing one.
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