Kibbutz Video Art by Oded Hirsch

By Pratt Gateway | Tweet

On the kibbutz where Israeli-born video artist Oded Hirsch grew up, there is almost always a ready-made cast of family and friends excited to star in his work.

For his first major piece, 50 Blue, half a dozen men from the kibbutz—a collective living community in Israel —  volunteered to hoist Hirsch’s father in his wheelchair up to a watchtower while standing in the Sea of Galilee in the rain.

“I was surprised because people really came to me and said ‘we want to be part of it,’” he says.

The haunting 50 Blue is the first in a trilogy; the second piece, Tochka, depicts an assembly line of men building a bridge. Hirsch is now working on the third as a 2011-2012 fellow for the Six Point Fellowship, which supports artists exploring Jewish ideas.

Still from Oded Hirsch’s film 50 Blue

There is Nothing New will show dozens of people from the kibbutz where he grew up rescuing a person whose parachute is tangled in power lines; the rescuers will go to great lengths to get the man down, when the problem could be solved with a tall ladder.

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