Dani Gal

The works of Dani Gal (*1975, Israel) are characterized by his interest in the performative and polyphonic process of narration and the historicity of events. The source materials are storage mediums of history, historical documents, which he updates by combining sound, image and video material, thus questioning their unambiguousness in expansive collages. By detaching images from their soundtrack and newly linking them (How to convert a scientific problem into a banal love story, 2005) or by presenting non-synchronized installations composed of slides and sounds (The New Terrorism, 2006), Dani Gal emphasizes the archival character of historical documents which, freed from their infamy, gain meaning only in the dispositif of reordering.

In other works, viewers interact with the audio installation via motion detectors, in this way modulating the exhibition as producers and recipients of the historical narrative (Architecture regarding the future of conversation, 2008). Dani Gal is above all interested in the gap that opens up in the process between the work created by the artist and the actual historical event, a gap oscillating between collective and subjective memory, between the event itself and the records documenting the event in sound and vision. His Historical Record Archive, a collection of historical speeches, interviews and addresses published on vinyl, serves as an archive; from its noise, indistinctly murmuring voices of the past rise to activate the collective memory in atmospheric language fragments. The events belong to the past, but their vague, non-linear effects are just as present today as the clear noise signals of unassigned radio frequencies.

With precise, unpretentious installations, often using anachronistic media, Dani Gal addresses the coding and representation of language and images as well as their specific features and mises-en-scène. Time and again, cinematic, installation-oriented and performative juxtapositions of sound and image recordings illustrate the relativity of collective and subjective perception: a retrospective collision of alleged knowledge weaving a carpet of copious associations.

Dani Gal, "Seasonal Unrest", 2008

Curriculum vitae

Dani Gal, "Black Magic Marker. Inside the Secret Laboratory of Lee 'Scratch' Perry", 2009, video still

Dani Gal, "Chanting down Babylon", 2009

Solo Exhibitions (Selection)

Group Exhibitions and Projects (Selection)

Awards and Scholarships