Issue #10

  1. Searching for Temples

  2. When is Zion

  3. Making and Unmaking City Centers

  4. Mishkan Motherboard

  5. A Wondrous Thing to See

  6. Mechitza 7.1

  7. Transposing Diasporas

  8. The Fez as Storyteller

  9. Your Mouths Are the Ghosts of Money / Your Tongues Are the Tongues of Memory

  10. After Halle

After Halle

Talya Feldman

A detail image of the sound installation. One speaker is mounted on a green satin acrylic board with exposed wiring on a white wall. Framing the speaker is the ethical code of triage. There is a faint blue light emanating from behind the board.
Talya Feldman, After Halle, 10-channel sound installation mounted on satin acrylic boards, 14:06, 2020. Photos: Frank Rumpenhorst. The 10-channel sound installation After Halle is currently on view at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt until 2022, and was first exhibited in January 2020 with the artist collective Odessa Nomadic at the MicNichols Civic Center in Denver, Colorado. Audio clips courtesy of the artist. All rights reserved.

 

A partial view of the 10-channel sound installation in a room with white walls, a white bench with a gray seat cushion, light wood floors, and a dark wood ceiling. Eight of the ten channels are visible and mounted on green satin acrylic boards with exposed wiring. Black wires extend from the bottom of each channel and are tucked into the white floorboard. Two of the satin acrylic boards are displayed on the left wall, five satin acrylic boards are displayed on the center wall, and one satin acrylic board is displayed on the wall to the right. There is a faint blue light emanating from behind each of the satin acrylic boards.

 

A visitor faces one of the speakers mounted on a green satin acrylic board. They are in the foreground with their back to the camera on the right side of the image and slightly blurred. They have short brown hair and are wearing a black turtleneck. The framed speaker is on the left side of the image and the black speaker is in sharp focus.

 

In the center of the image is one green satin acrylic board with exposed wiring on a white wall. Black wires extend from the bottom of the board and are tucked into the white floorboard. There is a faint blue light emanating from behind the satin acrylic board.

 

A side view of one green satin acrylic board is in the foreground with a closer look at the hardware, speaker, and exposed wiring. The speaker is on the left side of the image. In the background, a visitor is standing and observing a speaker on a different wall with their back to the camera.

After Halle was created in collaboration with 10 survivors, including the artist, of the mass shooting in Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur in 2019. The sound installation offers a site for listening, grieving, and healing. Visitors are enveloped in the sounds of survivors humming niggunim that were sung in the Halle synagogue on the day of the attack. Humming is a tool used by trauma survivors for self-soothing, both for the hummer and the listener. Each voice is amplified on its own speaker, but the speakers are not motion activated. Embodying the Jewish tradition of mourning and waiting for mourners to speak first, visitors encounter the installation and patiently listen. Sometimes one recording plays, sometimes three or nine play at once, depending on the melody. The speakers are housed in an open enclosure, with their inner workings exposed and vulnerable to observe. On the surface of each enclosure is a visual reference to the universal triage code used in times of crisis. A blue light emanates from the hardware and through the transparent board.

Talya Feldman is a time-based media artist from Denver, Colorado. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a graduate student at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. She has exhibited in Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Berlin. Feldman was awarded the 2021 DAGESH-Kunstpreis for her sound installation ‘The Violence We Have Witnessed Carries a Weight on Our Hearts’ at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and has received global recognition for her projects combating right-wing terror in collaboration with activist and research-based networks.