(2018)
The Chosen is a lecture-performance given at the British Association for Jewish Studies conference in Durham, England on July 11 2018. It considers the myths surrounding the contemporary artist and their supposed ability to create conditions of radical freedom and asks how contradictions in these myths can be brought up and challenged by looking at a heretical Jewish messiah figure. The Chosen particularly focuses on the writing of theorist and curator Beti Žerovc on the exhibition event as locus for confronting these issues. It uses the example of Roee Rosen’s Two Woman and a Man (2005), which introduces the fictional Belgian-Jewish, Surrealist, queer, feminist, (rumoured) heretical messiah Justine Frank as a figure who exposes art world hypocrisies.
It is one of a series of culminations of interviews on messianic figures in contemporary video art with Roee Rosen, Avi Mograbi, Yossi Attia, Yael Bartana and Menahem Roth.
Rachel Pafe 