May 2009, Berlin--“My 'residence' at PROGRAM has met with no resistance on any side,” Ariel Reichman declared in the press release to "Legal Settlement," his performance installation at Berlin’s street-level Program Galerie. ”My settlement is a legitimate one.”

Although he was invited into the gallery, Reichman’s exhibition still welcomes comparisons to problematic occupations elsewhere, not least of all in his home country of Israel. The Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank is, however, only one analogy for “Legal Settlement.” The South-African born, Israeli artist’s project goes beyond a mere theatrical “taking over” of the gallery and mines legitimate rich meaning from Reichman’s making the gallery his home during the six-week long installation.

During the course of the exhibition, Reichman gathered material from around Berlin to build a cozy den for himself in the gallery, where he hosts guests and mini-dinner parties and displays on-loop videos of the performances he previously staged in the space that were intended to evoke his memories of military service and religious training. At the same time, another screen projected on the wall shows, in real time, the image of a ragged white flag blowing in the wind generated by a fan in the gallery.

Overall, the effect of the exhibition is warm and hopeful, as Reichman takes the empty white gallery space and transforms it into a viable home. In fact, the transformation took place over time.  After being disturbed by club goers knocking on the gallery windows when he was sleeping on a mattress in the center of the space, Reichman built a little tent-like hut to hide his bed from planks of left-over wood. He also installed a tub where he does his washing and a sitting area for smoking and meals. As the show continues, his set-up evolves and becomes more sophisticated – like a homemaker scaling up.

In this sense, Reichman’s project reflects Berliners' experiences, as much as those of Israelis or Palestinians. Berlin is a city where squatting is only now becoming less and less common. But it is still a place where crafty kids from all over flock to make their nests. By making a gallery into his home, Reichman is living out the fantasy of many young artists who embrace Berlin as a cheap creative capital where they can successfully fuse their art and life.

Program’s director Carson Chan repeatedly finds artists who enliven the gallery space by directing attention to it as both an inherently interesting space and also as a gallery. For “Surface Values,” Program’s show before Reichman, Finnish artist Eemil Karila asked the gallery’s cleaning lady to mop the floors with a solution mixed with ultra-violet paint, so that black lights would reveal both the patterns from her mop and leftover details from previous shows. Reichman will tidy up the space after he leaves, but his presence will remain, even as he himself will surely be missed.

I meet with Reichman to talk about being an Israeli artist in Berlin and how his art relates to his identity and more universal creative concerns. Here, we share coffee at the wood-plank bench amid collected pots and pans which constitutes his ‘breakfast nook’ by the Program window. 

Ana Finel Honigman: So, where do you normally live?

Ariel Reichman: I normally live in Kreutzberg. 

AFH: I guess you subletted your place, right? 

AR: I did. Kind of as a little anecdote but mostly to get the rent, so I could spend it here. They have an artist in residence but normally one would not live here.

AFH: Unless this was your exhibition, and then you would. So you are from South Africa and live here. Yet you are an Israeli artist. How is that? 

AR: I was born in South Africa to Israeli parents. I was raised there until the age of 11 or 12. It's really strange because I don’t actually have any memories of South Africa. I was raised in an Israeli family and my family was orthodox Jews. 

AFH: There is a huge Jewish community there, right? Something like the third most prominent ethnic group I think.

AR: That’s right. I went to a Chabad school. I feel like I grew up in South Africa but I didn’t really live there. I don’t really have any memories of it. I have a black-out from this whole time. My father, he is a cantor, so we lived in this kind of rich area and it was very . . . umm . . . 

AFH: Isolated? 

AR: I think. Those are the memories I have but I don’t know. We had a lot of dogs. It sounds really pathetic. We had black people working for us and we were very close. It was also really strange. I found a lot of pictures and it seems like I had black parents. It was the time of apartheid and that was strange. 

AFH: That doesn’t sound atypical. New York kids are often raised by nannies too. 

AR: I went to confront my mother a few years ago because I wanted to find Maria, the woman who raised me. I asked because I know her name is Maria but I asked my mother about her surname and she didn’t have a clue. This woman grew me up and it hit me because my mother hadn’t a clue about her name. They came to South Africa when they were in their twenties. I asked them whether it seemed odd that they were paying two people to live and work for them, I don’t know something like a hundred Euro a month, and knew nothing about them. But they told me it was super-normal. My first memories were of my brother telling me, “This bus you can take. This one you can’t. This park is for you. This park is not for you.” It was totally separate. On the other hand, Maria was my mother. I could speak Zulu. I was taught when I was a baby. 

"My first memories were of my brother telling me, 'This bus you can take. This one you can’t. This park is for you. This park is not for you.' It was totally separate."

AFH: Do you still? 

AR: I forgot everything. I don’t even have one word. But my mother tells me that, until the age of 4, I could speak fluently to the black people and they were shocked. I could talk in Zulu. But I grew up in an Orthodox Israeli house. I had an army flag over my bed, which is sick, but that was how it was. Here, let me show you some photos . . .

AFH: I think it is really interesting that your brother told you that some things were for you and other things weren’t. One outside that system always thinks white people had everything, but there were things that were not for you? 

AR:  Every thing was for them but some things you just do not use. I really remember this day. I remember that and Maria. 

AFH: These photos are incredible. These people were your family. What are your parents’ feelings about your lack of connection to this period of time? 

AR: None. Their issues are my lack of connection to Israel. 

AFH: Do you see connections between the political situation in Israel and South Africa? 

AR: It is difficult. Yes and no. In a way, you can’t avoid it but in another way it is too much of its own situation. There is a route between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that I used to drive a lot when I was living in Tel Aviv and studying art in Jerusalem. There are demonstrations there every Friday, or second Friday. It is called “Apartheid street” because it used to be open to Palestinians and Israelis but some years ago they started closing it off and building walls on each side, so the highway is only for Israeli cars. On the side, there are Palestinian villages where they have to take off-roads. It is like wearing blinders, For a Palestinian a 45 minute trip takes three hours.  I took lots of photographs of the street because it is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. 

AFH: What about the question of being a Jew in Berlin? 

AR: I can understand that it could be interesting. And it is an issue, in a way. But for me, at the point I am at now, it just isn’t interesting. It does always come up though. I think that the third German generation think about it more than the third Israeli generation. I often get asked these questions. But I didn’t move to Berlin as a Jew. 

AFH: You weren’t making a statement. 

AR:  No. I wasn’t. 

AFH: Unless your statement was that you like to live in nice places to live. 

AR: I want to live here and work here in this place and time. It is an interesting city to live here and work here because of its history and its future. In a way, I feel nice that as a Jew, I feel good here and it’s not an issue. But I still think that it is an uninteresting topic to deal with. It just is what it is. I am Jewish. I live in Berlin. I feel great. It is not an issue. It is not a topic to get into. 

AFH:  I think the Germans are really mature in how they deal with the history… 

AR: Yes. Very true. 

AFH: But Americans are really chippy. 

AR:  I think it’s great that the Germans in Berlin have it everywhere and don’t try to make it pretty.  You see it everywhere and they don’t try to make it into a mausoleum. It is part of the city and its history but the city itself is so open to the future. It deals with everything in a really great sense. 

"In a way, I feel nice that as a Jew, I feel good here and it’s not an issue. But I still think that it is an uninteresting topic to deal with. It just is what it is. I am Jewish. I live in Berlin."

AFH: I really like how different locations with really heavy history, from the different eras in this city’s heavy history, went through phases of being gay fetish clubs. I like the thinking of taking these really tense death-filled spaces and just fucking in them, really raw, until the energy feels better.

AR: Yes. It’s beautiful.

AFH: It’s a nice way to move forward.  People away from here always ask whether Germans are really awkward and uncomfortable. But no one is uncomfortable here. 

AR:  No, everyone is in the park being comfortable. People always think there will be this tension and stress but no one is stressed. It’s just not interesting. 

AFH: I think people outside Berlin ask the question because it’s a lazy way to seem like you’re having a “serious conversation.” It just makes one look like they are saying something “informed” and sensitive. There seems to be a regular influx of Jewish Americans coming here and wanting to photograph Jews here, but no one cares and I guess they go home. 

AR: And it is not serious. But American Jews take it very seriously. 

AFH: My father’s mother, who lives in Queens is very upset that I am living here. But I’m sure my mother’s parents, who both were from Europe and had direct Holocaust histories, would be thrilled I was here. 

AR: I am sure any American Jew moving to Berlin would have grandparents who were upset. American Jews are so into Israel but in this totally abstract, atavistic way that has nothing to do with the reality of it. 

AFH: How is that different from other Diaspora communities’ mythological relationships with wherever they perceive as their lost home?

AR: There was an interview once on television in Brussels on the right of return, with Israeli and Palestine politicians for and against. At the end, there were questions. Most of the audience were Muslim. A Muslim woman stood up very angry at the Palestine politician who was against the right to return and she started to shout at him, “Where is your pride?” He looked at her and very patiently asked whether she has ever been to Gaza. She said no, but “Take me there with you tonight. I will go there with you right now.” She was really emotional. But he said something really nice and really correct. He said “It is really easy for you, as a young woman, to be national and proud of your identity when here in Brussels. You don’t have to deal with every day life. Your son doesn’t have to die. Being proud is easy for you. But when you go through it every day, you just don’t give a shit about these questions any more.” I think this about American Jews all the time. They are so much about “go there and fight.’ I just think “Fuck off!” 

AFH: It is just an excuse to feel special from the society you’re in. 

AR: It is disconnected to reality. To feel proud and wear the army uniform for a country where you don’t live. Its just . . . 

AFH: It’s sad. It’s sad to be living in a constant state of wistfulness for something elsewhere, that doesn’t even exist. 

AR: It’s totally disconnected to reality. It’s creepy. Take your money that you send over all that time and go build a hospital in your own town. 

AFH: I think a lot of that focus is a way to opt out of the internal racial politics in the States or elsewhere. Jews are not exactly white, but the overemphasis on ‘otherness’ also turns attention away from the real contemporary racial issues effecting Americans. I am sure you encountered something like this in South Africa. 

AR: I just don’t remember. 

AFH: Well, since moving from there I am sure you must have felt some pressure on you to respond to that political history. I mean, as an Israeli from South Africa, you must have a really shitty time at cocktail parties. 

AR: It definitely could be easier.

Artslant would like to thank Ariel Reichman for making this interview possible.

--Ana Finel Honigman