Aya Ben Ron | Shift

Aya Ben Ron | Shift | Solo Exhibition

Noga Star Project
Opening: 11.2.2010
Closing: 6.3.2010

Aya Ben Ron’s exhibition, “Shift,” incorporates a video piece (15 min), reliefs on plywood, and a sculptural work— all of them created during 2009. The video depicts a shift in two departments for patients with head injuries at the Reut Medical Center, Tel Aviv. It unfolds twenty-four hours in the life of 17 to 38 year old PVS (persistent vegetative state) patients. The patients in this state are unconscious, yet they sustain a cycle of sleep and wakefulness (as distinct from comatose, where patients are unconscious and have no sleep-wake cycles), and often live a long time with continued nourishment. The video was created by unmediated observation of life in-between. Eighteen months in all, the shooting process involved spending long periods with the patients in their rooms and following the various staff members interacting with them: doctors, nurses, paramedical staff, physiotherapists, animal and music therapists. The film exposes the relationship between therapist and patient, which is simple and intricate at the same time: simple,because it is centered on basic existential needs, and intricate due to the absence of normative communication. It indicates the existence of a human apparatus underlainby social and moral codes, intended to preserve life. The images in the sculptural work Still Life result from deconstruction and reconstruction of sketches of respiration machines and drawings extracted from medical textbooks, addressing various situations during childbirth in which the fetus fails to make its way out in the desirable way. The seven nurses (Sisters) in the reliefs are depicted standing in empty field hospitals.

Aya Ben Ron’s exhibition serves as a pilot for the Parasite work model. The work process which preceded the show functioned as an experimentation ground and a laboratory for defining the essence of the model and its consolidation, while engaging in constant dialogue and sustaining reciprocity and exchange between the artist and the evolving model. The end result illustrates and implements the credo on which Parasite is founded.