Ionah Nour

Perfect number. Ceramics interactive installation. Ceramic vessels, burnt at high temperature. Variable dimensions.

R/Shibolet. Ceramics video installation. Time in loop.

His Laba project centers around the phrase “You must change your life,” found in Peter Sloterdijk’s book. Encountering some truth that we have been searching for a long time, we all know these rare moments when you feel devoted to follow the call of something very precise that resonates within yourself—inside your stomach, your heart, and your mind. Two ceramics installations will be a response to this promise; it is time to promise.

Why night? Night is the hub, the intersection space that gives us the possibility to metamorphose. We are not in one moment, yet not in the other; we are in a liminal, quiet, and caring space that shows us its hands. In these hands is a gift of change: you must change your life. So in this transitional night space, we can think about two mechanisms of transformation so expected. You were stuck, but you met something very yours, however, responding to this yours is very painful and problematic, as you now need to conquer yourself to stay on its path.

The first response is we need to create a space of listening and attention within ourselves, we need to become a woman, our own mother, who humbles herself, giving all her strength to something that she still doesn’t know but should receive with unconditional hospitality. The expression of this gesture will be the first site-specific installation on the pier of the sea, featuring three ceramic vases. These vases give appear in them voices of the wind, the sea, birds, and stones. Here is the fixed form with the sounds and movement inside that it can’t control. The installation will be filmed and presented in the Laba final exhibition.

The second mechanism to respond to the promise of change involves gathering our previous ways of living, moving, thinking, and planning, and breaking them with the relief of liberation, letting go the whole potential that was waiting to break through, to be free and lost. To embody this gesture, the second installation with breaking ceramic vessels will be hold, directly connected to the concept of shvirat hakelim, however, we will give it a new meaning—not of a loss but of letting go of past belongings to make space for something new, new melodies? This will be a communal gesture at Casa Adret, accompanied by a poetic text and sound. Here is the action itself, nothing static, form being broken, its liberated voice heard, and its disappearance and transfiguration seen.

Night is our mother tongue, and poetry overwhelms it.

Poem: 4 Canciones de Miriam, written for The 114 Incantation Bowl project, by Dafne Ortiz Salazar.