נירה פרג ... שמור בחיים

The video work "Sabbath 2008", 2008, and the new project "Kept Alive", 2009/10 (three channels HD video and 18 photographs), at the center of Nira Pereg's (b. 1969) exhibition, use documentary materials filmed in Jerusalem: in the former - blocking the streets in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods to vehicles, using various blockades, as the Sabbath enters; in the latter - distribution of land and workforce in the crowded "real-estate" site of the Mount of Rest cemetery. The expression "reserved in life" refers to burial plots that living people purchase for themselves. Both works deal with social rituals and with marking territories and boundaries in Jerusalem: between the sacred and the profane, between the living and the dead. The intensive soundtrack amplifies the ritual, repetitive effect of dragging the blockades and of digging in the stony earth - activities that determine the rhythm of the films. --