VIDEOS

“Snow Globe” (2020), a single-channel video, follows the stages in the making of a home-made Christmas snow globe in the style of daytime DIY or cooking shows. A pair of hands are seen toiling on a kitchen table, cutting the shape of a pig using a metal cookie cutter intended for dough or modeling clay. Cut in freshly skinned pigskin, the cutout farm animal is then inserted into the snowball, suspended from a miniature butcher’s hook and red rubber bands sewn into the skin with a needle. Complemented by the traditional snowflakes and a Christmas tree, the ball is then filled with formaldehyde to prevent the pigskin from rotting away. Confronting a pastoral, snow-covered landscape with an act of violence, Mor’s traditional Christmastime souvenir offers a disturbing hybrid of different TV genres, from cooking shows, filmed lab experiments to DIY YouTube tutorials.

Past Perfect (2016), a 4:30-minute video that runs continuously in a wooden box propped on a tripod, likes a camera obscura with a peephole which gives the feeling of a voyeuristic gaze into a private, enclosed realm. The video comprises of three separate sequences, all shot at the same heavy industry facility and showing the daily routines of its workers at present. Screened in a loop, the indifferent sequencing of the three video segments recalls an industrial assembly line; however, the daily routine of the workers is no longer one of systematic productivity, but rather of idleness and leisure: They feed pigeons, listen to the radio and cook lunch on a makeshift grill. Much like many who were employed in the workforce of the “old industry” they still earn low wages, especially now that this branch of the industry is dying out. Their skills are limited to the job they were originally trained for and now they spend their time in near idleness, bound to production lines that have been terminated or are running only partly. Quote from the text “under the skin”, Sally Haftel Naveh.