Catalogue > At random

During February 2010, Jerusalem born artists Oreet Ashery and Larissa Sansour had twenty meals in twenty falafel eateries in London, one on each day. The meals were open for the public to join in eating and debate, and functioned as art events, laboratories, performances, therapy sessions and oral history hubs. All the meals were filmed with a small Flip camera on a rotating cheeseboard and were edited together into one-hour of raw and immediate film. Ashery and Sansour opened each meal with the question: Did Israel steal the falafel from the Palestinians? This seemingly silly and controversial question, was a precursor to an investigation into the intentional and systematic hijacking and eradication of Palestinian cultural history by the state of Israel.

Oreet Ashery is a Jerusalem born, London based visual artist, cultural activist and educationist, engaged in solo and collaborative practices. Ashery works across performance, still and moving image, objects and facilitation to create situations that explore the relationships between politics, culture and representation. Ashery?s work is presented extensively in an international context, and discussed in numerous publications and books, in various languages. Recently Ashery had published three books: The Novel of Nonel and Vovel, with the artist Larissa Sansour, Charta; the monograph Dancing with Men, Live Art Development Agency; and the Artangel commission Staying, dream, bin, soft stud and other stories. Sansour?s work is interdisciplinary and borrows heavily from the language of film and pop culture. References and details ranging from sci-fi and spaghetti westerns to horror films converge with Middle East politics and social issues to create intricate parallel universes in which a new value system can be decoded. Sansour?s work has been exhibited worldwide in international biennials, galleries, museums, film festivals and on the internet and is featured in many art publications. Larissa Sansour was born in Jerusalem and lives and works in London, UK.