Shimon Attie Visting Artist Lecture September 27

I know we already spoke a little about the Shimon Attie Lecture, but here are the three most relevant things I learned. I learned about Shimon's first big video project, which was called "The Attraction of Onlookers" An Anatomy of a Welsh Village. In his video he used real villagers holding static poses. It was made in remembrance of the children lost in an avalanche in Aberfan. Shimon's most recent piece is an eight channel round video installation called Metro.Pal.Is. For this piece, he blended the Israeli and Palestinian declarations of independence into a hybrid form. He then depicted 12 Israeli and 12 Palestinian New Yorkers saying various parts of the hybrid. Shimon is currently working on a piece for a memorial for police officers who have fallen in the line of duty in San Francisco. He is creating "The Well of Gratitude," which is a glass cylinder that opens up into an oculus and on the inside has letters that citizens have written in gratitude to the police force.