גוינט ישראל | עט השדה גליון 18

In the middle of broken worlds

She rises up.

All nights long

She spins the web

Of what could happen to her.

(Astar Shamir, “Stronger than The Wind”.

The issue’s fifth Section,

“The Power of Fracture”,

is composed of

two stories of personal journeys from the point of fracture to the

point of coping, creation and growth. The artist

Liron Breier–Danziger

describes a journey she took to her past through the lens of her camera;

a journey in which she revisited sites of fracture, scenes of crime. The

journey begins with one innocent picture of a house. A pretty house

surrounded by greenery, a house of plenty, a house where a crime

had been committed – an eight year old girl was sexually abused. The

writer takes us through stations of life to the place where she and

other girls, young and older women were sexually victimized. The

exposure of these “innocent” crime scenes (a well-groomed yard, a

school or a street in a residential neighborhood) brings back the sound

of those injured girls, young and older women. During the journey

the writer challenges us with the following questions: what is the

breaking point in cases of sexual abuse? Is the effect of the fracture

only individual and personal? What is the place of the public in the

victim’s cry for help? The writer’s story indicates that the power of the

journey’s story is in creating a renewed narrative that makes the pain

accessible through art and reveals points of social-political blindness.

Barak Biton’s

journey story begins with complex and difficult life

circumstances – parents’ separation, life in the shadow of poverty,

social exclusion and lapsing into behaviors of anger, frustration and

alienation. The writer describes this journey – first through the eyes of

a child growing with existential anxiety, with the shame of poverty and

power struggles with his environment, later on through the eyes of a

rebellious teenager, who roams the streets and joins other teenagers

First

publication

in Gali Atari

’

album

“

the Day After

” (1992),

by NMC