User:Aitantv/To Half Sell a Duck, David Bernstein

To Half Sell a Duck (2022) Bernstein, D. Solo Performance, Presented at Fortune Teller, Athens. 1 Channel Documentation Film, Stereo Soundtrack, 00:51:01 duration, Belgium. (http://www.yesyesdavid.com/index.php/projects/to-half-sell-a-duck-2/)

Synopsis: To Half Sell A Duck is an exhibition and performance that brings together a constellation of works around the theme of queer religious futures. Guests are guided through the exhibition with a performance that tells a story about a radical priest who makes kinky paintings, the creation of a Golem who fights canards, and an encounter with the artist Danh Võ who asks David to cut up a 16th century wooden Jesus into pieces.
"Host plus guest equals ghost"

+ Bernstein offers a solution: "David explores "Judeo-Futurism", reclaiming historical symbols of oppression by rethinking them and placing them into joyful and perverted fantasies."

One anecdote revolves around Juden Huts, "these were hates that Jews were forced to wear in the middle ages to separate themm from the socities in Western Europe. I like to think they were actually Judeo-Futurist technologies for us to communicate resilience through the ages, through the cosmos." - like UFO antennas

intro

Offers the viewer a cookie and unfolds the aluminium wrapper. Inside is a sceret message: "A guest plus a host equals a ghost. It's a work from Marcel Duchamp".

judenhut / UFOs / futures

"In 1415 the Pope organised the 4th council of the latrine, which was a gathering of religious leaders at the time to make a series of decrees. And one of these decrees was that Jews would have to wear distinguishing clothes in public so that they could be identified and not accidentally have sex with non-jews. The law literally was there to prevent Jews and non-Jews from having sex with eachother. One of these articles of clothing wasd the judenhut.
"One of my favourite styles was a yellow one that had a kind of antenna sometimes with a ball on top of it. I really liked it because it reminded me of UFOs and aliens. And I guess you could say Jews were aliens in Europe"
I imagines the kippa, a contemporary judenhut, as "a sort of portal, or satellite dish that connected the top of my head to the cosmos. But maybe you could also say it was also a judeo-futurist technology connecting me to the judenhuts of the past and future."

the wandering Jew / diaspora

"this plant here is called tradescantia zebrina that's the scientific name. It's originally from the area of Mexico and its indigenous name is Matalin. It's commonly known as Wandering Jew. It was given this name because it's an invasive species that spreads easily"
the name refers to a historical midieval anti-semitic Canard - it tells the story of the muthical character called the wandering Jew or the eternal Jew - this character stops Jesus on his way to being crucified and he insults him, "he says, "hey can't you move a bit faster". And then this man is cursed to have to wander the Earth for the rest of time until Jesus returns.
"The idea is that the Jews will never be at home anywhere. They will be punished to perpetually wander from place to place never being fully accepted anywhere. I guess you could say it's the condition of diaspora which means to spread across, a bit like the plant"
"When I first heard the story I thought it was actually a positive one, because it meant that we could overcome the hardships we faced, survive and easily create roots in a new location"
"Many contemporary Jews many progressive Jews are reclaiming the idea of diaspora. They're using it in contrat to Zionism which claims an original utopia Homeland and 'diaspora' as an identity says "I'm at home wherever I am."

Judeo-futurism / queering

"I'm a judeo-futurist and for me judeo-futurism is about reclaiming objects of the part including oppressive ones in order to rethink them and queer them. I'm queer both sexually and philosophically and by queering as a verb what I mean is to open up the multiplicities of meanings in a thing and to play with the sexual potential."
'I'm also cyring as I watch this - a feeling of being heard and seen, and offered a tool to deal with this complicated history' - he's processing a lot of hardship and sadness, but mediating it in a light, fruitful, hopeful way.
"the judenhut was designed to prevent Jews and non-Jews from having sex with one another. But the law didn't say anything about having sex with the hat" - insert crazy orgy hat drawings. "It's a kind of Jewish logic. It's about finding loopholes in order to fill and penetrate."
"I don't just wander with my body I also wander in my mind. I wander in Wonder." - so i have to warn you at the beginning of this performance that I have a psychosis - i wander along tangents and see where my thoughts will take me

perverting/queering the Judaic oppression

tzit-tzit whip - "that really puts the sin back in synagogue"
he also re-appropriates the juden hats in vibrant drawings of mass orgies where the pointed tips are use for penetration

the golem

the Golem - emet - earth
Rabbi moshe - the priest - the bread the wine the apple
removed the aleph from the golem - so it no longer said emet (earth) but met (death) - at that the golem fell apart back to a pile of earth.
"a guest plust a host equals a ghost. A golem is a body without a soul. A ghost is a soul without a body. Are you the guest and I'm the host? Or are you the host and I'm the guest? In Latin there's just one word 'hospes' which means both guest and host so maybe we're both at the same time."