A Free Moment by Nir Evron

Echoing Wavelength, Michael Snow's seminal structuralist film, Nir Evron’s A Free Moment explores the remains of Tell el-Ful, a building in northeast Jerusalem that was intended to serve as a summer palace for the Jordanian royal family. The building’s construction began in 1966, but was halted by the onset of the Six-Day War the following year. The building was never completed, nor was its structure removed, and the site is currently considered Israeli territory. Evron examines this modern ruin by placing a 35mm cinema camera on a unique apparatus, composed of a robotic arm attached to a track, and programmed to complete three simultaneous actions: dolly (the camera moves in a straight line on the track), pan (the camera moves in a 360-degree horizontal revolution), and tilt (the camera moves in a 360-degree vertical revolution). While each individual type of camera motion is common practice, the layering of all three at once is unusual, and produces unfamiliar results. The four-minute running time of the piece corresponds with the length of a single film reel. A Free Moment is in keeping with Evron’s previous works and his explorations of the ways in which architecture is tied to historical memory and very often to failed futures. 

Nir Evron is an artist and filmmaker based in Tel Aviv and Berlin whose work investigates the relationships between history, media, and memory. After receiving an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Nir began exhibiting his films, videos, and photographs widely. He has presented his work in solo exhibitions at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto (2020); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Art in Richmond, VA (2015); and at LAXART in Los Angeles, CA (2014). He has shown his films at the Berlin Biennial and the Rotterdam Film Festival (2010, 2012). Nir has received several awards from the Israeli Ministry of Culture. His work is in the collections of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; and La Caixa Foundation, Barcelona, among others. www.nirevron.com