Artists: Yael Brandt, “Breaking the Silence” (with Miki Kratsman and Avi Mograbi), Lana Čmajčanin, Juan Manuel Echavarria, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne (with rami Farah), Avi Mograbi, Christoph Weber, Rona Yefman, Mich'ael Zuprzner

In the artistic discourse, a long exposure is used to describe a photograph taken with slow shutter speed. During the long exposure to light, the details are gradually revealed and deciphered. In psychological jargon, “prolonged exposure” is a therapy technique developed recently by Dr Edba Foa, which has gained worldwide popularity in treatment of post-trauma patients. As part of the “prolonged exposure” therapy, the patient is exposed to elements tied in his memory with the traumatic event.

Most of the works in Prolonged Exposure, are video pieces created as a result of long-term documentation. The creators of these projects introduce stories which touch upon the notion of trauma, and depict a reality of power struggles, exploitation and manipulation, violence and chaos. Through this long photographic process, they ask their protagonists to reveal their individual traumatic stories. The testimonies bring to light the hidden trauma, thus echoing the “prolonged exposure” therapy technique.

The stories originate in different parts of the world—from Israel to the west bank, Syria, Bosnia, Colombia and Austria. Although they deal with biographical experiences, the works don’t present direct testimonies, but touch upon the crisis of testimony, and its inability to reflect an all-encompassing historical truth. The performativity of the testimonies offered by the artists of “Prolonged Exposure” represents an abandonment of the need to represent the real in a conventional manner, and an attempt to construct a new reality.

The artists in Prolonged Exposure — like many of their peers in film and video-art—have ceased to present an uncritical vision of the real through the documentary. They have instead chosen to blur the boundaries between documenter and documented, and to undermine the author’s authority by leaving their position behind the camera, entering the photographic frame, and by handing the camera to the subjects themselves—either physically or by foregoing control over the mode of documentation and the process.

The externalization and the undermining of the customary power relations between documenter and documented, with regard for the resulting internal contradictions and complexities, is a call to alter the existing balance of powers between strong and weak, heard and silenced. The shift proposed by the artists of Prolonged Exposure challenges the assumptions regarding what truth is, and who is authorized to be the bearer and speaker of that truth. The exhibition calls upon the viewer to reconsider her passive position in the power relations of representation, and to take a more active position in their realignment.

Curated by Maayan Sheleff

The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv

Prolonged Exposure

Prolonged Exposure Press
Midnight East
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