Anat Ben-David MeleCh (2014) film still. Courtesy the artist.
Anat Ben-David MeleCh (2014) film still. Courtesy the artist.
Anat Ben-David MeleCh (2014) film still. Courtesy the artist.
Anat Ben-David MeleCh (2014) film still. Courtesy the artist.
Anat Ben-David MeleCh (2014) film still. Courtesy the artist.
Anat Ben-David MeleCh (2014) film still. Courtesy the artist.

Anat Ben-David

MeleCh

8 - 18 January 2014

Live Performance: 7pm Wednesday 15 January 2014 / All Welcome

MeleCh is a new audio-visual installation by artist, performer and Chicks on Speed band-member Anat Ben-David, comprising a triptych of screens featuring mythical singing characters in perpetual movement, presented alongside a photo-collage demonstrating Body Image Exercise; a callisthenic technique devised by the artist to interact directly with the camera.

The installation and associated live event are accompanied by a 12″ vinyl edition and printed booklet, available for sale directly from Stanley Picker Gallery as a standard black vinyl edition (£15) and special-edition signed yellow vinyl (£30).

The works presented in MeleCh – the Hebrew word for King – have been developed using an improvisational method of speaking or singing words into a sound oscillator and observing their rhythmic effects. The sonic patterns created trigger new ideas about what words to utter and how they might be performed. The themes developed are then constructed into visual narratives through choreographed body movements performed for the camera in a process the artist has named OperaArt.

This working method, honed during Ben-David’s current PhD research at Kingston University, is based on biomechanics and performance improvisation that entails a form of subjective bifurcation; the artist split into the two entities of performer and producer by distancing herself from both her body and voice through interacting with digital interfaces.