A hog of a good time
In his new exhibition at Haifa City Museum, Ido Beck gains inspiration from history, video games and wild boars gone urban
When Haifa-born artist Ido Beck imagined how to address the uniqueness of his city he thought about its famous dwellers, the boars. The capital of the north gained headlines around the country in past weeks after wild boars began to prance around city streets seeking food. For Beck, the temptation proved irresistible.
Me, the Haifian, is again on display after its intended run was cut short by the novel coronavirus at the gradually reopening Haifa City Museum. Beck examines the visual history of early Zionist posters which were used in city campaigns as public service announcements informing residents, for example, where to get anti-mosquito repellent (“bring an empty bottle!” one ad says) and marking the 1958 Haifa Flower Festival. Together they have the effect of a visual celebration that verges on a 3D video game blown up to real life.
The posters mark a century since the creation of the Zionist Archive Collection. Curator Yifat Ashkenazi appears in an educational video on the exhibition’s site, where she speaks about the Haifa Flower Festival or Haifa’s Mother’s Day, which have become virtual local visual histories.
Beck is deeply interested in games and how they allow a person to explore reality and grow. He credits British artist Grayson Perry as one of his major influences in this regard. Just as Perry explores feelings of alienation via his alter-ego Claire, or in his 2013 etching Map of Days now at London’s National Portrait Gallery, Beck created a video game, Me, the Stranger, showing an avatar-Beck exploring Haifa.
The viewer can access eight different “plots” of his personal experiences – from rocket attacks to serving in the army – similar to Perry creating a fictional town where each part represents an autobiographical event.
With music by Taras Roskoshny and coding by Katia Podolsky, the game was created in 2019 while Beck was doing an MA in visual communication at the Academy of Art
Weißensee in Berlin.
In reference to the 1958 flower poster, for example, Beck presents an animated flower dancing in a vase. In another animation clip he shows a man climbing stairs. Haifa – built on the slopes of the Carmel mountain – is a city where locals climb stairs to get from one street level to the next and is a familiar local experience. The exhibition also includes large cartoon boars, smiling but perhaps a bit hungry or playful. These are placed next to cartoonish garbage cans and other aspects of Haifa life.
The interesting combination of retro-style video games, local history and ironic captions brings to mind Israeli street artist Know Hope (Addam Yekutieli) or US artist Raymond Pettibon, illustrating how truly international Israeli art is currently, while keeping its local flavor. Ashkenazi points out that gaming is not limited to video games; visitors may also explore and rearrange the historical posters from the collection when they visit the exhibition.
Haifa City Museum is located at 11 Ben Gurion Boulevard, Haifa. The exhibition Me, the Haifian reopens on Thursday, June 25 at 7 p.m. after closing temporarily due to the COVID19 outbreak. www.hcm.org.il