{"id":240670,"date":"2026-08-08T09:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/240670\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T09:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:28:09","slug":"inside-overtones-the-israel-museum-exhibition-turning-sound-into-an-art-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/240670\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Overtones, the Israel Museum exhibition turning sound into an art form"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Inundated, nay bombarded, with information as we are in this day and age, to have an opportunity for some more considered listening is a rare boon. Much of the data that cascades over us via our cellphones and computers<\/a> is of a sonic ilk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And as we muddle our way through the morass of auditory overflow \u2013 consciously or subconsciously taking parts on board in betwixt attempting to weed out the predominantly irrelevant stuff \u2013 whether we like it or not, we take on some emotional fatigue. That can lead to shrinking attention spans and a diminishing ability to discern the proverbial wheat from the chaff.<\/p>\n

Given that deplorable, increasingly challenging state of affairs, a visit to the Overtones: Sound and Art<\/a> exhibition, curated by Talia Amar, currently on display at the Israel Museum, makes solid remedial sense. The show features an eclectic spread of works that take in bona fide recognizable musical instruments, albeit implemented in very offbeat ways, and all sorts of wild, wacky, charming, and totally unexpected means of producing sound.<\/p>\n

The explorative scene is set with the introductory wall text, which opens with an insightful quote from John Cage, the innovative 20th-century composer, artist, and music theorist: \u201cNot one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ItamarItamar Mendes-Flohr’s ‘Ghost Interference’ uses the language of energy to communicate with inanimate objects. (credit: ELAD SARIG)Walking the art garden<\/p>\n

That yin-yang reciprocity dynamic was palpable as I took a walk through the recently refashioned Billy Rose Art Garden, speckled with its beguiling variegated array of sculptures and other aesthetic items. It wasn\u2019t just a matter of deciding to take a stroll around the pebbled expanse with its motley crafted figures and forms. This was a premeditated, crafted tour of a sector of the museum\u2019s outdoor domain, indeed a guided tour, courtesy of currently US-based Jerusalemite interdisciplinary artist Meital Covo.<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just any old information-laden lap around an eminently attractive location created 60 years ago by Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. \u201cThis is an audio walk,\u201d Covo enlightens me before we step out of the air-conditioned museum, into the sun-drenched late morning. \u201cThis is a work that you go out, to perform it. More than anything I have created until now, it very much depends on the individual who is experiencing it at the moment,\u201d she posits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why it is important to me that as many people as possible, of different ages, with different degrees of patience, coming from varying contexts, come and experience this. For me, the work does not exist by its own right. It needs to encounter a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is surely true, but isn\u2019t that the case with every work of art? Once the artist puts something out in the public domain, he or she subjects the fruit of their labors to third-party scrutiny and response thereof. The difference here, Covo explains, lies also in the intent behind the creative process.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of artists have no interest in that, and that\u2019s fine too. They want to engage in their art, and they don\u2019t care what happens afterward. I can\u2019t operate like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Covo has a history of interaction with people and their deepest emotions. During a residency in Paris<\/a> just over a decade ago, she invited visitors to step out onto a small balcony and shout their heads off, regardless of how that seemingly non-PC conduct may impact unsuspecting passersby in the street below.<\/p>\n

The 40 or so minutes I spent with Covo\u2019s velvety-voiced narration, as I took the audio walk around the garden, was a delightful, calming, and immersive timeout.<\/p>\n

For starters, I suddenly paid close attention to the creations that dot the sequestered al fresco spot, which for the majority of museum patrons is a little off their beaten track. Most of us head straight for some exhibition or other set inside the labyrinthine building without giving the outdoor offerings too much thought. After taking the audio walk, I can appreciate how much I have been missing all these years by circumnavigating the Billy Rose Art Garden.<\/p>\n

Archive of the soul<\/p>\n

Then there is the crux of Covo\u2019s endeavor, her Hebrew commentary built around snippets of her Archive of the Soul. The latter references a project she began in 2024, on the first anniversary of the murderous Hamas attack in the South, when she turned to members of the public and offered them an opportunity to offload some of their pent-up angst accrued since that fateful day, by vocally recording their thoughts and feelings.<\/p>\n

The street-level goal was to simply allow people a sorely needed outlet for their emotions \u2013 \u201ca personal commemorative act\u201d as Covo puts it \u2013 as the war raged on in Gaza<\/a> and our hostages continued to languish there. Participants were allowed to keep their recording to themselves, or to entrust it to Covo, to be used anonymously as she built up an online repository of emotional outpourings.<\/p>\n

Early in the audio proceedings, we hear a young child from Shlomi who was about to return home, up North, with his family, after spending 18 months in a Jerusalem hotel as an evacuee. The innocent goodwill that exudes from the youngster\u2019s dulcet tones, as he expresses an insouciant wish for better things to come, points us in a suitably introspective and amenable direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take a breath now,\u201d Covo advises us via our headphones before we move away from Anish Kapoor\u2019s iconic Turning the World Upside Down reflective stainless steel sculpture, where we capture our own distorted fun image and some of the landscape around us. The audio walk \u2013 the original Hebrew name translates directly, and delectably, as Sonorous Odyssey \u2013 now begins in earnest as we get into the thick of the artistic and soulful mix. Hearing water trickling from the Water Source mound is a wonderful balm to an already overheated body and spirit.<\/p>\n

The narration continues betwixt palpable inhaling and exhaling, which helps keep us on the right psychological track. Breathing is key to the participatory exercise, and as we not only get a closer look at Noguchi\u2019s deftly arranged maze of artistic creation, we begin to take in \u2013 with Covo\u2019s guidance \u2013 the panoramic view of Jerusalem that is unique to the eerie hilltop where our foremost cultural institution sits.<\/p>\n

Staying in the healing moment<\/p>\n

Like the rest of us, Covo is all too aware of our country\u2019s blood-soaked past and what the future may hold for us. She says her quotidian multitasking conversely helps to keep her grounded. \u201cI live in the world of today. I am a mother, and also an artist and a teacher, and I try to function in those roles in a manner that benefits myself and people who meet me.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is a highly commendable and society-friendly line to take, although it comes at a price. \u201cI try to do all those things while staying in the moment. We are always thinking back and forward. I\u2019m not good at that, and I don\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cue the audio walk. \u201cThat\u2019s why I was drawn to the garden, because it invites us to roam and lose ourselves in it. And that\u2019s why I was drawn to work with the voice, because it is a medium that demands total dedication, to be in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd breathing,\u201d I interject. The basic physiological fact of the matter is you can\u2019t talk if you don\u2019t breathe.<\/p>\n

The audio walk is not \u2013 pardon the pun \u2013 merely a blissful palliative bed of roses. There are some visceral slots in there that come straight out of Covo\u2019s peripatetic Archive of the Soul recording venture. The artist set up shop at myriad spots up and down the country, including at Mount Herzl. There, an initially hesitant woman eventually entered the tent-like apparatus that Covo had set up to allow participants some privacy as they discharged their innermost anguish.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly, there was a deafening shriek,\u201d Covo recalls. \u201cThe guard from the cemetery ran over to see what was going on. But the woman just came out, gave me the recording and told me to do whatever I want with it. She rejected my offer to send her the result.\u201d Duly relieved, the woman just wanted to go on her way. That astringent outburst is audibly and emotively present in the audio walk guide.<\/p>\n

There are all sorts of philosophical, artistic, and emotional insight to be had as you follow Covo\u2019s directions around the expanse, drawing you physically and cerebrally into the creative progression, and also enhancing your bond with the one-of-a-kind locale. I can honestly say that, after hundreds of visits to the Israel Museum over the years, the next time I make my way up to the museum buildings will be a different, more personal experience. I may even breathe a little more easily.<\/p>\n

Sounds across the spheres<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, inside the museum, curator Amar has laid out an expansive and diverse range of items for our visual and aural appreciation and enjoyment. \u201cThe reference point for all the artists in the exhibition is the point of view of listening, breathing, the human voice and the non-human voice. There are a variety of works that engage in different aspects of sound, noise, and so on,\u201d Amar explains.<\/p>\n

The eclectic selection of offerings is also a result of the source disciplines. \u201cNot all the artists work in the plastic sphere,\u201d Amar continues. \u201cSome are musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latter is pretty clear from some of the exhibits. That includes Peter Coffin\u2019s Free Jazz Mobile, which comprises a bunch of instruments tantalizingly suspended from the ceiling, just waiting for someone to pluck, bash, blow into or pass a bow across them.<\/p>\n

The \u201cincomplete\u201d ethos also pops up strikingly in Samson Young\u2019s Muted Situation 22: Muted Tchaikovsky\u2019s Fifth, created in 2018. As the numeral suggests, Young has made a whole series of videos of ensembles playing classical works without emitting a sound from their instruments, which have been mechanically muted.<\/p>\n

You are left with the corporeal dynamics of the players and conductor, their breathing and any other peripheral sound that would normally be smothered by the music. That naturally puts one in mind of Cage\u2019s seminal avant-garde composition 4\u201933\u201d, which addresses silence not as a sonic vacuum but as a domain that is full of sonic textures that are usually ignored.<\/p>\n

Sixties vibes filter through in the form of a Moog synthesizer that somehow found its way over here, in 1969, and ended up in the Electronic Music Laboratory opened by Josef Tal, a pioneer in the electronic music field. We get a good look at the workings of the instrument, with cables distended every which way out of something that looks like a back-to-the-future telephone operator switchboard.<\/p>\n

Before Robert Moog came up with his baby, electronic music had been the sole domain of classical music innovators. The new synthesizer was swiftly embraced by the psychedelic and other rock and pop crowd, such as The Doors and The Grateful Dead, particularly after the introduction of the portable mini-Moog.<\/p>\n

That revolutionary passage of Western culture is also represented in the exhibition by a cluster of posters advertising rock concerts of the day, with acts the likes of Jefferson Airplane, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix.<\/p>\n

We head back to this part of the world with Dor Zlekha Levy\u2019s Manana Manana projection and sound installation, inspired by the heady mix of church organ music and the acoustics of a mosque he encountered in Cordoba. The city was established as the regional capital by the Muslim rulers of the Al-Andalus part of southern Spain in the eighth century. Five centuries later, King Ferdinand III wrested control of the area back to the Christians and had the Cordoba mosque reconsecrated as a Catholic church. Hence, Levy\u2019s fusion of sonic elements of both religions becomes a natural musical synergy.<\/p>\n

There are other disciplinary leapfrogging items in the exhibition, with Christian Marclay stretching \u2013 literally \u2013 instrumental<\/a> bounds with his Virtuoso, an altered accordion he created in 2000.<\/p>\n

The 71-year-old American artist has been bridging various musical domains for some years now. He was a pioneer of record scratching back in the day, relating to discs as physical-sculptural entities in addition to their musical content. He has also produced a hefty body of work in the areas of performance, collage, sculpture, video, and photography.<\/p>\n

Reprising the theme championed by Young and Cage, Marclay\u2019s impossibly long \u2013 all seven meters of it \u2013 snaking accordion winds its way from end to end as a clearly unplayable instrument. The intentionally impractical manifestation harks back to the idea of paying attention to silence and, thus, prompting us to use our own powers of imagination to complete the sonic picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cOvertones: Sound and Art\u201d closes on December 31. For more information: imj.org.il\/en and meitalcovo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inundated, nay bombarded, with information as we are in this day and age, to have an opportunity for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[6387,461,32293,37,17723,16434,3738],"class_list":["post-240670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-culture-in-tel-aviv","tag-israel","tag-israel-museum","tag-museum","tag-music"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117059184738725710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}