31 January- 1 March 2009

Project Room
Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art


Dani Gal
Born in Jerusalem in 1977 and living in Berlin, has been one of the four winners of the Villa Romana Fellowship Prize 2008. He employs audio and video equipment to make documents and historical facts current and expose the needs of the production, its technical aspects, and its ideology, thus creating a contrast with the history not yet written in our present.
His work was presented last year, together with those of the other winners of the Villa Romana Fellowship Prize, at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin in the group exhibition Freisteller curated by Angelika Stepken.

Villa Romana
Founded in January 1905 by the german painter Max Klinger and his friends, the Villa Romana Association today is mainly supported by Deutsche Bank, The Federal Government Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs and further private patrons to offer an opportunity to especially talented, primarily younger artists resident in Germany to further develop their art during a prolonged stay in Florence.


Seasonal Unrest
The two-channel video-installation, produced in the occasion with support of the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, will be presented in the Project Room of the museum from 31 January through 1 March 2009.
The new work created by Dani Gal focuses on the professional role of the Foley artist, who produces sounds for movies using his body and different objects. By watching a movie and imagining how a given scene should sounds like, the Foley imitates real sounds (for example the footsteps of a character) and gives the movie reached and believable sound effects.
In his project Dani Gal films a Foley artist in the recording studio, during the process of creating new sound effects for a historical documentary called "Grenade in Gaza".
The film is an Israeli television production from 1970 where a television crew entered Gaza strip for the first time, shot a documentary and tried to create an image of Gaza, three years after it was occupied by Israel.
One aspect of the film is how the Egyptians used film to create anti Israeli propaganda. The director explains how image and film can be used for propaganda purposes while he assumes an objective position that could be seen as equally propogandist.

The result is a two channel installation where the Foley artist's video is projected next to the original film, which have a new sound track and has been translated to English. The confrontation between the two shows the mechanism of making a political documentary and try to question our understanding of the language used by the media in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than and today.



Dani Gal. Seasonal Unrest

Exhibition produced by: Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato
In collaboration with: Deutsche Bank and Villa Romana

Promoted by: Tuscany Regional Government and Prato Municipality
Supported: ASM, CariPrato, Gruppo Consiag, Unione Industriale Pratese
Official Partner: Florence Airport