Performing Blackouts. Orchestrated reading of censored Yiddish, Hebrew and Arabic texts

Orchestrated by artist Ofri Lapid, "Performing Blackouts" is a part of the online events program of Yiddishland Pavilion that takes place from May to November 2022.
Artist Ofri Lapid orchestrated an online multivocal and multilingual collective reading reanimating censored texts through the work of translation and transformations of language. The reading was provoked by different occasions in history when Yiddish theater was censored or banned by the authorities - from plays performed in in Berlin-Scheunenviertel in the early 20th century to Yiddish theater in the early days of Israel.
The online multilingual session gathered professional Yiddish performers and translators for a public reading of a collage of censored materials translated especially for the event from Hebrew and Arabic into Yiddish or English and vice versa. The selection of texts covered a variety of instances in which the Israeli government in the past, and also different theaters and publishing houses in the present impeded political criticism from being voiced through various instruments of censorship. The reading seeks to see in the Yiddish language a safe haven for the unspeakable and evoke questions regarding the apparatus of censorship and how to undermine it by means of translation. Can Yiddish voice political resistance? What kind connections occur with the transition of contemporary heated and controversial topics to a non-national language?
Texts by Hanoch Levin, Sigal Naor Perelman, Samich El Qasim, Jacob Gordin, Yael Tal, Anat Dreamer, Naama Redler and Amos Kenan.
Read and/or translated by: Irad Ben Isaak, Shiri Shapira, Ethel Niborski, Jake Krakovsky, Eliana Jacobs, Elena Hoffenberg and Jake Schneider.
An accompanying reader with translated excerpts can be downloaded at the event page yiddishlandpavilion.art/event...
Yiddishland Pavilion is an alternative pavilion that premiered at 59th Venice Biennale in dialogue with some of the national pavilions. It is the first independent transnational pavilion bringing together artists and scholars who activate Yiddish and the diasporic Jewish discourse in contemporary artistic practice. The Pavilion’s activities - performances, discussions, presentations of new artworks, physical and digital interventions - unfold at the 5in Venice and online between April and November 2022. Yiddishland Pavilion represents Yiddishland ( ייִדישלאַנד or אידישלאַנד)-an imaginary country/land/space/territory and a stateless network connected through the Yiddish language and culture.
Yiddishland Pavilion is curated by Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks.
yiddishlandpavilion.art/
yiddishlandpavilion.art/event...