Evaders

Ori Gersht (born 1967)

Towner

2009

This major two channel film by the Israeli born artist Ori Gersht will launch Towner's Art Fund International purchases in a strong and highly visible way. The film was shot on the border between France and Spain which was closed in September 1940, the day before the critic and philospher Walter Benjamin planned to cross from Nazi controlled Europe to avoid persecution. This led to his suicide and consequently the place and its history has become symbolic of a tragic search for freedom by a group of German intellectuals whose attachment to German romanticism blinded them to the horrors of the Nazi regime until it was too late. Gersht skilfully combines this history with his own more recent cultural upheavals and contemporary concerns of the European Union and border controls or the lack of them.

• Medium: HD format film
• Art Fund Grant: £29500 ( Total: £29,500)
• ArtFunded in: 2011
• Vendor: Mummery + Schnelle

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