Instruction:
Gilad Efrat

Meron Glaser lives in Kibbutz Givat Haim. In her final project, she presents eight photocopies of handwriting and objects. The handwriting is Glaser’s mother’s, which Glaser copied from notes her mother wrote after suffering a neurological injury. As part of this work, Glaser participated in neurological research at Beilinson Hospital in which FMRI scans were conducted on her brain while she was creating, showing which areas of the brain were active. The focus of Glaser’s creation is not the work itself, but the cognitive, emotional, intellectual, and material processes that create the complex and complicated layers of the brain – that meaty structure that presents its identity to the outside world through the connections it creates. 

The writing expresses human existence in historical contexts and is also a reflexive emotional coping tool for someone who was struck dumb and disappeared. Though the brain stores sophisticated information, the events happening within it cannot always be explained. The act of photocopying corresponds to the processes of medical imaging and diagnosis: both are visual attempts to grasp or at least establish a material connection with material-free mental activities.

“The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes is the fundamental text that accompanied the creation of the exhibition.  Glaser presents a series of ambiguous messages, some in writing and some in objects; these then amalgamate into a mixed and somewhat confused identity, in which the author’s question becomes more and more complex until it slowly disappears.

Photo: Achikam Ben-Yosef