As part of the exhibitions Leonard Cohen : une brèche en toute chose/A Crack in Everything, the public is invited to a tour in company of Michael Rakowitz on November 22, 2017, at 5 p.m.
Michael Rakowitz’s multidisciplinary practice engages the senses as a means of sparking discourse around pressing political, social and historical issues. This work meditates on the iconic figure of Leonard Cohen and the ethical crisis of the postHolocaust Jew in relation to Israel, Palestine and the greater Middle East. Rakowitz presents various relevant objects and artifacts, as well as letters and contextualized fragments that weave together a compelling and moving narrative.
The piece presented in the exhibition Leonard Cohen also includes a video projection, filmed at the Alhambra Palace Hotel in Ramallah, Palestine—which, like the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, hosted many musicians and movie stars passing through the area—reconstructing the period during which Cohen travelled to Israel to perform for troops fighting in the Yom Kippur War. The project’s culmination is an event that may or may not happen: the reincarnation of a 2009 Cohen concert in Ramallah, which was cancelled because of the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, to be played by Rakowitz and local musicians at the Ramallah Cultural Palace.
