I'm Too Uncultured to do Anything but Laugh at Modern Art

Last week was the opening of the "Jerusalem Art Show," which was a venue for contemporary art in the Old City of Jerusalem. When I heard about it, I had two thoughts go through my head: "I don't do large groups of artists walking around smoking and talking about the deeply moving inspiration caused by those streaks of paint," and "This could be pretty cool. At the very least, I'd have something to blog about!"

So naturally I went. It was all for you, dear blog readers. And for me, since I needed a good laugh.

When I got to the starting point (we were going to walk around the Old City to several different venues), I thought to myself, "Yeah, I really don't do large groups of artists walking around smoking and talking about the deeply moving inspiration caused by those streaks of paint, but I'm sure I'll have some crazy stories to blog about!" And I wasn't disappointed.

The first building we went in was still under construction/renovation. Like everything else in the Old City, the walls were cracked and the staircase was temporary and pretty questionable. One of the artists was doing a presentation, and we all had to wait and go in 5 at a time (the room was pretty small). Before we went in, we were asked to agree on a performance (from a list of 7) that the artists would do for us. We picked #7, which had as its description an old Chinese story. This told us absolutely nothing about what he would actually do, which should have been my first clue.

I started getting really nervous when we walked in because there was a man dressed all in black and wearing a ski mask standing there. I immediately went into "emergency mode," looking around for possible exits in case things got out of hand. However, then someone mentioned that he was from Taiwan, and my fears of Hamas-led "art" immediately vanished.

When we came in, he asked for a volunteer to move the pile of sand on the floor about 6 inches to the left with the shovel while he did the same to another pile of dirt behind the table. As this occurred in silence, the rest of us searched desperately for some sort of meaning or inspiration (well, most of the rest of us--I was struggling to hold back the laughter).

And then, that was it. He finished moving the pile of dirt, walked over and saw that the other woman had moved the pile of dirt, and called for the next group of spectators to choose a performance.

I walked outside quickly and tried to compose myself (I was laughing pretty hard), while the rest of the people in my group kept asking each other, "What was he doing? What did it mean?" "Well," I wanted to say, "He was moving a pile of dirt. It means that now he has twice as much floor area covered with dirt than he did before." But I didn't say anything.

AND THEN. One of the guys from my group came up and asked me, "What was he doing? What did it mean?" "I have no idea," I said. "Oh," he said. "I guess that's art, right? Imagination."

"Or dirt," I thought.

But it turns out that this guy was much more interesting that piles of dirt being moved around. He was from France and was on a solitary "tour of the world." And he'd been out for a year and had explored all of Asia!! Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Syria...he'd been all over. He said he planned another year to hit Africa and South America. And he was just traveling by himself, sleeping in hostels, mingling with the locals, and backpacking around the world.

Guys. What an AWESOME idea. I don't think I would ever have the money (or the emotional stamina) to do such a thing, but just talking to him about what he had done made me think for just ten seconds about doing a similar thing. (The crazy thing is he said he'd only spent about 9,000 Euros in that year!)

And the oddest thing? He spoke Chinese and had lived in China for a couple of years! For some crazy reason I keep running into Chinese speakers--but a guy from France doing a tour of the world that was fluent in Chinese?! My life is so weird.

There were some other exhibits, including this one about olive trees that I didn't really understand, but with the ice broken with the first show, I could laugh about all of them (and all the artists smoking and talking about the deeper meaning of life) without feeling uncultured.

I did get to go out on some rooftops and get some pretty spectacular views of the city, though!

I guess I'm just not cultured enough to appreciate modern art...