Mier Ahronson

Interview by Jean Wainwright

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 18 Numbers 3 & 4, 1999

Transcript

Jean Wainwright: I’m here with Meir Ahronson, outside the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Can you tell me how this show came together and how you came to choose the artists?

Meir Ahronson: Their names came out naturally, because they are from a group that I work with. I asked myself several questions before I decided to take them. I asked myself is it important that it is the last Biennale of the Millennium? So I decided that I am not going to make a pyrotechnic exhibition to show-off, and I don’t want to criticise anyone, but I don’t want to make a special show. I wanted to do an exhibition that will force the people to think. History is a flashlight for the future, you cannot go to the future without knowing the history. So this is the subject of the exhibition; it’s not the Jewish Holocaust, and I want to emphasise that. It’s a holocaust as something that humans create, it’s not a natural disaster; it’s not a hurricane, it’s not an uncontrolled force. We are changing positions from hunter to hunted without even feeling it. This is the subject of the exhibition.