The Next Fight

The Next Fight

2022-2026

Ceramic temple counting down toward "The Next Fight," offering symbolic sacrifices and attempting, through myth, performance, and wishful thinking, to delay the violence that always seems to be waiting just around the corner.

The first chapter was installed on the roof of a public bomb shelter in South Tel Aviv. Visitors gathered around a countdown that culminated in a staged martial arts battle between two performers. Drawing on the ancient tradition of depicting war in relief, the work functioned as a kind of ceremonial anti-war machine. It didn't work.

The second chapter appeared in the center of Jerusalem in the summer of 2023, facing the charged landscape of East Jerusalem. The monument returned in an evolved form, continuing its ritual attempt to hold back the inevitable. It still didn't work.

By the third and final chapter, created during an ongoing and devastating war, the project could no longer maintain its original optimism. What began as a magical attempt to influence reality became an acknowledgment of reality's refusal to cooperate. The monument remains, but its purpose has shifted. Rather than preventing war, it now stands as a witness to it.

In the end, The Next Fight is a monument to the strange position of waiting for the next war. Trying to stop it, preparing for it, imagining it, and building ceremonies around its arrival. Oscillating between anxiety and excitement, sincerity and absurdity, the trilogy follows a countdown toward an event that nobody wants and yet everybody seems to expect. The countdown continues.