Sweating Sweet
Abdominal Syndrome – Thoughts on Orit Raff's Sweating Sweet / Yair Barak
Raff's Character in Sweating Sweet is hardly one of us. Her appeal is one of a stranger.
Barefoot she is walking, wearing a dress, (more likely an apron) with sort of a pocket – an additional abdomen.
As an unknown marsupial she delivers an endless supply of white powder. As a metabolic by-product the powder is being thrown away and constantly (so it seems) – reproduced.
Salt or Sugar? The piece does not offer a definite answer. The title though, implies for the sugar. If that is so, the contemporary sower is spreading seeds of sweetness into the ever salty water of the ever non-sweet sea. A one man desalination plant, made of cloth and sugar, no pumps, no engines, activated by an urge for compensation, for correction and contradiction.
The action/labor is a repeating ritual, a Sisyphean task, trying to transform the salty sea water to sweet water i.e. in Hebrew drinking water. This action has no purpose but the object of the act. The urge to change the destiny, to take over, to interrupt the established order is an act of rebellion and obedience at the same time.
Raff's Character in Sweating Sweet is hardly one of us. Her appeal is one of a stranger.
Barefoot she is walking, wearing a dress, (more likely an apron) with sort of a pocket – an additional abdomen.
As an unknown marsupial she delivers an endless supply of white powder. As a metabolic by-product the powder is being thrown away and constantly (so it seems) – reproduced.
Salt or Sugar? The piece does not offer a definite answer. The title though, implies for the sugar. If that is so, the contemporary sower is spreading seeds of sweetness into the ever salty water of the ever non-sweet sea. A one man desalination plant, made of cloth and sugar, no pumps, no engines, activated by an urge for compensation, for correction and contradiction.
The action/labor is a repeating ritual, a Sisyphean task, trying to transform the salty sea water to sweet water i.e. in Hebrew drinking water. This action has no purpose but the object of the act. The urge to change the destiny, to take over, to interrupt the established order is an act of rebellion and obedience at the same time.
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