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EFFI & AMIR

TEXTS

First performed in 1999, in Jerusalem. Duration: 1 h 53 min.

The centre of the work is the act of running itself; 21 kilometers that each of us run which totals a full distance of 42 Km - a marathon. We run on two professional treadmills, placed parallel to each other and partially overlapping. Each of us faced in the opposite direction so that we are running shoulder to shoulder. In front of each of us we place a monitor connected to a closed circuit camera, which shows a section of the other runner's back. While running, each of us is gazing at the other's back. The image of the back hardly changes during the running, it is almost an abstract image. Above each monitor, we place a ventilator that ventilates our backs while blowing our sweat on one another. In this way mental and physical paradoxes of directions, distance and movement are created; a circular movement of pursuing, fleeing, attracting, supporting as well as movement of stretching along an imaginary line which grows as time passes and distance increases. The pace is fixed in order to assure that we would both finish the 21 km exactly at the same time.

On the walls and on a little corner table, we put framed photographs that we take at a radius of exactly 21 km from the location where the performance is actually happening, other objects can be added to the setting; few signs and artifacts, and a small digital alarm clock that shows the actual time.