Keren Cytter (; born 22 August 1977) is an Israeli visual artist and writer.
Biography
Cytter, born
22 August 1977, spent her childhood in Israel and went on to study visual arts at the
Avni Institute of Art and Design
Avni Institute of Art and Design is an Israeli art school located in Tel Aviv. History
The Studia school (later Avni Institute) was established in 1936De La Fuente S:Black and white in color" '' The Jerusalem Post'' 30 May 2007. Accessed 2008-11- ...
,
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...
. After finding success in various galleries in her home country, she moved to Amsterdam on a scholarship from
De Ateliers where she studied with
Willem de Rooij Willem de Rooij (born 1969 in Beverwijk, Netherlands) is an artist and educator working in a variety of media, including film and installation. He investigates the production, contextualization and interpretation of images. Appropriations and collab ...
and
Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas (born 3 August 1953) is a South African artist and painter based in the Netherlands.
Early life and education
Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Kuils River in the Western Cape, where her father ha ...
. Her scope of work includes film, video installations, performance, drawings and photography. She is also a writer of novels, theatre plays and poetry. She is professor at University of Fine Arts Munster.
Work
Video Art
After graduating from De ateliers in Amsterdam, Cytter made several video works that went on to be shown internationally including ''The Date Series'' (2004, a series of short narratives written, filmed and produced in the period of one year), ''The Victim'' (2006), ''Repulsion'' (2005, based on
Polanski's
Repulsion), and ''The Milk Man'' (2003). Among her most famous work is ''Der Spiegel'' from 2007. ''Four Seasons'' (2009) is another example of essential Cytter: the absurdist low-fi mixture of a variety of film genres, from
Film noir
Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...
to
Melodrama
A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on ...
, culminates in the iconic shot of a burning Christmas tree set to the dramatic music of
Ferrante & Teicher.
Dance and Theatre
In 2008 Cytter formed a dance company called D.I.E NOW (Dance International Europe Now) consisting of 5 non-professional dancers. Their first production ''History in the Making – The True Story of John Webber'', which was based on a wide range of influences including
Pina Bausch
Philippine "Pina" Bausch (27 July 1940 – 30 June 2009) was a German dancer and choreographer who was a significant contributor to a neo-expressionist dance tradition now known as . Bausch's approach was noted for a stylised blend of dance move ...
,
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
,
Disney on Ice
Walt Disney's World on Ice is a series of touring ice shows produced by Feld Entertainment's Ice Follies And Holiday on Ice, Inc. division under agreement with The Walt Disney Company. Aimed primarily at children, the shows feature figure ska ...
,
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...
,
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental. and the 1980s dance-floor filler
Lambada
Lambada () is a dance from the state of Pará in Brazil. The dance briefly became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in the Philippines, Latin America and Caribbean, Caribbean countries. It has adopted aspects of dances such as Maxi ...
, went on an international tour and was presented in
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...
's
Turbine Hall
The turbine hall, generating hall or turbine building is a building or room in any steam cycle or hydroelectric power plant which houses a number of components vital to the generation of electricity from the steam that comes from the boiler, or ...
in London,
The Kitchen in New York City, Tramway in Glasgow and
Hebbel am Ufer
The Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) is a German theater company and international performance center in Berlin. It has three physical locations (HAU1, HAU2, and HAU3), and a digital theatre (HAU4).
History
HAU was founded in 2003, before the 2003/04 season, ...
in Berlin.
The same year the British magazine
Art Review ran a cover story on her entitled "I just wanted to attract attention".
She initiated her foundation APE – ''art projects era'' together with Dutch curator Maaike Gouwenberg in 2010. The aim of the organization is to develop projects (performances, exhibitions, printed matter, meetings) that cannot necessarily be realized within traditional institutional formats or frameworks.
Later that year she wrote and directed the play ''Show Real Drama'', produced by APE and partly based on the lives of its two actors, Susanne Meyer and
Fabian Stumm. In the piece, which uses videos and repetitive dialogue and movements creating a fractured yet empathetic storyline, they are struggling with the demanding entertainment business while their relationship is slowly falling apart. The production met with great success, the
Houston Chronicle
The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. ...
calling it "intriguing (...) something deconstructionist architect
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions.
Gehry rose to prominence in th ...
might conjure if he were a playwright; a story pulled apart at the seams then re-configured with cool wit and 21st-century angst." As of 2014, the play has been performed all around the world from London, New York City and Houston to Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul.
In the spring of 2010 her work was featured on the cover of the American Art Magazine
Artforum
''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...
, which ran an extensive story on her body of work.
Her next play ''Anke is Gone'' or ''I Eat Pickles At Your Funeral'' opened in Berlin at
Hebbel am Ufer
The Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) is a German theater company and international performance center in Berlin. It has three physical locations (HAU1, HAU2, and HAU3), and a digital theatre (HAU4).
History
HAU was founded in 2003, before the 2003/04 season, ...
in 2011 and was invited to the
Images Festival Toronto in 2012.
In 2013 Cytter collaborated with musicians Keira Fox, Charlie Feinstein and David Aird on ''Vociferous'', a fluid combination of musical concert, video work and performance which was presented at the ICA
Institute of Contemporary Art, London. Adrian Searle wrote in his
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
review: "As a mix of live performance and video, the recent collaboration between
Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker. Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of '' Pandora's Box'' (1992) marked the in ...
and
Massive Attack
Massive Attack are an English trip hop collective formed in 1988 in Bristol, England, by Robert Del Naja, Robert "3D" Del Naja, Daddy G, Grant "Daddy G" Marshall, Tricky (musician), Adrian "Tricky" Thaws and Andrew Vowles, Andrew "Mushroom" ...
at the
Manchester International Festival
The Manchester International Festival is a biennial international arts festival, with a specific focus on original new work, held in the English city of Manchester and run by Factory International. The festival is a biennial event, first takin ...
set a standard. Vociferous is both more intimate, more alienating, and more of a mash-up (...) After a bit I gave up trying to follow anything like a story, if there was one, or to chase the projected imagery, which came and went intermittently, first on one screen, then another. I felt a bit of a berk, running through the crowd with a notebook, trying to keep up, like an undercover cop blowing my own cover. Towards the end, Fox and Feinstein take up the electronic drums, and Fox starts singing from a ragged sheet of lyrics, the music hitting such a pitch that my nostril-hairs start to vibrate in sympathy."
[''Keren Cytter's Vociferous''](_blank)
The Guardian
Projects
After six years in Berlin, Cytter relocated to New York City in 2012 where she initiated a quarterly publication focusing on art and poetry. Published by APE, it has so far featured Nora Schultz, John Kelsey and writings of Josef Strau,
Matthew Dickman, Roman Baembaev, Roger van Voorhees and Sylvia Mae Gorelick.
Her 2013 solo exhibition at
Pilar Corrias in London presented an ambitious new body of work called MOP (''Museum of Photography'') – a large archive of
Polaroid photographs documenting her life as she travelled from Berlin and London, to the United States and Israel from 2012 to 2013. Taken with her 1200i and One step 600
Polaroid camera
Polaroid may refer to:
* Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras
* Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation
* Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs
* Polaro ...
, the photographs are carefully categorised by geography and chronology and then arranged into sub-sections, titled A, B, C and D and so on, via their aesthetic. Images of friends, colleagues, curators she encountered, museums she worked in, landscapes she passed through, and her own performances are all featured. The collection consists of more than 800 polaroids.
In May 2019, Cytter had her first institutional solo presentation in Israel, titled “Sponsored Content.” The exhibition carries a deep autobiographical tone, although, as always in her work, this very tone is hinted and suggested, avoiding any direct references. For this exhibition, which is articulated in two galleries, the artist has conceived an immersive display that invites the viewer to have an unusual physical encounter with her work, generating a space for reflection, bringing up all the different life stages, from childhood to teenage, from adulthood to middle age, till old age.
Films
In February 2024, Cytter first feature film “The Wrong Movie” premiered in the forum section of the
Berlinale
The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...
. The film met with great success.
Travis Jeppesen
Travis Jeppesen is an American novelist, playwright, poet, artist, and art critic. He is known, among other works, for his novels ''Settlers Landing'' and '' The Suiciders''; a non-fiction novel about North Korea, ''See You Again in Pyongyang''; a ...
wrote in his
Artforum
''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...
review - “Those familiar with her videos, artwork, novels, and films already know Cytter as one of the great progenitors of the absurdist tradition of Beckett and
Ionesco; The Wrong Movie, with its self-deprecating title and its critical incursion into present-day existential immanence and all its post-ideological squalor, was one of the 2024 Berlinale’s great unsung films."
Vladan Petkovic wrote in
Cineuropa
Cineuropa is an online information portal dedicated to the promotion of European cinema. It publishes daily news, reviews, interviews, and industry reports and maintains a database of information. It is available in four languages: English, Fre ...
“Like a
Beckett drama for the digital age, The Wrong Movie deals with existential questions, such as the feeling of loss and loneliness in a constantly connected world. But it is far from trivial or redundant – there is much more to be found between the lines of this apparently simple, but in fact quite complex, work. The movie may feel wrong, but most of the time it actually seems to get things right.”
In 2024, Cytter was a member of the International Competition jury for the
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, founded in 1954, is one of the oldest short film festivals in the world. Held in Oberhausen, it is one of the major international platforms for the short form. The festival holds an International ...
"
Writing
In addition to her video and performance work, Cytter is the author of five novels: ''The Man Who Climbed Up the Stairs of Life and Found Out They Were Cinema Seats'' (Lukas and Sternberg, New York – Berlin, 2005); ''The Seven Most Exciting Hours of Mr. Trier’s Life in Twenty-four Chapters'' (Sternberg Press Berlin, 2008); ''The Amazing True Story of Moshe Klinberg – A Media Star'' (Onestar, Paris, 2009); ''White diaries'' (CCA Kitakyushu, Japan, 2011); and ''A-Z Life Coaching'' (Sternberg Press, Berlin 2016); in addition to three children’s books: ''The Curious Squirrel'' (Pork Salad Press, 2015), ''The Brutal Turtle'', and The ''Furious Hamster'' (both Pork Salad Press / CEC Genève, 2018).
Quotes
"I studied art because I wanted to go to New York and wash dishes." (2010)
"Artists are like bees. Hard to catch, they have the tendency to die after doing something meaningful." (2012)
"Not for epileptic people." (On her performance ''Vociferous'', 2013)
Awards
In 2006 Cytter won the
Bâloise Prize at
Art Basel
Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel (Switzerland), Miami Beach (US), Hong Kong and Paris. Art Basel provides a platform for galleries to show and sell their work to buyers, an ...
, Switzerland. She also received the Ars Viva Prize 2008 in Berlin and was one of the four nominees for the 2008 Preis der
Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst, Berlin. In 2009 Cytter became the first recipient of the Absolut Art Award in Stockholm and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2010. Cytter is the recipient of The
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
for Creative Arts, US & Canada (2021).
''Keren Cytter Profile''
Guggenheim Fellowship
References
External links
Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cytter, Keren
1977 births
Living people
Feminist artists
21st-century Israeli women artists
Jewish Israeli artists
Israeli novelists
English-language writers
Israeli expatriates in the Netherlands
Bâloise Prize winners
Israeli contemporary artists
Israeli experimental filmmakers
Israeli video artists
Women experimental filmmakers