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// Interview of Ohad Ben Shimon with Yotvat Zarka for Mifgash Magazine, 2011

Diary

At the outset, I contacted friends. I got to know Ohad Ben Shimon, a photographer who also does performance art. Ohad Ben Shimon keeps a diary: ahead of time, he defines the criteria for what goes in. For example, he’ll start to write a week before a performance and keep writing until the curtain goes up and then read the diary entries to the audience at the performance. The reading usually takes place in front of an audience of artists - for example, photographic artists working in Ohad’s own field. He reads the diary just that one time, without any preparation. The fact that the reading is a one-time event and that he is addressing an audience of artists is significant. Ohad’s website screens videos that show him reading the diary.

I found that I really like his work, and after an exchange of emails we decided on an email interview. (In order to make better sense of the interview it is a good idea to look at Ohad’s work as presented on his website. To view the works - www.ohadbenshimon.com)

Through the interview, I try to understand Ohad the artist and the meaning of keeping a diary. I want to show that the genre he uses is an interesting foundation for investigating the idea of diary writing and, beyond that, the possibility of writing out of our experiences at all. Reading out loud from a diary contradicts the whole notion of a diary, yet at the same time it is its most precise manifestation.

Yotvat Zarka: It is precisely in art (the discourse in which you create) that there is reference to what you’re doing, to the act itself, and I see your texts as literature. I listen to your stylistic choices and to the intentional tone of reading. I find myself asking if the choice to keep a diary is a conscious one, performing an act that allows you - within the world of visual art - to speak/write only. Why keep a diary altogether?

Ohad Ben Shimon: The decision to write a diary is clearly a conscious decision. I see it as one of the last frontiers of subjective expression available today. In that sense I use it as a kind of format that has its own ontological validity or justification.

At the same time, it questions, as you correctly suggest, the surrounding discourse into which I insert it. In this case, the context is visual art with its different hegemonies and canons, which traditionally do not recognize text or speech as a categorical imperative, for these forms of expression are less obtainable.

Yotvat Zarka: It seems to me that the link between texts and the visual arts is very interesting. You don’t hear a lot of reference to words in the world of visual arts. Perhaps a literary conversation about a work of art that contains a few words, e.g., the work of Michal Neeman, would really be refreshing.

The Limits of Words

Words do lead us to a very subjective place. Part of this is their essence, being a limb of something that is absent and being open about the fact. Does your reading assume some kind of missing element? You describe entire days on a few pages, or a day in a single paragraph. Which details do you include in the text and which do you leave out?

I feel that there is a hidden something that cannot be accessed other than through the voice, though it too seems to be aiming for monotony. Through the movements of your fingers, the turning of the pages, perhaps these components give me a sense that you have turned yourself into a diary, a broadcast, and that is something that transcends the individual, the personal. What are you feeling when you’re reading the diary?

Ohad Ben Shimon: Indeed, I like how you describe words as relating to an absent bodily organ, a kind of phantom limb perhaps. One of my texts is titled My Pen Died. In that title I was playing a kind of word game with “deadpan” to refer to the writing aesthetic, a kind of dry, monotone, of a strictly informative character. In my own perception I always remembered the term “deadpan” as “dead pen” and thought it would be funny to think of a personified pen who died on me either just before, during or after me writing the text.

At the same time, the title points to the inherent paradoxes or impossibility of the act of writing, in which I absurdly find myself time and again. I write in order to get a grasp on those life events, on the logic that constitutes them or me in them and so on. So to answer your question, I guess what I am missing or am afraid of missing out on is the continuity of time and my actions on that time line. Perhaps the texts in the way they are written, try to create that missing, invisible space-time capsule or at least to bridge the edges of the visible ones.

I usually write whatever is on my mind. I try not to block myself or censor myself while writing. Otherwise I get stuck and try to cover what in fact should be uncovered, which is the banality of the everyday. Sometimes I find myself talking to myself while writing and tell myself to stop writing with so many “I”s. When I stop to think about it, I say fuck it, why not, this is my text, I am the one writing it, why shouldn't I write “I” as many times as I want. So it is always this kind of attempt to get behind myself to write about myself, a self-rebellious attempt to attain autonomy over myself, which is quite a weird feeling.

As for the voice, my voice while reading the texts, indeed it is an important element. Somehow only when I read the texts live and out loud to a public do the texts become alive, and immediately, right afterwards, in a way die because I never read the same text live out loud again. I also usually never read the texts before that live reading, so I never know how they are going to come out, and that is what I find so interesting. When you are facing a public reading or performance of this sort, you never know how it is going to come out.For me, this adds an element of insecurity, which challenges the usual very safe kind of environment I am in while writing - a quiet room with almost nobody around. When I start reading the texts usually I get kind of nervous at the beginning but that passes after a few minutes and I very much enjoy the silence of the public and myself somehow when I read. I am there to deliver the text, it is no longer mine somehow, it belongs to this reporter character that you correctly identify.

Coming Back to the I and the Diaristic Identity

Yotvat Zarka: I think it’s really great that you speak about your thoughts about writing, why you write, and so on. These are truly authentic moments, and sometimes also very funny. I was thinking about what you said about coming back to the word “I” and the fact that the diary imagines an I (singular) around whom the world turns. There is a parallel between the syntax of a sentence in which there is an “I” and the idea of the diary, particularly to the way of thinking. It seems to me that latching onto a diaristic identity, like a sentence not missing the “I” contains a tremendous passion or effort to generate a product. This may be the figure you say you’re transmitting. Do the writing of the diary and its reading leave you feeling more trapped as an “I” or more amorphous and lacking in identity?

Private or Public Diary?

The choice to read a diary in public is a statement. Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as a private diary? Is your choice an attempt to show the extent to which the personal isn’t really personal?

Ohad Ben Shimon: I like how you term my identity as a diaristic identity, and, yes, in a way it is hard to maintain that and deliver that to the public. It requires being completely oblivious to what’s going on, while at the same time keeping your eyes wide open. During one of my last reading performances I had to start laughing in the middle because I couldn’t hold a straight face (and I was a bit drunk...). At first I thought it might be a bad sign or something not right to do when reading my text but later I thought actually why not, and so being in a way captured between this serious straight - face guy and the ridiculously clueless guy became my diary - identity/persona.

Thinking a bit about the nice term you defined (diary identity) makes me think about the entity with which every diary begins and is in a way addressed to - “Dear Diary”. Who or what is this “Dear Diary” person or thing? Do we address it to ourselves? Do we address it to Mr. or Ms. Diary? Do we address it to the material entity of the diary, the object of the diary? Maybe my diary - identity is in fact my 'imaginary friend' - “Dear Diary”? Perhaps in my live readings I become and embody the person to whom my diary is addressed.

Writing and reading the diary text doesn't then bring me into a certain state of mind or identity, but more to a feeling of a mind between two states, not necessarily more cohesive or amorphic but intra-subjective.

As for the private/public issue, sure, I intend to evoke something with that. In the place I live, alot of the efforts of people are aimed at very superficial channels such as trying to keep up at all costs a public appearance or a certain smiley face. At some point these attempts take over the individual completely and leave a kind of living-corpse, shell or social puppet behind. I believe that in this kind of society there is no more something we would call private or personal because all of the capacities of that human being are aimed at keeping up that puppet-being. This leaves no room to talk about truly personal things such as emotions or feelings, not in public nor in private.

Yotvat Zarka: To play the role of the diary - that is actually a brilliant idea, the figure to whom you address the diary. I always thought that usually, when keeping a diary, you, in your imagination, are addressing it to some fictional character who is going to read it at some time in the future. But now that you mention the salutation “Dear Diary” I’ve just imagined a situation in which there is a salutation - speech, dialogue - to or with an object.

I think that when you write a diary there is some sort of constant identity that insists on being our second self. Perhaps were we to keep a number of diaries at the same time we would develop other identities, each of which would take shape on the basis of the terms of each specific diary.

I’m starting to wrap this up and am attempting to summarize this “interview.” I have very much enjoyed our correspondence. It seemed productive and rewarding. In your work and in the discussion about it there are essential materials linked to the subject of identity that I allude to in the discussion about limits (the theme of this issue) and I really hope that the ideas in your work will be brought to the fore in our lives (and not remain in the realm of “a work of art” only).

In what way do you think the audience is affected by your art (both at the immediate level and in the longer term)? What sort of reactions do you get? You’ve spoken about the goals of your work and your intentions, but do you think your audience gets it? Does the audience feel the effect of your diary?

Ohad Ben Shimon: Thank you as well for a fruitful discussion. It has given me some new insights into my practice.

As for the effects on the public I hope that in one way or another they feel that I've given them something, or mirrored something back to them. I guess that somehow everybody goes through more or less similar things in life and maybe the public recognizes something of its own life in my texts. By extension, it gives me a sense of sharing an experience together with the audience which is great, and somehow I guess therapeutic.

As for responses from the public to be honest, most of all I like it when people really open up and share their true emotions with me after they hear or read my text. Someone once gave me a big hug afterwards, which was very sweet. Someone else said I reminded her of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and said that the text wrenched something in her insides. I'm interested in what you personally felt after reading or listening to the texts. After all we have met only virtually through these emails and my website.

Yotvat Zarka: There is something very real in your reading, very sad and specific. It doesn’t ignore the obvious and that really moves me. I connected very strongly with it. On the one hand I felt - especially at the beginning - the glorification of the artist who knows what he’s doing and is full of himself, but on the other hand is saying something different, human, without any barriers or definitions. It made me feel pity for myself.

I’m tremendously curious about your division: it has an interior story and I enjoyed listening. I assume it’s different when you’re in a hall; it must be even more moving. Other than being monotonous, the speaking tone was self-effacing, not trying for an emotional effect, humble. This made me believe you.

In my writing, I find it very difficult to be personal, to write naturally, clearly. I always move away from the concrete. The more I write the more I understand that writing has to be based on events that happen to me; even when I invent characters, the emotional foundation springs from me. This point in your diary is very true and right; the writing doesn’t get all caught up in itself.

Let me ask you a last question, following up on the discussion about the diary as a character. You mentioned that over time the character has become endowed with its own features as you read and write the diary. Do you think that the character can distance itself from what Ohad used to be? Does the character perhaps try to distance itself from you through it, using the diary as a means for liberating you from what you know as yourself?

Ohad Ben Shimon: Thank you very much for your kind and wonderful reflection on my work. I appreciate it! As for your question about the development of my diaristic persona: that persona has indeed changed over time and I think the main changes or developments of that persona are shaped by the surroundings in which I, as the writer or author of that persona, am situated while constructing those narratives. So you could say that the diaristic persona is half a private construction or fantasy of mine and half the construction of the environment in which it is situated ; generally speaking that would be Europe.

I think it relates to the intra-subjective element that I tried to describe before. Somehow the diaristic persona is an inter-medium between my own authentic self and the public, a kind of double-sided mirror: so, the diaristic persona does not serve the function of getting me away from myself but more the function of bringing closer ”The Other” which I believe belongs to the ethical dimension of Art.

Yotvat Zarka is a writer and editor of Mifgash Magazine based in Tel Aviv, Israel