mixed media: found antenna, radio transmitters, radios, barn wood etc
Diasporist Anchors for Future Memory
curated by Craig Williams @ Kamloops Art Gallery
group show w/ J.Forever, Z.Teifenbach
Doikayt (hereness) 97.9 is a 10-channel pirate FM radio sound sculpture. It sonically yearns for the Jewish shtetl from which Gambletron’s ancestors came. The work centers the artist’s diasporic homeland through ten stations of original compositions and field recordings, transmitted from a modified TV antenna mounted on an imagined rooftop in a contemporary Eastern European village. Gambletron gestures toward a homeland they long not to have been expelled from, emphasizing that brutally colonizing another nation to establish a new Jewish state is not the answer. Visitors dial one of ten channels across four radios, placing them throughout the gallery to shape an acoustic, choose-your-own-adventure soundscape.
Underlying their investment in Eastern Europe is the Jewish Diasporist notion of דאָיִקייט (doikayt), anchored in the Yiddish word for "hereness.” This concept signals care for Jewish cultural autonomy wherever Jewish communities or individuals exist, without (and in direct opposition to) the colonial maintenance of a theocratic ethnostate. As they explore Ashkenazi ancestral homelands, the artist strives to articulate "hereness” as an ethos honouring the safety and autonomy of all people, rooted in the firm belief that “never again” means never again for anyone, with unequivocal support for Palestinian freedom and self-determination.This sculpture is interrogates the idea that a homeland is nothing more than an actual homeland. As Eastern Europeans zev, gamble were pointing directly to a homeland they yearn not to have been kicked out of punctuating that bruitaly colonizing a foreign nation and creating a new jewish state is not the answer.