The Tel aviv museum, In Collaboration with the musician Nadav Reboh/Naduve, curators; Tal Lanir and Hagit Werner
Website;
http://timespacecompositions.com/
Exhibition article by Eyal Fried;
A Neanderthal Lullaby Drifts on the River of Time
Eyal Fried
It might be—and I say this with grave consideration and judgement—that when the Neanderthal man sang a soft lullaby to his soft Neanderthal daughter, he sounded like the teacher in Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” Shrill, nasal, provoking an intense wish to disappear. This, at least, was my first thought after talking to artist Nivi Alroy about the high-pitched voice theory of human language. I thought it would be interesting to tell a tale whose protagonists are vocal chords, primates, humans and sounds.
My second thought, and probably the third and fourth ones, revolved around speculating what this hirsute relative of mine had to say to his delicate hirsute daughter. Did they sit at the entrance to a cave on the Carmel, wondering whether it was going to rain? Did they play an instrument carved from a mammoth bone? Did they play knucklebones and, mainly, did they speculate about time’s non-linearity?
Nivi Alroy and Nadav Reboh’s chapter in the exhibition is a meeting place but, beyond that, it is a river. A river with a two-directional stream in which languages, spaces, objects and sound flow upstream and downstream—all of them together forcing us to experience a narrative, enabling us to create one by ourselves, about ourselves. Alroy and Reboh provide us with the tools through the drawings, films and sculptural objects of the former, and the music of the latter. Since the artists have not given us an accurate “instructions manual,” I thought I would create one myself, starting with an Introduction of sorts:
When a Macaque Eats a Raisin
Singing a lullaby is a complex endeavor, based on language. The Neanderthal man had a language, but how did he speak? How did he sound? And while we are there, why don’t chimpanzees, for example, speak like us? Even when they are raised with us from birth? Even when they obviously have something smart to say? The study of human voice is the study of human thought and consciousness, and in the past 50 years it has focused on explaining why humans are the only race that developed control over the vocal system that is necessary for speech. Two rival theories have attempted to explain the inability of primates to speak like us: the first one, which prevailed until the late 1960s, claimed that primates lacked the physiological neural systems for developing language. An opposing theory then emerged, which speculated that primates lack the physiological components for vocal flexibility, essential for complex language. The debate seems to have been settled recently by researchers using well-established techniques, such as X-rays, who documented the vocal communication of macaques, e.g. while eating raisings: they found that the vocal tract of primates is wondrously similar to ours. It is their brain that limits their language.
Our closest cousins, the Neanderthals, who graced this Earth from about 200,000 to 20,000 years before this last Passover, are the very subjects of the interesting high-pitch theory, the inspiration for this chapter in the exhibition. Try to imagine this:
Their neck is shorter than ours, their vocal chords are short—hence their pitch was high.
Their ribcage is sunk deep in their thick thorax, like a powerful bellows—their voice was loud.
Their nostrils were wide and deep—they spoke nasally.
The Neanderthal, with his relatively big brain and his clumsy vocal tracts, probably did speak, but we may have disliked hearing him do so.
Geneticists such as Professor Eran Meshorer—a neuroscientist, microbiologist and sworn curiousologist—also contribute to the study of language development and the human essence. New genetic mapping technologies enable the examination of fossilized cells of Neanderthal and other races, in order to investigate the epigenetics of the studied body: i.e., how genes behave throughout time, which genes “woke up” and when, which genes “fell asleep” and why, which “played” with each other or neutralized each other, and what phenomena were triggered by these games. Thus, for example, scientists researched the epigenetics of skull and larynx development, and how it influenced the formation of facial expressions, sound production and, accordingly, the formation of speech and language.
Language, and the voice that expresses it, are incredibly simple yet complex; they are the foundation of thought, culture, humanity itself. Alroy, an experienced interpreter of scientific epistemology, examines the high-pitch theory and asks, in her own way, the question: why don’t primates talk like us? Because of the body? The brain? Perhaps by necessity? By choice? Through fear? For Alroy, this is a question that necessitates her own experiment, using her own tools. Alroy produced a new musical instrument, composed of furniture parts, string, chords and speakers, a kind of bellowing act, simultaneously violent and poetic, of the human vocal tract system that has defined, to a great extent, not only the human language but also humanity itself.
Time, Binoculars, Relativity
Time is flexible, dynamic, rather mischievous.
It bends, it moves and shifts. It is old when young, young when old.
This is not a religious argument. Nor philosophical nor even theoretical.
It is an argument that scientists such as Meshorer contend with in the laboratory, persuading old cells to reconstruct their youth, forcing the timeline to recalculate its route.
Through binoculars, those through which one looks with eyes wide open or those that necessitate closed eyes, Alroy helps us observe time, criticize it, perhaps try to influence it. Through binoculars we observe the space and the illustrated stories Alroy created and ask whether this mediator limits our perspective or in fact opens up new outlooks.
Space
A corridor, two holes in the wall (“To peek or not to peek? What do I see? Why?”).
Black space, partially lit.
Sounds. Music? Music. It repeats.
A large, strange object, in the middle.
Illustrations on the wall.
Films screened. On, above, below, there, here.
Wall.
Earphones connected to binoculars, ears and eyes observing together… Someone is sitting. What is it on the wall? A drawing? Should I stand by? What is he hearing? He is smiling. No, now he seems concentrating. Maybe laboring.
Am I peeking? Disturbing?
He stands up.
I sit down.
The space that Alroy and Reboh create hosts sculptural “creatures” and a nocturnal-melodic surrounding, but it does not stop there. The space is not just a place. It holds a perpetual debate with itself. It is the two-directional river that moves and motivates the components of language, the time, the narrative and consciousness of the artists and of us, the viewers/participants. The soundtrack created by Reboh accompanies us as we study the space and lets us sink—walking, standing or sitting—into the world of sound images; we are given permission to distort time and change the laws of nature, as we wish. Almost.
Music
Yes, “music is a language.” We know.
And yes, “music is communication without words.” “Moving.” “Exciting.” “Stirring.” “Threatening.” “Soporific.” We know.
Yet, in this two-directional river, Nadav Reboh’s music is something almost different.
Defiant.
It is familiar and unfamiliar, wild and steady, challenges the primal brain—fast, sharp, intuitive—and its intellectual parts, which brought us along to the exhibition from the outset. Reboh’s soundtrack partly accompanies Alroy’s sculptures and objects and partly disperses in the gallery, talking to us in its own language, mediating in split seconds between generations of evolution (is this the melody of Mr. Neanderthal’s lullaby to his daughter?).
Story–Exhibition–Story
In one of our conversations, Alroy told me how she had been to Nahal Me’arot (Caves Creek) on the Carmel several times, and each time, upon seeing how modern humanity had gained control over primal nature—the signs, directions, guidelines—she imagined the place “in its youth,” in its beginning, in its loneliness, before it became what she terms a “Disney park.”
The chapter “High Pitch: Rewind” in this exhibition constructs, deconstructs, distills and reconstructs the most elemental components of the world and of nature. It entices us to doubt its very existence though our senses. It takes an iota each from biology, genetics and anthropology, and presents its own version of an imaginary reality, in which old age is youth, language is a whirl of sounds and linear space leads everywhere from everywhere. In this multi-variable formula, the artists use sculptural objects, drawings, animation and a musical process to demonstrate another version of the world. Alroy and Reboh employ the exhibition to tell us an ancient tale about language and life. Furthermore, they create a platform that allows us to participate in their tale and, if we so wish, construct our own.