Dani Gal: Historical Records

Memory and its use as historiography is a central theme in Dani Gal’s (* 1975) work. Since 2005, the artist has compiled a large archive of historical vinyl records; he combines these sound documents in his installations and performances—often collaborations—with electronically generated sound. He initially deconstructs this historical material, puts it in a contemporary context, and reconstructs in this way—by structuring the previously widely scattered material—a layer of the past that would otherwise remain sensorially irretrievable. He thus stimulates our study of history, opening up a truly surprising additional perspective. Dani Gal examines how history, or rather, how its recording is constructed, packaged, presented and consumed; yet, it is not simply about the individual vinyl record as an aesthetic object, but also all the information related to it. In addition to numerous records on World War II and its protagonists (»Hitler spricht«, Goebbels, Roosevelt, Churchill, etc.), it is, above all, those American records of the post-war period that stand out in his collection: speeches by Kennedy, Nixon, Jesse Jackson and LP-collections with original recordings from 1967, 1968 and following years. This raises questions about historic events and their medial presentation; Dani Gal immediately creates an ironic distance by nebulizing the analogous semantic cosmos of the spoken language with digital-electronic sound clouds he produces. The book at hand not only documents his work based on meticulous research in the labyrinths of media archives, but rather interweaves—in the actual sense of that word—the source material with pop culture and forms something like a photographic ready-made.

Dani Gal, born 1975, studied art at Avni Institute of Art and Desing in Tel Aviv and at the Bezal Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, before he changed to Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main, where he studied with Ayse Erkmen, and finished at Cooper Union in Mahnhatten. He lives and works in Berlin and got 2008 the Villa Romana Prize as well as 2012 the Große Hans-Purrmann Prize of the city of Speyer. He exhibited at galleries and off-spaces in Frankfurt/Main and Berlin, 2004 at The Or Gallery in Vancouver, 2008 at Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, 2009 at Centro per l’arte contemporanea Prato, 2010 Kölnischer Kunstverein Cologne, 2011 MMK Museum Moderner Kunst Frankfurt/Main. He also was invited for a DJ-ing act at documenta 2017.