In the midst of the Israeli diamond-exchange district, in between fancy skyscrapers, stands a one-storey construction – an abandoned space that once functioned as a garage. After 9 month of work the old garage became an compecated mix media Installation. the work took place in between the tall buildings and the gas station surrounding it, the wiewers entered a space where beauty and ugliness were juxtaposed, and a sense of liveliness and movement was challenged by dozens of small and medium-sized jars of formalin, that contained preserved dead animals.

The proposed paper will analyze this installation through the issue of the “subject”, arguing that in this installation the subject becomes a reflexive and dynamic epistemic and political form. Through contemporary theories on post-Zionism I will show that "Lubrication and Car-Wash Services" embodied dialectical issues that are at the heart of contemporary Israeli identity in a state of occupation. These dialectical issues, in their historical and cultural context and in their aesthetic forms, will enable me to define this installation as a dynamic platform for the engendering of subjects. The reflexive epistemic system of subjectivization, which is generated in this installation, constructs the idea of occupation as a thematic subject that vacillates between the artistic object and the Israeli state, while the occupying subject (as a political form) is performed synchronically by the artists and by the visitors. Through this case and the epistemic model it offers, this paper will define the contemporary subject as a contingent idea that assumes a dynamic essence.   

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Text by: DR. Ronit Milano

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Photos by: Havraham Hay, Ahikam Ben- Yosef, Anat 

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