e-flux presents Me, You, and Everyone We Know
Pardes (Orchard)
Yael Bartana
2014
71 Minutes
Date
August 4–18, 2021
Join us on e-flux Video & Film for an online screening of Yael Bartana’s Pardes (Orchard) (2014), streaming from Wednesday, August 4 through Tuesday, August 17, 2021.
In Pardes (Orchard), Yael Bartana takes a very personal look at how Westerners seek personal enlightenment by appropriating traditional rituals. She documents the journey of her close friend Michael—an Israeli artist, who, on the one hand, sceptically rejects all organized religion, but on the other hand, is on a constant search for deeper understanding, investigating Kabbalah as well as the cults of the Amazon. Under the guidance of a Brazilian shaman he undergoes the Ayahuasca ritual, taking the psychedelic brew that is said to lead to deep spiritual revelations about the universe and one’s own personality, a feeling described as an experience of rebirth, enlightenment or—in the worst case—as one of the worst trips possible. The once very specific and local ritual becomes an inclusive performance, open for very different needs and cultural backgrounds.
Pardes (Orchard) is presented here as one of six films in Part Four | Frames for Alterity (Ethnography, Human Rights, Class, and Race), the final of four programs in the online series Me, You, and Everyone We Know: Interrelationality, Alterity, Globalization programmed by Irmgard Emmelhainz for e-flux Video & Film. The series will run in four thematic parts from June 23 through August 18, 2021. Each part will include a two-week group screening, and a live discussion. The series concludes with a repeat of all films from parts one through four on August 18.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.