{"id":12350,"date":"2011-05-11T13:49:41","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T20:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=12350"},"modified":"2011-05-15T20:29:27","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T03:29:27","slug":"spencer-tunick-naked-dead-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=12350","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Tunick – Naked Dead Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Dead Sea\/Photo courtesy of PR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s all about the money, and it\u2019s all about the art, but it\u2019s also about the environment, Israel, community, family and friendship. Spencer Tunick is known for his site specific installations involving large numbers of naked people grouped together and photographed \u2013 the images of his work are quite striking and thought-provoking with regard to issues of the body, identity, relations between the individual and the group, place and genre. Tunick would like to create an installation in Israel, at the Dead Sea, but lacks sufficient funds to go forward with it. A fundraising campaign, Naked Sea, was launched on Kickstarter, raising $47, 471 (so far, the last time I checked), but unless they reach their goal of $60,000 by June 6, 2011 \u2013 the project will be abandoned.<\/p>\n

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Spencer Tunick\/Photo: Ayelet Dekel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spencer Tunick<\/a> met with the press today in Tel Aviv to talk about the project, accompanied by a team of people who have rallied round him to make it all happen \u2013 from long time friend Ari Fruchter, who is managing the fundraising campaign, to Ari Gottesman, who researched the feasibility of such a project (in other words \u2013 tried to figure out if enough Israelis would be willing to get naked outdoors for the camera), to Ben-Or Communications who worked on fundraising and Gura Berger who is doing the publicity and brought in the journalists to hear what Tunick had to say.<\/p>\n

Those who know Tunick\u2019s work may be familiar with previous projects in support of causes: the installation at the Aletsch Glacier in 2007, calling attention to global warming, and the more recent photo shoot at the Sydney Opera House in 2010, when gay and straight participants were asked to embrace one another. So it was not too surprising to learn that when scouting locations in Israel last year, Tunick was moved by the plight of the Dead Sea, which is losing water at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n

It was a surprise to this writer to learn that Tunick has family in Israel. Not only has the artist been a frequent visitor, but Israel has also been a location for his photographs over the years, albeit individual portraits rather than large scale installations. So he\u2019s not just an outsider, a New York artist who sees Israel as an exotic location (which would be fine \u2013 call us exotic any day), he\u2019s really one of us, in a way. Tunick\u2019s aunt has been living in Israel since the mid 60s and his grandparents moved here in 1971. \u201cMy grandmother is still alive,\u201d said Tunick, \u201cthat\u2019s one of the main reasons I\u2019m so excited about this project is I get to see my grandmother and at the same time make art, and at the same time work at the Dead Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tunick talked about the place of nudity in his art work:
\n\u201cFor me nudity is sort of, in my work, the group work, it\u2019s an explosion of life, it\u2019s a way for me to shout and really to bring attention to the vulnerability of the human body juxtasposed to public space and also the spirit of the natural human body in a concrete world where there are many things that come against the body in today\u2019s society, whether it\u2019s man made problems, whether it\u2019s problems of who owns your body, whether it\u2019s free speech issues, 1st Amendment issues in the United States, and I think my work becomes a catalyst somehow to a lot of other people\u2019s issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his choice of location, Tunick said, \u201cI love the natural landscape. I\u2019ve been to the Dead Sea many times. The sadness of seeing it retreat, and the knowledge that we could lose this body of water is quite a visual tragedy but also an environmental tragedy \u2013 and it\u2019s man made.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the money can be raised by June 6, 2010 \u2013 and it seems quite likely at this point, given that there is not that far to go, Tunick is ready for the next, and most important stage artistically, with lots of ideas:
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If you want to become part of the project by contributing or participating, check out the Naked Sea page on the Kickstarter site. <\/a>And about that other question \u2013 are Israelis willing to get naked for art? Apparently, the answer is yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s all about the money, and it\u2019s all about the art, but it\u2019s also about the environment, Israel, community, family and friendship. Spencer Tunick is known for his site specific installations involving large numbers of naked people grouped together and photographed \u2013 the images of his work are quite striking and thought-provoking with regard to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}