Dani Gal’s work questions the ambivalent relation of history and truth. Highly interested in forms of manipulation and reinvention and different formats such as films, books, and installations, he blends historical facts with fictional storylines. Historical Records (2005–ongoing), for instance, is a collection of commercially produced vinyl records that documents recorded political events of the twentieth century, including speeches by Kwame Nkrumah, Mahatma Gandhi, and Fidel Castro. The project examines how these events become commodified and how collective memory can be manipulated. His film Three Works of Piano (2022) reconstructs three piano performances of the twentieth-century avant-garde, including a representation of John Cage’s famous ‘4' 33"’, interrupted by a visitor singing an Israeli nationalist song. All of these events highlight the role of silence and silencing in shaping dominant national narratives. They also function as allegories to contemplate the complex dynamics between the historical witness and society. Gal’s latest film Dark continent (2023) deals with racism that results from colonial imaginaries and their transmission through music. His film is an adaptation of a case study from psychiatrist and political theorist Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial book Black Skin, White Masks (1952). In the film, a white woman suffers a nervous breakdown triggered by the sound of drums, which were prohibited by colonial regimes as they were suspected of carrying, in their sound, signals of rebellion and witchery. 

Work in the exhibition: Dark continent (2023), 1-channel-video, 25’, written and directed by Dani Gal with: Yoli Fuller, Maj-Britt Klenke, J. David Hinze, and Patrick Joswig; camera: Itay Marom; production: Kirberg Motors and Dani Gal. Courtesy of the artist