Shelly Federman | Aberstein – Floating Wall

The video work “Aberstein – Floating Wall” by Shelly Federman engages with the American Beach Party film genre.
On the border of Tel Aviv–Jaffa, a stand is set up for renting beach mats made from concrete segments of the separation barrier. In the work, Federman presents a utopian mirror image: the wall, which normally serves a security function, undergoes a metamorphosis into “Aberstein” – a wall that can be dismantled and transformed into beach mats on which people can float safely. The vendor is not concerned with construction, but with dismantling the wall and scattering its parts until it is entirely gone. Instead of the far-right fantasy of throwing Arabs into the sea, here it is the concrete barrier that is lightly and deceptively cast into the waters of the Mediterranean.

Aberstein – Floating Wall, 2009. 8:38 min
Courtesy of the Federman Family

Shelly Federman (1975–2014) was an Israeli interdisciplinary artist working in installation, video, architecture, and performance. She was born and raised in London and Israel, and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she specialized in stage design. Federman showcased her work in international exhibitions and biennales, including the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale, where she presented Sea and Sun, a reconstruction of a typical Tel Aviv beach strip surrounded by a concrete wall with pay-per-view observation booths. She was also a co-founder of The  Spaceship at Hayarkon 70 in Tel Aviv, which became a center for experimental art. Her work addressed social and political issues, often using a readymade aesthetic and everyday materials to explore urban and social complexity.