Acclaimed artist and film-maker, Yael Bartana stages encounters between history and fantasy, prophecy and ritual, questioning how the present is infiltrated by the past and vice versa. Bartana will present Inferno (2013), which depicts the building of the third Temple in São Paulo by a Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal Church. Inferno collapses ancient Middle Eastern history into a surreal present, asking questions about monumental construction, destruction, and the weight of the past on material presence and imagined futures. After showing Inferno alongside clips from other works, Bartana will engage in conversation about Jewish materialities and her methodology of “historical pre-enactment” with scholar of Hebrew and German literature and visual culture, Maya Barzilai, and scholar of ancient Jewish history and visuality, Rachel Neis.

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