My Collected Silences, 1996, video, 4 min

In My Collected Silences, Doron Solomons combines excerpts featuring dozens of interviewees in the pause before the beginning of a television broadcast, from which he edits four intense minutes. The video excerpts are the redundant raw materials cut from the broadcast, which usually remain unavailable for viewing. Solomons chooses to focus on those idle, marginal moments, and contrary to common practice – to put them in the limelight and at the work’s very core. Observation of the changing photographed subjects, some familiar and others unfamiliar, introduces a new gaze which had heretofore been absent. Surprisingly, they appear silent and uneasy. Some take a breath in anticipation of the broadcast; others await their turn indifferently and impatiently. Solomons renders chaff into wheat, refining a new meaning. It is precisely in these moments of wait that the more human aspects of the interviewees seem to be revealed, eliciting identification. These are, in fact, the true moments, the reality behind the pretense and other games underlying the interview situation. The viewer serves as witness to those human moments, the tense breathing and lip-biting, when the silence of the photographed subjects emphasizes the ambient noises. That “calm before the storm” enhances the viewer’s alertness, drawing his attention to delicate gestures and other hidden nuances, feelings, and whispers.