The presence of the cats in the work further evokes the cityscape of Tel Aviv, where feral cats are omnipresent. Frank is attracted to the ambivalent attitude of cats, their moral indifference, their territorial nature and tendency towards casual colonization. An important sculptural element in the installation is a number of exercise balls with long, comedic noses. These sculptures are given a new resonance by the pandemic lockdown, seemingly referring to a situation of communal instruction and exercising at home, an absurd moment of mass mobilization orchestrated by the return of an iconic Israeli TV fitness instructor.

The device of the grid, which is a central integrating structure both in the film and in the installation, is a universally recognizable visual device used for spatial indexing purposes. It also carries art-historical and ideological associations that are important in decoding the political character of the spatial environment of the film. Frank’s use of the grid is designed to complicate and disorientate. The illogic of attempting to data map an abstract ethical concept like peace is an act of artistic cynicism aligned to wider conditions characterized by disorientation, fragmentation and collapse.

Frank’s new work offers a playful metaphor for political cynicism and the historic failure of Israeli politics in the form of an immersive environment of ruinous and fragmented forms, communal instruction, and ethical indifference. Yet the work is also hopeful, signaling the potentiality of new political realities in the chaotic, ever shifting optics of the present.

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