A Performance-Installation
Material/Inheritance Exhibition
Jewish Museum of Maryland
Baltimore, MD
March to June 2023
Between the Bread is a ten-minute radio play embedded in an interactive installation. The work uses the sandwich as a site of conflict and coming together, a way to think about neighborhood composition, change, and the joys and tensions generated by a density of difference. The installation is composed of visual totems – a sandwich press, a boombox pre-loaded with a cassette, two pairs of wired over-ear headphones, and a bottle of Tums, backlit by a neon “LUNCH” sign. Tucked into the open sandwich press is a liturgical binder with instructions for participatory engagement.
Participants are instructed to hit play on the boombox. The radio play begins with a call and response sandwich blessing. This is followed by a dialogic deep dive between three characters of different ethnicities and ingredient fixations, united by a fervent belief in the potential for fusion sandwiches to bring us all together. Finally, the play ends with a monologue from a neighborhood “old head” critically questioning the new sandwich as something that causes indigestion, upsetting community rather than nourishing it.
About Material / Inheritance
The artists featured in Material/Inheritance emphasize resilience in contemporary forms with inspiration from and foundations in ancestral Jewish texts, practices, histories and griefs. This work asks: what does the future hold, and how much of that is in our own hands? What do we need to survive, and where can we find it? How can we balance the needs of the individual and collective as we generate new solutions for contemporary and age-old questions? What does it look like to celebrate and rejoice alongside continual waves of mourning, discomfort and despair Material/Inheritance challenges genre and generic frames, specifically to consider the thinking and community that become possible in inter-disciplinary conversation. The artists showcased in Material/Inheritance engage forms from new media and live performance to painting, poetry, food and sculpture.
Conceived by: Brandon Woolf and Ben Gassman
Written by: Ben Gassman
Directed by: Brandon Woolf