Out

Tse’s central scene depicts a domination/submission thrashing, set in a mundane living room. The scene is not acted but rather performed by two women whose real-life preferences entail BDSM (Bondage- Domination-Sadism-Masochism). But in this session, the painful blows meted out by the Dom cause the sub to spew out sentences, all of which are quotes from Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, renowned as one of the most extreme right-wing politicians in the country. Thus, a scene of erotic pleasure and pain becomes an exorcism, and the film itself a hybrid between a documentary (both about the present rhetoric of the Israeli right, and its free-spirited sexual community), a fictional scene harking to a genre of horror movies, and the theme of possession. The ritual at the centre of the work is framed by two additional scenes, each with its own distinct cinematic style. A preceding interview with the two participants seems at first to be a straightforward documentary about their own experiences within the Israeli BDSM scene, but soon transforms into an exposition of the premise by which one is possessed, the other an exorcist. The final musical scene is a song set to the words of the Russian poet Esenin’s Letter to Mother. Executed as a one-shot, the song not only elevates and complicates the emotional resonance of what preceded it, but is also a direct, if twisted, hommage to the final scene of another film that deals with hybridity, radical sexuality and politics: Dusan Makavejev’s WR, The Mystery of the Organism. –Biennale