Tunick, a frequent visitor to Israel, wants to juxtapose the vulnerability of the naked body with the man-made environmental damage being inflicted on the Dead Sea, whose Jordan River water source has been diverted for agri-business. "You just don't get a clear answer," Fruchter said.īut on the bright side, he said some 700 students signed up to "get naked in order to participate" and a further 2,000 people of all ages had expressed interest in joining what Tunick calls a unique form of performance art. With 25 days to go to their deadline, the team are calling for donations on Tunick's site (Neither Tunick nor his Israeli associates were able to explain why it was so hard to raise the money. He would like to float his nude multitude in the extreme buoyancy of the Dead Sea's ultra-saline waters and covered in its famous health-giving black mud.īut a year of fund-raising by Tunick's friend and Israel-based associate Ari Fruchter, together with the Tel Aviv consultancy Ben Or, has managed to raise only $45,000. The artist has not yet decided what the installation will feature. Tunick is seeking funds and models for one of his trademark mass shoots of naked volunteers, this time at Israel's Dead Sea shoreline. It was aimed at building a desalination facility in Jordan and to link the Red Sea and Dead Sea.Nude models directed by US photographer Spencer Tunick pose in a Bourgogne (Burgundy) wineyard in central-eastern France 2009. The increasing number of sinkholes in the water body became the subject for Mr Tunick’s second project in 2016.Īlthough there was a glimmer of hope to revive the dying sea with a $1.5-billion joint project with Palestinian authorities, Jordan this year cancelled it after a diplomatic row. Environmentalists in the early 2000s predicted that the Dead Sea will disappear by 2050 if its water level continues to drop.įor Mr Spencer’s first installation, his subjects - covered with mud from the sea - posed at the Mineral Beach, located in the northern part of the Dead Sea. The Jordan river, its primary water source, has been diverted for agricultural and other uses by Israel, Jordan and Syria. In the last three decades, the sea’s water level has depleted by almost 100 feet. The sea has receded by around four feet every year, creating thousands of sinkholes. The Dead Sea is located between Israel and Jordan. “I am hoping this project will represent the body as an agent of change that will bring attention to the environmental problems of the Dead Sea area,” he said. "People are afraid of naked people,” Mr Tunick told the Jerusalem Post newspaper during his visit to the city last week to speak about his new project.
During his first project in 2011, he featured 1,200 people, while only 15 people modelled for him in 2016. This was the 54-year-old photographer’s third nude art project on the shores of the world’s most saline water body. The project was a part of an initiative to support the establishment of the planned Dead Sea Museum in Israel’s Arad city. Mr Tunick said he chose to cover the models in white paint to evoke the Biblical story of Lot’s wife, who allegedly turned into a pillar of salt. The volunteers, both men and women, stood barefoot on brown hills overlooking the sea. Volunteers, of ages between 18 and 70, lined up across the desert near the Dead Sea in rows of 10 on Sunday and awaited instructions from the artist, who was perched on a ladder with a megaphone and a camera. Over 200 people covered only in white body paint modelled for American artist Spencer Tunick across a desert in southern Israel to raise awareness for the deteriorating condition of the Dead Sea.
0 kommentar(er)
