Beyond the Conventional: Doubts and Shadows in Amos Peled works

Fakewhale engages in conversation with Amos Peled, a multimedia artist who uses doubt as a methodological foundation to create unique and provocative works. His childhood in a hospital environment deeply influenced his artistic approach, leading him to explore the role of art in medicine. Amos is also involved in collaborative projects like  Hamsters where he explores communication and knowledge through talking toys. His work is heavily influenced by experimental music and his passion for exploring the unusual, aiming to push the audience to reflect and reconsider their perception of the familiar.

Fakewhale: In your work, you have focused on the use of doubt as an artistic and conceptual tool. Could you describe a specific moment in which doubt played a crucial role in the creation of one of your works?

Amos: During my work on Shadow of Doubt (2022, Multimedia performance) I explored the possibility of using my own doubts on the process of making the artwork as a foundational framework and methodology to create the artwork itself. It obviously became a highly confusing process, as when a certain aspect of the work seemed settled and clear to me, it inherently contradicted the essence of the methodology.

Therefore, I created a situation where I, as a performer, feel a significant doubt towards the actions I am performing In front of the audience. As part of my research, I developed a few mechanisms that create doubt or Shadow of a doubt, for example in the middle of the performance there are knocks on the door, but there is no one behind the door, the door knocked from itself. I tried to create a sceptical imaginative interpretation system among the audience, individual engagement with the performance, transcending a singular, predefined interpretation. My motivation lies in using doubt to provoke a shift in thinking, inspire new perspectives, and encourage experimentation with the tools and environment around us.

Fakewhale: You often mention an interest in focusing on the experiential conditions of the audience. How do you seek to influence or shape the audience’s experience through your installations and performances? Are you interested in some way in controlling the audience’s experience with the works? Do you think it is a duty of artists to refine their languages so that they are clear and effective in terms of understanding the works?

Amos: It really depends on the motivation for the work. In my work, I’m interested in creating an experience that leads to a symptom, a side effect, that will broaden and inspire individual (critical) thinking rather than conveying a specific message. The goal is to engage the audience in exploring layers of their own subjectivity, provoking reflections on the familiar. Clarity and effectiveness in realizing the works are not my primary focus; instead, it’s about creating a fascination by the difference. I keep this abstract as I truly believe that those can only be created by emerging naturally by themselves in one’s thinking. 

I believe one of the functions of art is to get as far as possible from the familiar. Science uses the familiar in order to discover the unfamiliar. Art uses the unfamiliar to discover the familiar. While something is registered with us as familiar, as something we identify, within a category, I believe that we stop examining it in depth or sometimes at all. As consciously recorded repetitive action can disappear completely from our memory. We stop attributing meaning to action, performing by reflexes. We stop questioning, relating, interpreting, understanding. Placing information within a stable and frozen system. If the Artist’s goal is to convey a straightforward narrative, yes, then it’s important to create clear and effective understanding of the work and its meaning, and this is very important. 

However, I believe that a unique aspect of expression in an artistic context can be the deconstruction of reality, resulting in a reflection that remains highly effective in conveying a feeling but not a clear message. I believe this can “affect” one more, especially if the initial stand of one’s mind is contradicting the side of the phenomenon that is presented. Presenting a phenomenon in a creative and accessible way leads to a deeper understanding of it. I have never considered it as a goal for my works to be clear or effective in a practical sense, but of course it is something I’m interested in, just not as the motivation or core for making.