Artery. A podcast on art, authorship and anthropology · Artery. A podcast on art, authorship and anthropology

Ayala Gazit with Rotem Steinbock

·51 min

Rotem Steinbock introduces his research on Jewish-Israeli artists who immigrated to Berlin and frames the conversation around authorship and voice. Ayala Gazit speaks about her work in photography and installation. She traces her path from Israel to New York and then to Berlin in 2016. The two discuss how living in different cities changes what feels possible to photograph. Gazit describes New York as a place that can feel like a set, shaped by representation and other people’s ideas. Berlin, by contrast, feels layered with history in a way that matters to her practice. That difference is not only aesthetic; it is emotional too. Gazit connects the city to a sense of freedom in making work, even when that freedom is tangled with contradiction. The conversation turns to a work that began with old objects and the walls of Berlin. It becomes a new story built from inherited material. Steinbock follows up on how that work emerged through Gazit’s move to the city and a fellowship tied to that work. Gazit explains that she had wanted to work in Berlin for years before she finally lived there. She also describes the pull of making art in a place where difficult histories are close to the surface. The interview stays with the question of why some cities feel generative while others feel mediated. Gazit says that what she recognizes in New York often comes from cinema or cultural image rather than direct experience. Berlin, for her, is less like a scene and more like a place with weight. The discussion widens into the complexity of coming from one context and working in another. Gazit speaks about contradictory feelings and identity as part of the material of the work itself. Steinbock keeps the exchange open and unhurried. The conversation also circles around the word voice itself, both as artistic presence and as something shared between people. By the end, the tone becomes communal rather than declarative. They close on the idea that people need one another. The episode ends with the sense that conversation is not separate from art, but one of the ways art becomes intelligible.

As heard by us

A careful conversation about making art between memory, migration, and the histories cities carry.

Rotem Steinbock lets Ayala Gazit think aloud about making art between places, and the talk keeps circling back to Berlin as a city that changes how things look and feel.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want an art conversation that stays with voice, authorship, and the pull between New York and Berlin.

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