Get Up, Go On
Sound installation, 2025 (7 minutes)

Concept, text, voiceover | Joy Bernard
Music, composition, studio recording | Jonathan David
Installation photographs | Meital Covo, Ariel Adiram, Yair Meyuhas

This site-specific sound installation is currently on view at the exhibition “Gathering” at ZUMU Museum (curators: Shiraz Grinbaum and Avital Wexler) until February 15.

“The work oscillates between a command and an invitation, seeking to form a physical and mental sense of gathering inwards, toward the act of rising from the ground. Bernard, a writer, multidisciplinary artist and choreographer, examines in her works as a dancer how personal and national traumas influence the moving body and change its patterns. In this work she uses the first person plural voice to summon the inner forces required to get up and go on. The piece was written especially for ZUMU Sha’ar HaNegev, and it is a direct continuation of the work ‘If You Fall, Will I Catch You?’ which Bernard exhibited at Alfred Gallery in 2023 under the commission of curator Dr. Revital Mishali.” - Shiraz Grinbaum, curator [text from exhibition catalogue]

ZUMU is a traveling museum that anchors down in a different community each year. In 2025, the museum set up its latest stop in Sha’ar HaNegev, a region seriously struck by the Israel-Gaza war. When the curators invited me to create a new sound work for the exhibition, I decided to write a guided meditation for listeners that invites them to connect to their bodies before they take the physical action of getting up off the ground and perhaps, starting to walk away: From the past, from trauma, or from people and places they loved and now must leave. The text I can be heard performing is inspired by Feldenkreis technique and mindfulness, which I practice in my everyday life as a dancer. It integrates breathing exercises and body scanning tips with poetic ruminations on separations and the every-changing nature of our life journeys.
To create this work, I collaborated with the musician and composer Jonathan David, who composed and plays the music heard throughout the piece.