Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-wpx69 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-14T06:12:36.026Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Steve Reich Talking About ‘The Cave’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Extract

Well, I've been collaborating with my wiie, the video artist Beryl Korot. Her work involves multi-channel video where the timings between the channels are very highly worked out – four channels where the first and third and the second and fourth would be interlocked – very musicaltype structures. So it was a natural collaboration, but the question was, what's it all about? In a few minutes we decided it would be the Cave of Machpela. Beryl and I had both become interested in our own Judaic backgrounds and had both begun studying the Torah. We discovered that there's a town in a very politically sensitive area of the world, Hebron, thirty miles south of Jerusalem in the West Bank, where Abraham is accepted to be buried by Jews, Muslims and Christians. Whether he's there or not is really immaterial. I think part of the decision to choose the Cave of Machpela was that, on a political level and as a human being living in the world today, I don't think you can understand what's going on in the Middle East unless you understand the Biblical and the Koranic level of the conflict – otherwise you miss the base on which it all stands.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)