Pseudo Territory, Video, 2025

The video is both a documentation and an expansion of the work Pseudo-territory realized by the artists at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, part of the “Yiddishland Pavilion” (curators: Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks). The artists created a virtual sculpture (AR sculpture) in which a pulsating thicket of letter-like shapes, created from a combination of the Paleo-Hebrew, Hebrew and Latin alphabets, was superimposed on a real image of the surroundings. The main message of both this work and the film presented here is the fluidity and transformations of languages, as well as the concept of language as an independent territory, building itself across geographical and political borders, in which culture develops. An important reference for the artists is the tradition of Jewish anarchist thought that developed in the early 20th century, which opposed borders and hierarchies and emphasized mutual aid and artistic freedom. They cite, in particular, the writings of the pre-war Jewish critic Baruch Rivkin, who coined the term 'pseudo-territory' to refer to Yiddish culture. 

Exhibited in: The Power of Words. On Jewish Languages,
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, 21 November 2025 – 8 June 2026
Curated by: Tamara Sztyma

Video & Soundtrack Editing – Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson
Music – Chaia, “Daloy Politsey”
Voices – Jenny Romaine & Jeremiah Lockwood
Archivists & Researchers – Eléonore Biezunski, Tom Tearney, Sam Glauber-Zimra, YIVO Sound Archives
AR Development – Arhead
With thanks to Andy Drucker and Tanya Floaker

Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson - a Moscow-born, Israel-based and now Berlin-based artist who creates language-based interventions in public spaces and murals in public places, museums and galleries, forming a kind of “linguistic aesthetic” that she describes as “nomadic and anarchic.”

Anna Elena Torres - a professor of Comparative Literature specializing in Jewish studies affiliated with the University of Chicago. At the center of Torres's interests is the relationship of Yiddish literature to ecology, migration, and labor movements.