Jester Lux

I’m nervous about this interview because at the book launch, you screened a film that describes the interview experience in a really funny way, with ridiculously repetitive questions and topics.  I'm not sure how to start. The question “How does a book come into the world,” is not so appropriate for this one, because it is a Zen puzzle, spread over 380 pages. It doesn't feel like it has a beginning or an end. How should we start?

I’ll start by talking about the book chronologically and from there things will move into another realm, which is broader than a beginning-middle-end narrative. In 2013, I was in Philadelphia at the Kelpius Cave named after the 17th-century mystic, scientist and spiritual figure Johannes Kelpius, who lived in the area of ​​the cave with his followers and also meditated there. I sat in the cave and tried to commune with him, to experience things beyond the thoughts that come automatically. I asked for help, I asked for a character or entity that would accompany and help me artistically. A few days later, the name Touch Stone appeared to me—the name of the court jester in Shakespeare's play As You Like It. It was a deeply magical event. A moment when the mind becomes an eye. Since that day, I treat the figure of the court jester as a partner in my creative path in the world. The idea for the book began then.

I have memories of that time from your Facebook feed. You broadcasted live séances in the middle of the night. Where did the name Jester Lux come from?

After the name Touch Stone revealed itself I started reading about the character. I was interested in treating it as a collective archetype, and not as a character who has a specific name and history, even though he is fictional. The archetype of Touch Stone is the court jester. The Jester is not my invention, he’s part of the Akashic Records.

So if we are trying to touch a moment of inception, this is the first image you created with Jester. What followed? 

Yes. When we started collaborating together we created drawings and would post them on Facebook. I remember that I really enjoyed the possibility of deleting the drawing a few hours after sharing. A sort of amusing and liberating illusion was created. This was one of the reasons why we chose the Facebook platform. The court jester is a cultural critic, and humor for him is a value and a way of life. We made more than 800 drawings together, but not all of them made it into the book. This book went through several reincarnations, until it reached its current incarnation.

What was the first incarnation?

Before our conversation, I looked at emails and saw that the first correspondence about the book with the designer at the time was in 2014, when I just started drawing. I was an undergraduate at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, and I was thinking of a book without texts. In 2016, I continued directly to my master’s degree, and during this period we tried to figure out what would be the most suitable text to accompany the drawings. We decided on a meeting with a psychoanalyst. We thought it would be interesting to analyze me as a patient and not necessarily as an artist and to write about the experience.

There are many references in the drawings to art history, critical theory, films, music, but you decided not to have any critical analysis of your works included in the book

Yes, that’s one way I didn’t want to go, to analyze the works from an intra-artistic perspective. Upon entering the meeting with the therapist, she pointed to a picture of a jester from the Middle Ages hanging in her clinic. “Look here, your court jester,” she said. Afterwards, she sent me an interview with curator Nicolas Bouriaud in which he talks about the “Radicant,” an adjective for someone who sets their own roots in motion. He writes: “I see it in studios and in the new generation—people make roots wherever they go.” And although my roots are from here, and go many generations back, I connect with this concept.

In the last incarnation of the book, there is an interview with Jester. How did it unfold?

After the meeting with the psychoanalyst, the book was on hold for a while, I felt stuck. I felt that I had arrived from point A to B, but I needed someone to help me reach point C. In 2019, a curator approached me to do a solo exhibition at CCA in 2021. I told her about the book and we decided that this would be a good opportunity to launch it. I had a round of meetings with designers, and chose Field Day Studio (Zohar Koren and Idan Am-Shelem). We had an instant connection, and it’s one of the best decisions I made in my life. Making a book is like doing anything creative, it’s dealing with monsters that pop up at every corner: money, disagreements, holidays, illnesses, nightmares. When there is trust, you manage to bridge the gaps. At some point while working on the editing, I realized that Jester should interview me. It felt the most natural and direct thing to do. A simple text and without any external mediation.

It is a text in which the story of the book itself is told very enigmatically, full of biographical, mystical, perhaps fictional details. Sometimes it feels like reading your dreams.

Reading dreams is a beautiful thing. I have been writing my dreams for several years now, and I read them from time to time. I believe they hold many keys to our consciousness as humans and as creative people.

The book has eight chapters, and each has a title and a mandala.

The mandalas are the title pages of the chapters. At first we thought that in each chapter there would be an inspirational image and the reference images I used to produce the drawings. We wanted them to appear at the beginning of each chapter. But then it became apparent that the movement of the book is from the inside out, and not from the outside in. That’s why Jester and I drew a series of mandalas—each one begins a new chapter.

​Tell us something about the chapters themselves.

Each chapter symbolizes a chakra in our body of work. I remember in particular, going through a deep process with the title of the last chapter “Live Fast, Die Old.” The reference is of course to the well-known phrase “live fast, die young,” which refers to the price of a good and successful life that happens in the fast lane. Jester and I thought that it would be more fun to live in a world where if you live “fast,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to die young or pay a price. The title “Live Fast, Die Old” came about in order to create a transformation of this social convention, and of world views that don’t serve a healthy consciousness, especially towards ourselves.

I’ve noticed that people open the book the same way they open tarot cards. My father, for example, did not open it at the beginning, but at the entry entitled, “Can You Help Me With My Vision” (page 207). He just had eye surgery, and is very preoccupied with his vision. Somehow it seems to me that this happens to a lot of people with your works. Coincidences and serendipities. Something similar happened to me with your drawing “Angel of History,” a drawing that in the end didn’t make it into the book, a homage to Paul Klee and Walter Benjamin

Interestingly, regarding the tarot cards, we debated about the type of paper for the drawings and chose thin cream-colored paper, which would give the feeling of an old card. Originally we wanted the texts to be on whiter and thicker paper, but in the end it turned out really nice, that everything is the same texture. It’s also a light paper, and the book has a lot of pages, so it didn’t turn out too heavy. The transparency of this paper also allows the images to merge with each other, to appear and disappear.

And the red cover?

We tried all kinds of colors and jacket covers, and in the end it was clear that the cover would be red. Because for me Jester is first of all a color, he usually wears a red suit. In my first solo exhibition at Rosenfeld Gallery I painted all the walls red as his sign. It was the designers’ brilliant idea to have ​​the PVS cover. When they told me about it I thought the kinkiness was perfect for the book's BDSM style. The cover wraps around the signatures of the book, but it is not attached to the spine itself. That is, the book itself is “naked,” like the figure in the drawings. It’s a conceptual success, that the cover sits over the book like a jacket, and underneath is nothing.

The title Jester Lux appears on the cover like a signature, and your name appears in small print along with the designers’ logo.

Yes, because it’s not about me. My name appears but it is not the main one. Even when you open the book, my name as if “dissipates” on the page. I wanted a book that was open source, an open channel. Every reader is invited to stay in the world of the book and see themselves.

The name Lux is a name for the unit of measurement of light intensity coming from a certain body. When did the name “Lux” join Jester?

The word “Lux” came to me spontaneously. At the same time as I was posting on Facebook, I also had a Tumblr account where I would share the drawings. Tumblr used to be the place to share art, before Instagram. The name came when I opened the page—Jester Lux. I immediately understood that “Lux” was like Jester’s last name. This last name is related to other characters I collaborate with alongside him. In 2018, I started working with Sage, and in the coming years there will be a Sage Lux book, which will present our joint works. I also know that in the near future there will be a book called “Book of Lux” that will contain all the works that were born together with me into the Lux family.

That’s really exciting news. I think the book is absolutely amazing. What book should we add next to our library? 

Hila Laviv and her stunning new book Paper and Scissors, which came out in the last few months.

Where can readers get a copy of your book? 

CCA [Center for Contemporary Art], Rosenfeld Gallery.