born in Israel, 1975
lives and works in Tel Aviv

The drinking fountain is of the type found in KKL/JNF forests throughout Israel, with slight but substantial differences: It lacks faucets, and it is displayed in a museum. The faucets were disconnected from the main pipe designed to facilitate the flow of water, and the remaining parts of the pipe float in the air, like a pencil line erased from drawing paper. Like Duchamp's Fountain (1917), which displayed a urinal in an artistic context, Hummel's drinking fountain is detached from its original context, accentuating the foreignness of the object that is no longer functional and reminding us of its original use, related to the body. Unlike Duchamp's urinal, Hummel's drinking fountain incorporates a collective memory related to the Zionist enterprise as part of the KKL/JNF's operations.

Cutting off the faucets not only converts a practical object to a useless condition. It is also a type of response to disturbing something that is whole - at the theoretical and political level, as well as the material level. Hummel's act of building the drinking fountain is opposed to the primary definition of readymade, but similar to Duchamp's act in 1964, when he created copies of the original readymades that were lost. The drinking fountain is shiny and new, without the signs of use and time that are evident on drinking fountains in the field. Thus, Hummel endows it with new functionality, as if it were a sort of memorial wall or monument.

Thanks to Guy Gilboa