Known as Chad Gadya, this song, tells the archetypal story of one being consuming another in an ongoing violent drama. On a simple level it is a goat eaten by a cat, bitten by a dog, hit by a stick, burned by a fire, put out by water, drunk by an ox, slaughtered by a butcher, killed by the Angel of Death, killed by God. It is one of the most powerful and simple tales and I grew up with it, sung in a jolly tune, but actually extremely disturbing. Is it the cruel dynamic of nature, one creature killing another to survive? Is it the story of one empire or kingdom replacing another in the power struggles of time and history? Is it the very idea of time? Or of one way of thinking or ideology replacing another? I try to keep the differing levels of interpretation open in this work where the images swirl around in a huge golden sheet filled with details, props, questions, and pictograms. For some reason Russian Avant Garde artists during the early years of the Twentieth Century were particularly drawn to this tale.
