Independence Park Day - Video

Independence Park Day / documentation of performance 

a piece of Ariel Efraim Ashbel
Music: Santiago Blaum

Performed by Michal Oppenheim Landau and the 'Gayzmers' Choir members: Adir Even, Gilad Leshed, Nir Oren and Scott Piro

Performed and filmed live in Gan Ha'azmaut (independence park) Tel Aviv, September 2012
Cameras: Yoav Bezaleli, Yael Engelhart. Editing: Yifat Tadmor

Produced and presented in the frame of "Province", a project curated by Leah Abir as part of "Loving Art Making Art", Tel Aviv 2012

Independence park day - invite

GIANT trailers

Starting this week, we will release a weekly video as a build up towards "GIANT" the new piece Isabel Lewis and myself are working on which will be premiered at the Acco Festival in Israel. This week til the beginning of october = 7 weeks, 7 videos.
Here we go with #1:


#2:

Does Israel still need democracy? (this one is serious)

What's happening in Israel these days is starting to look like a really bad sci-fi-tragi-not-so-comic-more-like-horror movie. An extremely right wing nationalistic government is constantly passing new laws, aimed at restricting the supreme court, the free press and human rights organizations and hurt the status of non-jewish minority groups. 


Professor Zeev Sternhell published this text in Haaretz daily newspaper, it is highly recommend if anyone is interested: Does Israel still need democracy? - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News


Here are some random quotes from it:

The individual has ceased to be at the core of Israel’s democracy, with the right-wing majority aggressively pursuing legislation that turns the country’s non-Jews into second-class citizens. Anyone who allows this to happen will be complicit in the country’s fate.

Making non-Jews into second-class citizens is the objective aspired to by the right-wing majority in Israel. Acting on behalf of this movement are the ministers of justice and foreign affairs, who have the backing of the entire parliamentary elite of the right, except for the Speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin. Even when the activity is conducted within the framework of the law, it is stridently opposed to the foundations and spirit of democracy, and to the intellectual values of liberalism.

[...] the core of democracy’s existence is the assurance of human rights and individual freedoms. Majority rule is the means to that end, not a goal in itself. Majority rule came into the world as an alternative to rule of the individual or of the few, in order to prevent arbitrariness and to guarantee equality for all. Therefore, majority rule is limited by the purpose for which it was created: Rule of the majority loses its legitimacy the moment it harms human rights and denies universal norms of equality. Through majority rule, democracy can also terminate itself.

[...] the state is not conceived as a device to ensure the well-being of all its citizens, but as a framework that facilitates the enforcement of supremacy of the Jews over those who are not Jews. One should not misunderstand the intentions of the right. The seriousness of the current antidemocratic legislation derives from the fact that it is anchored in an inclusive outlook, that it serves a clear objective, and is nothing but the first stage in the major war to change the character of the state and society in Israel.

At this point, it seems proper that Israelis take stock of their situation. What would we say if the legislation now making its way through the Knesset were to be passed in one of the European countries? What would we be saying if documents were publicized there − akin to the statements and rulings of Israeli rabbis − demanding that apartments not be rented to non-Christians, or forbidding girls from dating non-Christians, even though the reference is to other citizens of that country? Without a doubt, a loud outcry would arise here: The monster is again raising its head. So it would be worthwhile to consider the fact that the monster is already walking, head held high, through the hallways of the Knesset, and proudly displaying its accomplishments. 

Haaretz has also put up a special section covering these disturbing political moves under the title Black flag over Israel's Democracy, please check it out. I'm also talking to some activist friends trying to figure out what's the proper web action to be carried out.


And to conclude in a comic note, here's a PSA produced by the ministry of "Aliya" (the special term that designates much wanted and very much campaigned jewish immigration to Israel), starring my close friend, the beautiful Naama Schendar (she got a lot of money for it, that helped her continue her amazing project, a theater group with jewish and arab kids in Akko, so there is some justice there), aimed at convincing Israelis who live abroad and their families that they must come back ASAP. 
The guy in the ad fails to understand his girlfriend's grief in Israel's memorial day, as instead of having sex with him (and here lies another, more hidden level of the racism in this video: the "gois" are all sex maniacs who want to violate our precious, luscious, innocent girls) she's shedding a tear in front of the computer. 
The text that the responsible-but-yet-warm fatherly voice at the end says is "They will always remain Israelis. Their partners won't always understand what it means. Help them to come back home". Seriously, he says that. 
I repeat, this is not a parody. 

Haifa Gymanstics, July 2011

I guess some nights are meant for blogging. I just found this video on YouTube, so I have to add one more post. It's us doing Samuel Beckett's piece "Quad" in Haifa Museum in Israel this July. The video, apparently uploaded by the museum, shows Amit Hadari, Osnat Kelner, Subi and myself performing 1/8 of the play, and then me desperately trying to talk to the audience, explaining the piece's structure and trying to get some volunteers to join and perform it with us. What I didn't really consider when I decided to do that, was the sound from numerous video and audio installations that were working all around the museum, as well as the museum visitors, who weren't really into listening to what I had to say... So at some point I just did what sometimes a man's gotta do: shut up and keep walking.

Alona Rodeh - when you are here

a great video my dear friend Alona made. I think it's a beautiful example of how a specific gaze in the right context can give you a glimpse of a whole process. When you see this little moment in the car next to some of Alona's installations, her take on live art and kinetic, time-based sculpture becomes very clear. Nowadays, doing something so specific without making it literal and (pseudo-)intellectual is truly a blessing. Cheers babe! :-)



It also reminded me of this little one I made two years ago:




Here's another one of Alona's installations in Brener St. in Tel Aviv:




And continuing this very free stream of consciousness, here is a gorgeous piece by Brussels theatermaker Kris Verdonck:

I luv Zehava

thanx to a stupid reality TV shtick that's going on in Israel these days, I remembered what a huge singer she is.

 "

AMAZING!

View from living room window

Israel tour, here we go

10 more days til we depart to a hot July in TLV city, followed by an even hotter August in NYC. Somehow it happened that this month in Israel became kind of a little performance tour, where I have three different gigs:

Immediately upon arrival, on Wednesday 29/6 there will be an improv show at Ilan volkov's "Hafarot Seder" festival. It will be a kind of an improvisational sketch for something I've been wanting to do for a very long time now: a piece for drumming and drummers. So my beautiful performers will be joined by the wonderful musicians Hagai Freshtman and Alex DROOL Yanovich, and as if this isn't enough, we are also truly privileged to have in our show an amazing artist who puts the D in diva, my hero and a rare inspirational force in Israeli theater. I'm talking about the one and only Smadar Yaaron. Together, we will make something we decided to call "who gave you a license":

And here is the program for the entire festival:

Later that week, on Saturday 2/7, the Schub, Yos Kelner, Mitzi Hadari and me will perform a new-ish thing called "Haifa Gymnastics". The occasion is the opening of an exhibition at Haifa Museum of Art, which is now being re-opened with new chief curator Ruti Direktor. The exhibition is titled "a line made by walking" after the famous work by artist Richard Long, made in 1967, and will explore different ways in which movement and image making are entangled. In the opening, we will present Samuel Beckett's 1982 composition "Quad", offer our services to whomever is interested in learning it, and hopefully create an interactive version of the piece with the audience. The play, which is the most abstract Beckett wrote, is actually a set of very detailed instructions for four performers walking in a square. It looks like this:  

And this the original version, produced in germany and directed by Beckett himself:



Since you don't really need any special skills to perform this thing, you just to know how to plan where you're walking, we will hopefully get the public's cooperation and make a new, interactive version of this play. I already did something with this play while I was in school, so I'm very much looking forward to dealing with it again, and if the audience will be responsive it should be fun. Here's the invitation:



The third thing will be a restaging of "Shlager", a musical-theatrical piece by Musica Nova group, created by Amnon Wolman, Avigail Arnheim, Noa Frenkel and myself. We made it last year and will present it again at the lovely "City House" (beit hair) in Bialik Square in Tel Aviv. The piece is based on texts that avigail wrote, following her experiences producing, curating, initiating and promoting musical events for the Tel Aviv municipality music department. It's naturally a bureaucratic hell so the materials invite many absurd, viciously funny moments. I'm sure that the location, being the official Tel Aviv history museum, will help contextualize the piece and will make it readable in a new way. The shows are 18-20/7.

Then we're going to New Jersey for a month to work/think/hang out with Keren Rosenbaum. But that's a whole different story.

Hello from Tel Aviv

Arale just sent me this pic he took in the "Tikva" neighborhood in Tel Aviv, where most of the struggle against migrant workers takes place. It's one of the hot issues in Israel these days, as is it shelter to many immigrants and refugees from war zones in Africa. Recently, groups of Israelis started protesting around the country, calling to deport the foreigners. Alongside some official, state-paid Rabbis that not so long ago distributed a "psak halacha" (kind of a Jewish religious law) encouraging people not to rent or sell their houses to non-jews, and a series of incredibly-racist-nearly-fascist laws legislated by the government, it looks bad.

The graffiti in the pic reads "deport niggers"

Is it too late to get a Bat Mitzvah?

Thank you Iris, for sending this and making my life so much richer.
For those who don't speak Hebrew - I'm deeply sorry it's very hard to translate