The exhibition “Province: Visitor Center” concludes a continuous art and research project that began in April 2012. The project, titled “Province”, deals with notions of the ‘public domain’ in the urban context, as either concept, method or value – notions which served as starting points for the participating artists, poets, musicians and activists, who will show their works in two locations.
Underlying the project is the assumption that the public domain, which is an inseparable part of any artistic action, exists in the city in different modes and intensities – in the various buildings, structures and mechanisms that comprise the shared urban fabric. The public domain operates on various switches that can turn it on or off, disclose it or conceal it: These served us as access points into the field of social powers that make-up the city. The name chosen for the current exhibition, “Visitor Center”, evokes the ambivalence inherent in the tension between the visitor center and the site it aims to represent – a relation both internal and external, which locates the viewer in an actual space by way of its imagined representation. The exhibition will include the products, documentations and continuation of previous events in the project, as well as workshops, talks and a historical archive of culture and activism in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
Curator: Leah Abir
Associate Curator: Gilly Karjevsky
Research Team: Anna Axenov, Na’ama Henkin, Mor Shavsha, Dina Yakerson and Ifat Peleg
Previous events in the “Province” project, June-August 2012
During June, July and August we held three preliminary events to the current exhibition:
Historical Seminars: seminars presenting archival materials, interviews, images, films and sound recordings documenting local culture and activism since the 1920’s.
Television Nights: several curated video programs were screened on TV sets, complete with remote controls. The programs featured video works, films and other footage by artists and cultural activists from around the world, and focused on the themes of ‘the commons’, ‘a eulogy to privacy’ and ‘bureaucracy’. Among the artists featured: ubermorgen.com (Austria), Acconci Studio (USA), Broken City Lab (Canada), Dominic Gagnon (Canada), DJ Spooky (USA), Hackitectura (Spain), Natalie Bookchin (USA), Sigalit Landau, Katerina Seda (Czech Republic), Roee Rosen, Ran Slavin, Chto Delat? (Russia) and Tamir Zadok.
Other events included a talk and performance by Maya Dunietz and Yoav Beirach on the history of sound improvisation in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, in the context of activism, and a preliminary tour for the “Jaffa 2030” project by Muhammed Jabali.
Filed under: אודות התערוכה | About Province
