Galit Eilat

Ilekroć wyświetlano film Artura Żmijewskiego Berek, niemal zawsze spotykał się on z gniewnym przyjęciem widzów. Galit Eilat twierdzi w artykule, że kontrowersje i gniew, jakie film wywołuje, mają korzenie w sporze o przedstawianie Zagłady i o to, komu przysługuje prawo do jej reprezentowania. Tak rozpoczyna się debata, czy istnieje „właściwy” sposób pamiętania o Auschwitz, a jeśli tak, to jaki? Być może jest to jeden ze sposobów, aby zachować pamięć o Zagładzie w teraźniejszości i nie zakopywać jej w przeszłości.

The 9th Muslim Mulliqi Prize Exhibition is curated by Galit Eilat and Charles Esche. The Muslim Mulliqi Prize is the most significant exhibition for contemporary visual arts in Kosovo and aims to be one of the most interesting contemporary art projects in southern Europe. The exhibition features 29 artists. They were selected from a national open call together with invited international artists. The concept of the exhibition began with the idea of how to reinterpret the idea of beauty using today’s social and aesthetic forms. The curators were inspired by the idea of the Kaleidoscope. The word ‘kaleidoscope’ is derived from the Greek kalos ‘beautiful’ + eidos ‘form‘ + scopeo ‘to aim or watch’ and means ‘aiming at beautiful forms.’ This ambition runs through all the works in the show, but the kaleidoscope not only aimed at beautiful forms but also produces a new, artificial idea of beauty through its fragmented images reflected through mirrors. In the beginning, the kaleidoscope was a competitor for photography and related ‘tele-views’ such as the telescope, later the camera, and eventually television that captured reality and projected it at a distance. The first produced imaginary images while the other precisely recorded what it ‘saw.’ The idea of production and fragmentation is related to the curators’ personal experiences in Kosovo. While the pressures from history and the present are evident, there is equally a real energy to produce new realities and to see beauty in the possibilities that might lie ahead. Indeed, the close historical relation between truth and beauty—the one being found in the other—inspired the choice of the title and the focus on beauty in everyday reality. As well as each person’s own perception of their own environment, there are other people that tell the stories to a wide public through the media. This is true in Kosovo, where the dramatic changes in recent years have been subjected to the harsh lens of the press. In our contemporary culture, we could speak of the media as a telekaleidoscope, a single machine that gathers, produces, projects, and fragments our view of reality at the same time. In this environment, it seems important to discover where beauty might be found outside its traditional expression, and to learn how to see and value what is in the immediate locality. This is what the individual vision of the artist can bring to the situation and help others to see what was previously invisible. The artworks in the exhibition are principally intended to be a way to understand what we might mean by ‘aiming at beautiful forms’ in the early 21st century, both here in Kosovo and further afield. In today’s art, beauty can emerge in a moment of discussion, in light falling on a suburban landscape painting, or in the movement of a hand in a video. The exhibition also responds to the transfixing visual beauty of an image of crisis or collapse that lingers even after we know the real stories behind the moment.

Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long

Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long rejection of the Arab culture that lives within and around it, as well as of the culture of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, who are perceived as inferior. The representation of the Arab has undergone numerous metamorphoses, from the pre-1948 image of an aristocrat tilling his land to the shahid (Muslim martyr) of the 2000s.

Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for Digital Art (DAL) in Holon. Galit Eilat emphasizes that trust and sociological imagination are crucial for soft power's negotiation, as an important option amidst Palestinians' ongoing occupation and the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations. As an example of how soft power is implemented in the regional art scene, Eilat unfolds the trajectory and conditions for a chain of art events which were lead to the Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani's 'Picasso in Palestine' project. In the past decade Hourani’s Picasso in Palestine has become a symbol of art’s triumph over the Israeli limitations on culture and transportation in the Palestinian occupied territories. Eilat senses that Hourani’s project along with other soft power art initiatives that she was involved in will eventually lead the local art scene to distance itself from the glorification of the unique art object and the genius artist/curator towards a much broader sociological imagination that envisions the breaking down of barriers between the west and the rest. [Hadas Kedar]

This text is composed of the used and unused excerpts of a conversation on the video works of the artist Jelena Juresa which is deal with the psychological effects of political violence. State-supported terror and its dehumanisation policies, collective silence, and amnesia on crimes that have been inflicted on masses, and the therapeutic mechanisms of memory are among the motifs of her recent practice.

When I was asked to write about multiculturalism in the Israeli art world, I reflected on the relation of the term "multiculturalism" to Israeli reality, and on the ways in which it is given expression in the Israeli art field. On a superficial level, one may define Israeli society as multicultural, since communities from different ethnic backgrounds have chosen or have been constrained to live under Israeli sovereignty.

The idea of a turn is often attributed to religious conversion, to a change of political system, or the attempt to define a moment in which social and institutional conventions change, giving way to a different set of common values. Such a turn may only occur without exact mechanisms of control and command. At present, the intensification of national movements, ascents, and collapses in the markets of the global economy, and increased inequality in the distribution of resources all indicate a paradigmatic change. When the status quo is enforced concurrent to that change, the nonexistent is rendered tangible abruptly. The turn discernible to us on the horizon seeks a way to rid itself of predetermined parameters. It does not shy away from conflict and confrontation as vehicles of change.
The title of this essay, “Collectivity, Conflict, Imagination,Transformation,” is composed of the four building blocks that guided the curatorial team1 in the development of the concept for the 31st Bienal de São Paulo—four notions, which, when brought together, have the potential to change reality. Charles Esche, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Pablo Lafuente, Oren Sagiv, and myself arrived in São Paulo after a stormy winter in Brazil, during which hundreds of thousands of citizens in major cities went out into the streets to protest against the rising costs of public transportation.
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The Curatorial Conundrum
What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice?
Edited by Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson, and Lucy Steeds.The Curatorial Conundrum looks at the burgeoning field of curatorship and tries to imagine its future. Indeed, practitioners and theorists consider a variety of futures: the future of curatorial education; the future of curatorial research; the future of curatorial and artistic practice; and the institutions that will make these other futures possible.

While it is commonly believed that nations have always existed, in fact they are a relatively modern phenomenon. Throughout human history communities have identified themselves not as part of a nation, but as belonging to a group, or more directly – to a certain family, tribe, or village. Unlike a family or a village, however, a nation is a concept that does not coincide with any unequivocal scientific definition. The attempt to define a nation via economy, language, or ethnic affiliation is impossible. What defines a nation is national affiliation. It seems that the definition of nationalism cannot find an external foothold, and is perceived as tautological (the state is the political manifestation of the ”us”, and is founded on nationalism, which implies the politicization of the ”us”). Artists: Bureau d’etudes, Nurit Sharett, Yael Bartana, Efrat Shvili, Cao Fei, Yochai Avrahami, Mark Napier, Khaled Hourani, Erzen Shkololli, Anri Sala, Miri Segal, Köken Ergun, Gulsun Karamustafa.

Exhibition catalogue - The exhibition “Evil to the Core” addresses issues pertaining to docility and obedience to authority, conformism, social responsibility, disobedience, and non-conformism in general, and in Israeli society specifically. The exhibition combines different materials, works of art, and documentary films exploring socialization, obedience, power, authority, and resistance. Three major methods run through
them: simulation, experimentation, and reconstruction or reenactment, which may be regarded as methods shaping the reality of the present.
Artists: Amir Yaziv, Rod Dickinson, David Reeb, Artur Zmijewski, Noam Gelbart, David Tartakover, Avi Mograbi, Tamar Yarom, Uri Bar-On, Eyal Eithcowich, Yoav Shamir.

This article surveys recent developments in the BDS movement and its call for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel. It analyzes the policy of the cultural boycott in comparison with other forms of boycott as well its effectiveness in different circumstances. The most effective strategy is not necessarily to enforce a boycott but to create a vibrant public discussion about Israeli policies against the Palestinians. The legislative power of the Israeli position is compared with the much weaker force of international pressure that the Palestinian population can bring to bear. Yet, even in this unequal exchange, the boycott movement and its cultural wing are achieving traction. The essay suggests the possibility of a shift in Israeli society against the political and intellectual consequences of occupation. Published by Duke University Press. South Atlantic Quarterly. Volume 114, (Number 3) 2015

'Forbidden Games' features video games written and distributed by entertainment industry and independent  media activists, academies and ideological groups, as a tool for addressing political and social issues. 'Forbidden Games' text based on an exhibition with the same name.

Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long rejection of the Arab culture that lives within and around it, as well as of the culture of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, who are perceived as inferior. The representation of the Arab has undergone numerous metamorphoses, from the pre-1948 image of an aristocrat tilling his land to the shahid (Muslim martyr) of the 2000s.

The political imagination, the politics of imagination or images, social changes, and art in the service of the revolution all are empty gestures, which deal with form rather than content. How are exhibitionary acts supposed to generate political imagination? Does a political imagination lead to a political act? Does an imaginary exhibition lead to a political act? The danger is to end with an imagined exhibition as a political act. Therefore, one should ask what image evokes political imagination? Or maybe it is the exhibition itself that sparks imagination? Perhaps sparking people’s imagination does not need exhibitionary gestures because images are not necessarily retinal but mental? An exhibition is a place where people look at things, and people look at people looking at things. The potentiality of an exhibition to propose social change is as a ceremony / a ritual of going to an exhibition: What is exhibited precedes the exhibitionary acts.

The work of the Etcétera… collective oscillates between theatre, visual arts, and activist street actions, continuing a tradition of participatory art that has evolved in Buenos Aires since the mid-1960s under the inspiration of Oscar Masotta and the Ciclo de Arte Experimental (Cycle of Experimental Art, 1968), fusing artistic practice with leftist politics. Their recent works employ the theatrical methods developed by Brazilian director Augusto Boal during his Argentinian exile in the 1970s as well as the work of León Ferrari. While originally unconnected, the two older artists shared similar artistic strategies: using real life as raw material to politicize whatever found its way into their works.

In recent years, artists and curators have often been confronted with the political dilemma of engagement or disengagement. The ideological, economic, or ethically objectionable circumstances of certain biennials and art exhibitions have raised the question of whether to continue and, if so, under what circumstances, with what consequences, and to what ends? From 2013 to 2015, biennials in Istanbul, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and São Paulo demonstrated that curating and art production can’t just carry on as if nothing had happened.

This reader is the result of Joanna Warsza’s course at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. It examines four recent cases of boycotts, presenting their political, ideological, and economic contexts, timelines, statements, as well as interviews with parties involved. It reflects on how certain biennials became the place where the power of art is renegotiated and why one simply “can’t work like this.”

The catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Short Memory', held in The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv and at P.S.1 MoMA, NY. The publication includes stills of 'Wild Seeds', 'A Declaration', 'Mary Koszmary', 'Summer Camp', 'Kings Of The Hill', 'Trembling Time', 'Sirens' Song', 'Profile', 'Low Relief', 'When Adar Enters', 'You Could Be Lucky', and 'Freedom Border'.

A voyage within the home of a gynaecologist who died. The heroine – a girl in a flower costume – moves around her house, searching for her roots. While she is scanning the furniture, medical equipment, books and other articles, some of the objects come alive and reveal hidden details about her life. Exhibition Catalogue | Graphic Design by Michal Sahar

English, Hebrew 2007

Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for Digital Art (DAL) in Holon. Galit Eilat emphasizes that trust and sociological imagination are crucial for soft power's negotiation, as an important option amidst Palestinians' ongoing occupation and the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations. As an example of how soft power is implemented in the regional art scene, Eilat unfolds the trajectory and conditions for a chain of art events which were lead to the Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani's 'Picasso in Palestine' project. In the past decade Hourani’s Picasso in Palestine has become a symbol of art’s triumph over the Israeli limitations on culture and transportation in the Palestinian occupied territories. Eilat senses that Hourani’s project along with other soft power art initiatives that she was involved in will eventually lead the local art scene to distance itself from the glorification of the unique art object and the genius artist/curator towards a much broader sociological imagination that envisions the breaking down of barriers between the west and the rest. [Hadas Kedar]

Good Museums Copy, Great Museums Steal' reveals how misleading myths are perpetuated in institutional narratives and used by cultural leaders for personal glorification. The abuse of power and moral harassment rely on cultural and social legitimacy, and cannot be eliminated as long as they are not defined as offenses in the written law.