On Tuesday July 27th, the first artist talk takes place in a series of talks held between July and October. The talk features Idit Porat in which she speaks about the project "Life Stories" which is taking part under her guidance in the neighborhood, and about other community art projects.Idit Porat has been meeting with a group of women at the Lazarus Community Center every week, for four months now, and is working with them through writing. She will speak about the significance of the process of group work as a means of personal and communal empowerment, on her plans to integrate both women and male artists to create new works of art from personal meetings with the participants, and will explain and bring examples of community art-making projects that she curated. At the meeting, some women from the workshop will read from their writings.
The artist talk with Dani Meir Took place on August 3rd. Meir talked about art and sound, and about the recording studio that he will open in the neighborhood. Meir’s project is to record the residents, telling stories about their life in the neighborhood. The recordings will eventually produce an audio archive that includes dialogues about the neighborhood. During the talk Meir also explained about his work as a sound designer.
On Monday, August 16th, The third artist talk took place, as part of a series of the artist talks in the neighborhood. This time the meeting was with Effie & Amir. They presented their new project "Jessy is Cooking" which is a documental culinary project with the participation of the neighborhood’s residents. The project’s aim is to build a website which functions as an archive, a film reservoir and a culinary map of the neighborhood. To this end Effie and Amir will visit in the resident’s kitchens, and document the preparation of different dishes and the stories behind them.
On September 14th - the artist talk with Gil- Mualem Doron took place at the center’s "branch" in Jessy Cohen.
Mualem- Doron presented a series of urban actions aiming to change an existing urban texture, by working with local residents and with architectures and design students. He showed photos and videos of urban actions around the world such as community gardens in a "railway houses" neighborhood in London, an open gathering place for the Jaffa community, a redecoration of the entrance of "Kiryat Ganim" community center in Rishon Le Zion and etc. Mualem- Doron’s project in Jessy Cohen is planned to be of this kind. So that the talk served also as a preparation stage for working with the local residents, listening and discussing their suggestions for the course of action.
On September 26th an artist talk with Meir Tati took place in the neighborhood. Tati’s works are dealing with sensitive social and political issues and use interdisciplinary visual language inspired by pop culture, comics, cinema, and the computer and internet world. The works combine performance, installation and video art, thus creating a world that reflect the relationship between the social- political reality and the possibilities of its mediation by contemporary media. Tati had shown examples out of his works and discussed these issues.
On October 5th an artist talk with Ayelet Zohar was held. Zohar talked about The Hybrid Garden project that will take place in the neighborhood, and outlined several planning principles that are leading the project. Zohar conducted a discussion about the relations between "nature" and "culture", how does the term "nature" is formulated in different cultures, what is garden? various types of gardens with different functions, the shoving aside of agriculture to the backyards, the relations between gardening and agriculture and how the two of them can be re-combined together, through understanding the multi- cultural environment.
The last artist talk of "Hot Summer in Jessy" was conducted on October 19th with Ronen Eidelman. He talked about his projects aspiring to connect art, culture and politics while dealing with social and historical issues on site. He presented the project he initiated in Jessy Cohen, in which he mediates between an artist from abroad and the neighborhood’s residents. According to Eidelman the exposure of difficulties and conflicts, pushing them to an extreme and absurd state, may lead to real action and positive change. Many of his works exist in public spaces, in which the audience is an active participator in the artistic experience.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
