The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
 

Tel Hai 87: A Change of Direction

Tali Kayam

The third Tel Hai event marked the end of the “Amnon Barzel era," with changes in direction and decreased funding. The new curator for this event and the one that followed was Flor Bex, then Chief Curator and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA). His approach there had been to introduce local artists with an affinity for international, contemporary art, while emphasizing work of the 1970s.[1] The list of artists exhibited under his direction of Tel Hai 87 suggests that Bex decided to import many of the artists that he had shown in Antwerp to the Naftali Mountains, raising some questions about the event’s lack of thematic cohesion. In this edition of the event, the number of international artists was almost equal to that of the Israelis, with some 18 Israeli artists participating in the event alongside 15 international artists from 8 different countries.

Unlike the previous events, the pieces by the Israeli artists at Tel Hai 87 appeared too universal. There was no link between them and the site or, alternatively, between them and the socio-political and artistic-political reality in Israel.

The international artists who participated had not been represented in any of the important international platforms from which Amnon Barzel had drawn and infused the emerging Tel Hai events with oxygen. The main commonality between the international artists who exhibited at Tel Hai 87 could be found in their resumes; all had exhibited previously in galleries and biennales in Antwerp.

Regarding the curatorial agenda, Bex declared that it was his intention to continue the tradition of 1980 and 1983 on the one hand, while “moving on from aspects other than the ones brought by the previous curator, Mr. Amnon Barzel, who focused on Israeli art.”[2] In the catalog, pieces indicated as concerning “other aspects” appeared to constitute intra-artistic discussions considering the definition of art. “Art-making is not something natural and what is natural isn’t art,” writes Yaakov Dorchin. “Visual art is a language unto itself, and like spoken languages, it has many dialects,” writes Hava Mehutan. “Art is a necessity! A necessity for individuals within society and therefore, of society as a whole!” Writes Avital Oz.[3]

In the curatorial text, Bex further explained one of the factors in his choice of artists was to avoid re-exhibiting those artists whose works were already on the grounds from previous events. But in fact, a number of the participants from previous editions were shown again at Tel Hai 87: Penny Hes Yassour presented at Tel Hai 83, Yaakov Hefetz exhibited at Tel Hai 80, Yehuda Levy at Tel Hai 83, and most notably, Ezra Orion and Yossi Mar Haim who participated in both of the previous editions were present again at Tel Hai 87. This time, Mar Haim was involved in a number of works: the performance ‘Interview 2 Floor’ by Rachel Kafri and the band used music that Yossi Mar Haim created at Tel Hai 80, and he himself made two additional works, one of them in collaboration with the artist Arik Shapira.

The 87 event roster also included Yehiel Shemi and Igael Tumarkin, prominent artists in the field whose participation in previous Tel Hai editions was allegedly denied on personal grounds.[4] In some ways, their inclusion in this event was seen as a “blow” to the power struggle of the art field.

The event lost its status as the Israeli “documenta," in the eyes of the world. It did not offer a real alternative to the center, nor did it display big names  who would add to its symbolic capital. Moreover, the notions of sculpture in the landscape and the environmental question were no longer at the center of the international artistic discourse at the time.[5]

In this respect, there was a notable difference in the presence of kibbutz artists in this edition. Bex’s curatorial text did not refer to the Arts Institute nor to the Regional Council, and neither the kibbutzim of the Upper Galilee nor the teachers from the institute were well-represented.

Bex described taking the financial aspect into consideration in choosing the participating artwork. Indeed, many of the pieces in the exhibition used industrial materials, such as concrete and steel, which were not connected to the surrounding landscape. David Renov’s work, for example, which was made of iron and incorporated an electric pump, referenced industry in a way that seemed to connect much of the work in terms of materials as well as conceptually: “The sculpture is my attempt to bring back a sense of primordial nature, through materials and means that are the fruits of culture and industry. … Placing a work made of metal, oil and a pump on the Tel Hai grounds against and within the landscape sharpens the relations between the organic person and the industrial environment…”[6]

The work of Yehuda Levi, a member of Kibbutz HaGoshrim and the Upper Galilee music coordinator, did not connect to any aspect of the Tel Hai’s events as a museum in nature, nor its mythology: “In my present work, I tried to address a different aspect of the day-to-day audiovisual experience that we sense without noticing. The combination of sounds, lights, engine noise, horns and loud broadcasts often creates a uniquely random texture, but in the intense pace of life we lead we don’t attach any importance to it because we are always preoccupied with our more urgent problems — did you ever stop in the street and listen to the texture of sounds and noises and the random interplay between them?” Levi’s topic seems at odds with the serene landscape of the Galilee, describing more of a typical urban environment and not the communal village, kibbutz or farm life.

In this edition, the basalt stones which are typical  to the area were hardly used, and the artists who used these materials were actually the international land artists from “the outside” such as Canadian Bill Vazan in whose work, ‘The Burning Stone’ (1987), he created a system of six engraved basalt rocks intended to reference Moses’ burning bush. “The black basalt rocks with the addition of the engraving on them reflect the process of preserving our ancient earth,” Vazan wrote. Meanwhile American Merle Temkin created a sundial out of basalt imprinted with a painting of her fingers, claiming that this was the way in which she left her symbolic“fingerprints” on the landscape.

The Tel Hai 87 Meeting also saw the prevalence of the performance medium grow even further. For the first time, the shows and performances were separated into their own catalog. This part of the event showed work expressing local historical baggage associated with the Tel Hai myth such as Eli Gur Cohen’s piece ‘Let the Dogs Bark’ which sought to discuss victim culture: “The monumental organ of the Tel Hai hero will be brought by cranes and driven through the mountain … Here we can discuss the erection of heroism, the sanctity of the erection, the memory of sanctity, the sanctity of memory.” Meanwhile in his accurately named piece. ’Tel Hai in a Different Light,’  Nissan Gelbard, a stage and set designer by trade, illuminated the building in the Tel Hai courtyard so as to give, as he said, “the atmosphere of something alive and breathing that blends into an area appropriate to the character of the place and its historical significance.” Another exhibit that made use of the myth was ‘Our Heads are Adorned’ by Arik Shapira of Kibbutz Afikim, in which 400 schoolchildren followed a flute player with flutes of their own, playing Israeli songs from the beginning of settlement to the Lebanon War.

The exhibitions also included works that pertained to the relationships between the periphery and center, such as ‘Magbilit’ which was built of two parts: “The first in peripheral motion and the second connecting the periphery to the center … Each focal point is also a symbolic and emotional geographic region. The nature of the movement was determined by the nature of its focal point.”

Moreover, while Tel Hai Arts Institute’s teachers and graduates had a meager presence among the sculpture and installation works, the institute’s staff stood out on the list of exhibitors and performers. Lee Ramon, a sculpture lecturer at the Arts Institute, created a walking piece with audience participation on the mountain; Uri Hofi, a graduate of the Ceramic Sculpture and Drawing department at Tel Hai College, created tools live in front of an audience; four teachers and graduates of the institute created a work called ‘In a Defined Landscape’ and Hanina Neufeld continued her work from Tel Hai 83, presenting a video within the maze that she made then.

So the works of Tel Hai 87 did not serve the overall goal of the initiative: the international artists were not the ones to attract an audience and lend an avant-garde atmosphere, while most of the Israeli artists lost touch with the themes of representing the place and environment in which they were displayed, which was part of the event’s alternative image. In this respect, the exhibition’s temporal works and the occurrences within them did not make up for this lost connection. Could the event’s status hold?

Reception of Tel Hai 87 - Watershed Moment

The 1987 Tel Hai Contemporary Art meeting reaped the fruits of the two iterations which preceded it, but constituted a watershed moment for the future of the initiative. Some 25,000 people visited the ‘Museum in the Landscape,’ which many of the visitors considered a kind of sculpture garden.[7] “Was Tel Hai 87 a success? Without a doubt, if we are talking quantitatively, in terms of public response,” writes art critic and curator Gideon Efrat and describes, “an amazing sight: an endless line of cars, a curving snake with its tail in Kiryat Shmona and its head in Tel Hai, crawling along the road toward Tel Hai 87.”[8]

At the same time as the third edition of the Tel Hai events, documenta, which it was modelled on, was taking place overseas. This time the documenta had a major Israeli presence, including Zvi Goldstein and Nahum Tevet who, as mentioned, participated in Tel Hai 83, Dani Karavan, Micha Ullman and Buky Schwartz who took part in both ’80 as well as ’83, and Serge Spitzer who participated in Tel Hai 80. This documenta was curated by Manfred Schneckenburger who, as you may recall, accepted Amnon Barzel’s invitation and attended Tel Hai 80. “The New York Times critic emphasized the Israeli contingent as a strong group in the general framework of documenta, and the Israelis garnered admiration in the European press and art magazines,” wrote Dani Karavan in a personal column on the continuation of Land art in urban times.[9]

There was disappointment among attendees of Tel Hai 87 who also wondered as to the relevance of  Land art at this stage in the discourse and the direction of the event overall, particularly regarding the shows and performances: “Most of the shows are performances … that seem to make light of the whole thing. These performances, with some exceptions, … are exceptional in the awkward amateurism in all that concerns the body. Defecating in public … copulating for real or almost for real,” wrote Nitsa Maliniak who had praised the previous event. She was referring to the work ‘Monkeys Negative Mutation’ (1987) by the ‘Smartut’ Group, in which a group of performers imagined an opposite process of evolution. “I was sorry for what looked like a sour ending to an electric performance, which stopped short,” wrote Giyora Manor of the work ‘Amudumad,’ by Ofira Avisar and Doron Polak, and executed by Tal Haran.[10] “I would rather die than see a repeat of that performance,” reporter Karni Am Ad quoted a viewer with whom he spoke at the event.[11] “It was an endless repetition of  chewed up experiences, not exactly relevant to contemporary art. My only consolation was the actual view. Go travel the Galilee,” wrote the [then] young curator Tali Tamir.

Attendees mused if the shift from Barzel to Bex benefitted or hurt the event, but it seemed that the Bex’s curatorial choices were debatable at best. “Flor Bex, the appointed artistic director of the 3rd Tel Hai event, carried on the existing path but this time sought out young artists that were less known in Israel and abroad,” wrote the artist Dani Karavan. “The synthetic bridges distort the skyline, they don’t emphasize anything and create an ordinary white line which lacks malleable innovation,” writes Dorit Keidar, concluding: “The curator, for his part, did not do his work rigorously, and did not adequately filter out what is shown here.” Ruti Rubin (Director) noted Bex’s lack of familiarity which led both the choices that clouded the atmosphere and created ripples of gossip around the event: “More than anything, Flor Bex, the guest curator is  Belgian, an innocent European who fell into the lion’s den of Israeli art, without the capacity to identify who is friends with whom, who is with whom in which clique, who says what about whom and why.”

At the center of the attention that the event received was the participation of Tumarkin, referred to by some as “Rashomon” due to the large number of surrounding details and various versions around it.[12] Under the heading “Finally Tel Hai” Tumarkin himself wrote about his participation with open contempt: “For me Tel Hai is the gem in the story, beginning with Tel Hai’s first symposium in 1980, which I wasn’t invited to, according to an instruction from Dani Karavan to Amnon Barzel… and now behold, I came to this holy place, the Galilee Panhandle of Barzel and of Bauman and of Karavan to install a sculpture.”[13] His description of the sculpture contains a tone, of practically gleeful sabotage: “It’s a colorful traffic sign … standing beautifully against the view … and what is more absurd and natural between the lion and “good to die for our country”, the grave of Manya Shochat and all of the Amnon Barzels and friends than to put up this yellow traffic sign?” [14] In his article “Basalt, Wood and Wind,” Haim Maor revealed that Tumarkin was not actually invited to participate in this edition of the Tel Hai events, which provoked Tumarkin’s sharp reaction. A clarification with Flor Bex revealed that Tumarkin’s proposal was not originally selected by Bex because he was late to submit it. Later on, three spots opened up among the exhibitors while Bex was on vacation, and his assistant asked  Tumarkin, among others, to fill in the gaps. When Bex learned of this, it was uncomfortable to cancel Tumarkin and embarrass him, so Tumarkin actually was not invited, on the one hand, but his participation could not be cancelled, on the other.

The Tumarkin incident shed negative light on Tel Hai 87 for two reasons. This “scandal” joined many complaints about the shortcomings of the event’s organization. “There is no signage, no guide, no nothing,” wrote Amiram Cohen in “Al HaMishmar” and gave a detailed description of the challenging viewing experience: “You have to climb all kinds of goat paths or carefully descend between the rocks, pricked by thorny bushes along the way.”[15]

Furthermore and more importantly, this was the first edition in which the participation of prominent artists did not add to the prestige of the event, even detracted from it, transgressing for the sake of incorporating them into the exhibit. In this respect, Yehiel Shemi’s work, which did not receive much coverage, did not win the hearts of critics either.

However, the kibbutz artists who stood out in their number, with eight out of the ten participating Israeli artists, received sympathy and consideration among the viewers and critics. “Contemporary Israeli sculpture is now in the hands of kibbutznikim, and whoever has a role in this should take note and conduct himself accordingly,” wrote Haim Maor. “The sculpture in nature is their home turf,” wrote Broshi in reference to the kibbutz artists, noting in particular the work by Penny Hess Yassour, Shmuel Pe’er, Yaakov Hefetz and Aharon Adoni.[16]

These observations led the writers to conclude their publications with advice to the event organizers and obituaries for an initiative which some of them claimed had run its course. “In conclusion, Operation Tel Hai lacks professionalism — despite the invitations of curators from abroad. It should cease to exist in this format, and if the organizers want to continue the tradition — they should get to it right away and invest a lot of work in it,” wrote Dorit Keidar in “Al Hamishmar.”[17] “I join in congratulating the initiative of the Tel Hai meeting. We must hope that the organizational and program-related lessons, … will establish a basis for the event in the future too, as one of the milestones in Israeli art … with regard to the kibbutz artists in particular, I call for a reckoning, which will lead them not just to Tel Hai 91, but to a pioneering status, as cultural and spiritual designers in a different, renewed kibbutz, which needs creativity and values like air to breathe.”[18]

The following article was taken from a chapter of the thesis ‘A Center Everywhere: Art platforms in Israel’s geographic margins in the 1980s as a tool for creating cultural and symbolic wealth’ (title translated from Hebrew), towards a master’s degree as part of the program “Policy and Theory of the Arts” at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, supervised by Professor Yael Guilat and Dr. Tal Ben Zvi.

 The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis