Mifal Hapais Arts and Culture Council
The exhibition "We’re Not Alone" presents examples of art’s possibilities and potential in the current era. What is the current era? What challenges does art face when coming to take part in reality?
On the global level, we live in a period characterized by economic instability alongside far-reaching technological developments. On one hand, the digital revolution is at its peak. The tools at our disposal are constantly being renewed and updated, and with them—the nature of our actions in the world. They make for a freer, but also more supervised, society. Alongside these developments, however, there is a growing fear of economic collapse, exhaustion of the growth potential, the liquidation of the resources on which Western society relies, and ecologic catastrophe.
On the local level, Israeli society, which in the past three decades has shifted from a welfare state economy to neo-liberal economy carries on a tradition of social and cultural seclusion from its surroundings, and continues to regard itself as part of the capitalist West. The social-democratic apparatus, which in the past provided some kind of an answer and support for Israeli society (or rather, to parts of that society), is undergoing a continuous process of liquidation. The neoliberal Israel gradually does away with inclinations toward socio-economic solidarity, positing instead an illusion of ethnic unity.
The Israeli art field transpires in this reality. It is a part of it, it is influenced by it, hence it must respond to it.
In 2010, the Israeli Center for Digital Art was invited to operate at the Jessy Cohen neighborhood in southwest Holon. For over two years we held various projects in the neighborhood. Concurrently, the Center continued operation in its old premises on the other side of the city. As the project evolved, we realized that its definition as a "project" and its demarcation in a given time frame were mistaken. The socio-political agenda which guided our activities at Jessy Cohen was the same agenda that had guided us over the years. We decided there was no point in splitting our activity in the neighborhood from our activity in the Center. Thus (and following processes and decisions which were not all associated with the Center), in 2012 we moved to Jessy Cohen, and the Center settled in its current building, previously the Weizmann School, at the heart of the neighborhood.
The basic premise of our activities in Jessy Cohen is that to generate meaningful action, we cannot operate by ourselves, in seclusion. We must cooperate. This was the point of departure for many of the Center’s projects in the past, and it has remained with us. We believe that working as part of a coalition, collaborating with people from other fields of knowledge, holds greater power. It has the potential of scrutinizing and undermining existing apparatuses, identifying deep-seated modi operandi, and being more effective.
In view of the challenges posed by the "current era," art cannot afford to operate within the boundaries of its own autonomy. It must team with other disciplines, with people who use other tools in their practices. It cannot walk alone.
The exhibition "We’re Not Alone" is being staged after three years of operation in the neighborhood. It contains some of the knowledge we have gathered in their course: the work on the projects, the successes and failures, the accumulated experience. It is an attempt to introduce an outline for effective artistic activity which regards itself as part of existing social and cultural networks and strives to integrate and participate.
Activity with organizations and individuals who do not come from the artistic field requires different preparation and training. It demands reconsideration of the portrait of the artist whom we were educated to be: no longer the loner who refuses to compromise his principles. The involved artist must be able to compromise, to be attentive, to be understood.
In many cases, the two fields comprising the notion "community art" are mutually exclusive. Art often shuns the community for fear of compromise and of "amateurish," "arts & crafts" type of nonprofessional art. The community often dismisses art as worthless, improvident, incomprehensible. The socio-artistic practice must confront and challenge these views, while mediating between them.
Artistic activity in the community is almost always custom-made for a given community. It is place- and time-specific, hence it is usually hard to transport it other than as documentation of an action performed "there," "then."
In the current exhibition we endeavor to emphasize the importance of "translating" the original action to other situations and contexts, in the belief that the reality in which the original action took place is not only a unique reality, but also the result of global processes which affect distant communities in different countries and different contexts. In this respect, although community art is almost always community-minded and situation-oriented, it may be the most universal art form today. It takes part in a reality which is the outcome of global economic and political processes, hence it can also be relevant outside the community in which it was originally made.
The exhibition stresses the method’s portability potential, by attempting to extract a model of action from each of the presented projects. This is done by translating the original action to a new art space and a new context: from the original community, the one in which the action was taken, to the local community in which the exhibition is presented—all this to create a network that shares knowledge and experience, a data bank of art and society.
The process described here is intended to examine to what extent the questions and dilemmas arising in community projects in different places and diverse contexts are indeed common. Is it possible to use the experience and method of a project executed in one community, and project it onto another? Can they be implemented where we are? Can they be implemented elsewhere? Do the basic assumptions regarding the universality of the processes influencing different communities in different places enable art to conceive of a practice which may be reproduced and reapplied over again?
The exhibition introduces proposals for making models of projects. Each project is presented on several platforms:
1. As an art object—an outcome of the action.
2. As a body of knowledge acquired in the course of the artist’s research and based on the experience he has accumulated.
3. As an infrastructure put in the service of the local public.
The exhibition "We’re Not Alone" is a starting line. It is an attempt to propose a reading and a formulation of social practices in art by examining several case studies from different places.
We believe that community art is a practice which necessitates constant self-examination. "Art" and "community" are broad concepts with great historical baggage. As such, they must not be treated as fixed, closed terms, but rather as a field of options and opportunities, of practices and knowledge that have to become the object of ongoing discussion and an incessant reformulation of its fields of influence, its tools, its language.
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During the research for this show we sent artists and collectives nearly identical questionnaires to gather information about the history of their actions, their methods, their unique work modes, etc. Instead of writing a curatorial text about each of the projects, we decided to present the artists’ answers to some key questions in order to indicate the similarities and differences in the practices of the participating artists, while exploring whether art’s action in the community indeed has models that may be identified and formulated.
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Along with the exhibition, the online magazine "Ma’arav" is coming out with a special issue, a cooperation with the Social-Economic Academy. The journal is accessible in both English and Hebrew at: www.maarav.org.il
The exhibition was supported by Mifal Hapais Arts and Culture Council.
Eyal Danon, Mai Omer
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
