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The project is supported by Perion and by by Mifal Hapais Arts and Culture Council.
  

About the Project

Since January 2014, artists Luciana Kaplun Ira Shalit and Mai Omer have been working with a group of Ethiopian youth from Holon’s Jessy Cohen neighborhood, including Aviel, Adeno, Iyov, Elimelech, Angdau, David, Yosef, Yaakov, Yitzhak, Yeshambel, Michael, Moshe, Simien, Stav, Shay, and several others. The musician Neta Weiner join some of the group’s activities.

The group meets weekly, and the meetings vary in format: sometimes a lesson, at others an open workshop, or a game without fixed rules. The aim of the meetings is to teach contemporary art tools, maintain a framework that enriches everyday life in the neighborhood, and to form a group that creates together.

The activities develop and enhance an independent, local, non-institutional culture that challenges existing hierarchies.

The Hall, a public building that served as a school sports hall in the past, is a place to meet, create, and learn. It constitutes an alternative to the social activities the establishment does or does not offer. Thus it enables boys and girls from the different communities to gather, plan, build, and create as they see fit.

The Hall itself was collaboratively designed and founded by artist Ira Shalit and the group of youth who create content within it, assume responsibility for it, and operate it. It has been built for the most part from furniture discarded in industrial areas and municipality warehouses. The pieces of furniture were taken apart and reassembled, and the result is an inviting and open space that fills the neighborhood’s leisure time with activity, creativity, thinking, dialogue, and building.

The Hall was built in the spirit of “Do It Yourself” (DIY), and includes wheeled mobile units containing the tools to facilitate activities on different subjects, such as a film screening kit, a party kit, a learning kit, a repair kit, and so forth. It is a dynamic space that varies in accordance with the user’s activity. It can be used to hold lectures, screen films, hold parties, gatherings, and workshops; the existing infrastructures can be used, and new ones can be built.

Luciana Kaplun is an artist. She graduated from Minshar for Art and the advanced studies program at the Beit Berl College Faculty of the Arts (Midrasha). She won the Young Artist Award in 2014, and an Artist in the Community grant.

Ira Shalit is an artist. He graduated from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2011.

Mai Omer is an artist and curator. She graduated from the Beit Berl College Faculty of the Arts (Midrasha). She is a staff member at the Israeli Center for Digital Art.

The Hall Project | Credo | Why

“We can also distinguish art as utopian experimentation, attempts to imagine alternative ways of living: societies or communities built around values in opposition to the ethos of late capitalism” (Chantal Mouffe, Art and Democracy).

We need art that is created with the society in which it operates.
We need art that is created for the society in which it operates.
Art that is not satisfied with merely criticizing the current situation, but offers alternatives to it.
We believe that in addition to objects and images, art can also create infrastructures, structures, and communities. It has the power to change hierarchies.
Works of art based on long-term joint activity can create alternative infrastructures to those the establishment can offer. Moreover, this kind of art can create alternative infrastructures to those the establishment refrains from offering.
Artistic activity has considerable potential for social-political power. In its simplest and most immediate form, the artist’s “cultural aura” can open doors. It is easier for an artist to meet the mayor than for a social activist. Additionally, an artist can also act more flexibly than other professionals. He has the time and freedom to experiment without being committed to a predetermined outcome, and in the field of art the risk of failure is substantially lower than in other disciplines. No one will fire a painter for producing a “bad” painting, and the failure of an artistic project does not generally harm anyone.

In Western society art is one of the only disciplines in which emphasis is not placed on efficiency: the process is no less important than the outcome, and there are no clear-cut criteria for success.

It is not only the status of the artistic discipline that imbues it with strength. The artistic tools themselves are also effective tools for self-expression and social-political influence – and self-expression is not only a means to formulate personal thoughts and feelings. It is also a tool of the highest order for understanding and influencing reality.

Consequently, there is a close connection between expression abilities and political power.
Consequently, there is a close connection between silencing and political oppression.
Consequently, developing self-expression abilities not only benefits the individual, but also contributes to the social-political power of communities, especially excluded and disadvantaged communities.

Every human being has the right to self-expression, and every human being should possess the ability for self-expression – and the contemporary art field can facilitate this.

However, among the general public contemporary art is perceived as unimportant, irrelevant, inaccessible. It is perceived as a luxury. There are a number of reasons for this. First, creating and consuming art require leisure time, but leisure time is an expensive commodity nowadays. Only people of means can invest time and money in it. Moreover, from the outset Israel has not had a strong tradition of leisure culture. In its absence, and in light of the pressures engendered by the labor market and local economic policies, leisure culture which is limited in any case, is increasingly eroding. The time available to engage in hobbies, or anything not associated with work and livelihood, is gradually being depleted.

The world of art is therefore accessible first and foremost to those professionally engaging in art or adjacent disciplines. For the most part, these are people from the middle-class upward. The world of contemporary art in Israel primarily comprises Ashkenazi Jews from the center of Israel – a population typified in any case by privilege and influence.

Not only is Israel’s art world more accessible to people whose voice is heard from the outset, it is also closed and detached and does not make any particular effort to invite other populations into it.

A unique situation exists in Israel that makes self-expression even less accessible: there is no separation between civic and institutional activity, and there is no prevailing tradition of non-institutional self-organization.

The connection between the establishment and culture is very strong. In Israel it is difficult to create without the establishment – and the establishment has a hand in everything.

One of the reasons for this is the modernistic foundations of Zionism, which holds that identity and culture can be constructed. However, this perception inherently contradicts the development of an independent, non-institutional culture that grows from the ground up. Consequently, organizations of this kind will generally only be found on the margins (in the criminal world for example), or receive a “bear hug” from the establishment.

When the establishment in Israel seeks to provide individuals and communities with tools to express themselves, it does not merely remain a contributor or supporter, but becomes part of the expression itself.

This lack of separation between institutional and civic activity is the reason for the weakness of culture in Israel in general and protest culture in particular. It is impossible to criticize the Israeli establishment, offer alternatives to it, or challenge it without also challenging Israeli identity.

 

***

 

We are part of a society that exists in an overwhelming economic, emotional, political, and physical burden.

We believe that leisure culture and imagination should be encouraged – the space and time to create, think, and express yourself.

That is the key to social-political change.

In the Hall Project, we as a group are creating a framework. We are building a place that learns, enhances, and celebrates DIY culture, self-expression, and non-institutional self-organization.

 

The Hall Project | Guiding Principles

 

1.      Acquaintance

 

A renewing agreement
Our joint work with the group of youth from the neighborhood began with an agreement. One Friday evening we went to the neighborhood’s soccer field and asked the young people we met there, “Do you want to work with us?” And they said yes.

Every few months since then we ask them the same question in varying ways. Sometimes we ask the whole group, and sometimes each participant separately. But the aim of the question remains the same: to check if we have a partnership.

This renewed inquiry enables us to ensure that participation remains an act of choice, and is not continuing due to force of habit or discomfort. And since we invite the young people to act in a flexible and changing practice, with which they are less familiar, it is important to check each time anew if what we are doing together interests or bores them, is relevant or irrelevant to their lives, funny or embarrassing.

Additionally, for the young people themselves the fact that this is a framework they choose is meaningful. Unlike most of the frameworks in their lives, here they are responsible for the very existence of the framework, and they have the power to influence its character.

A long process
Although mutual learning, human connection, and mutual trust can be created in a short time, there is still special significance to months and years of acquaintance. This acquaintance deepens due to jointly contending with a variety of situations, and is built by creating a joint space.

A long work process also enables the development and deepening of content. When working with children and youth, length of time has particular meaning as they grow up and improve their ability to face challenges.

Examining the existing hierarchy; building a flexible hierarchy
Community art is always typified by a hierarchy at the top of which is the artist who possesses the knowledge and experience.
There is a hierarchy in the Hall Project too (adult/youth, [geographic] center/periphery, Ashkenazi/Ethiopian).
Even if we oppose the existing hierarchical structure, we cannot ignore it. We have to address it so that we can change it.
Hierarchies can be made more flexible, they can be challenged and undermined, and at times even annulled by jointly creating content, by learning, and by means of mutual interest, and willingness to learn from each other.

Conflict and an agonistic space
According to Belgian theorist Chantal Mouffe, liberal Western society does not in fact contend with insoluble conflicts. She argues that the attempt to reach compromise, “to agree to disagree”, is primarily an attempt to eliminate and silence the conflict. She speaks out against the “business” logic of compromise, against the tendency to conceal the conflict rather than address the state of disagreement. According to Mouffe, the flipside of the inability to contend with conflicts is fundamentalism, whereby disagreement has to be resolved by obliterating the opposing idea. In place of these two options, Mouffe encourages the creation of an agonistic space: a space that contains the conflict without attempting to silence it on the one hand, or resolve it by obliterating one of the sides to the conflict on the other. Principles that cannot be compromised can exist in an agonistic space. It is a space that contends with the discomfort of disagreement. According to Mouffe, only an agonistic space enables the creation of a strong community and true pluralism.

The conflicts between the participants in the Hall Project were evident from the very beginning of our joint work. It was important for us to create an agonistic work environment: an environment that allows room for conflict and disagreement on politics, lifestyle, and beliefs. A work environment in which it is the conflicts within it that enable deeper acquaintance between the participants, and help to clarify the views, beliefs, and feelings of each and every participant.

 

2.      Work

Collaboration
It is not only the work that is collaborative. The content is determined collaboratively as well, although there is still instruction and guidance. Much of the content is determined in the course of a debate that encourages suggestions for activity, and most of the suggestions (that are feasible) are accepted.

DIY

The Hall Project is entirely founded on the logic of DIY. The project’s esthetic language, the elements created within it, the objects, the music, the human interaction, and the work in an open workshop are all founded on the notion of producing something directly; on the notion of being present in the space, creating a culture, and building a place as an act that is a purpose in its own right. An act that the individual does himself, for himself.

We invest time in learning and creating tools that anyone can use and imbue with their own content.

Physical action

The work includes reference to the body, to physicality, and the presence of all the participants. Thus the work itself becomes another means for connecting people and establishing a community. In the course of our work the participants are required to be aware of their own presence, voice, activity, as well as those of others around them.

 

3.      Space

A dynamic hall
The space can easily be changed in accordance with the people working in it and the work being done in it.

We believe that a dynamic space encourages those entering it to make their own changes to it, adapt it to their needs, and thus make it their own. It is not a given space to which users have to adapt themselves. On the contrary: the space changes in accordance with the users. Just as in sports training an unstable surface can be used to strengthen balance and build up muscles, in artistic-community activity the dynamic space can strengthen ease and activeness.

Agonistic object
The space as an object around which to unite.

In the early days of our activity as a group, before we had a permanent space, we worked on creating a bicycle. The bicycle served as an object around which to unite: an object that creates a group and dictates the rules of joint activity. Once we were given the Hall as a permanent place, we abandoned the bicycle. The Hall itself became the object uniting the group, both concretely and symbolically.

Public space
The space functions as a continuation of the public garden and the neighborhood soccer field. The Hall is a closed space with infrastructures that enable additional activities. It is a rich and enabling public space; not merely a place “to pass the time”, but a place for leisure time and leisure culture. It is a meeting place for local groups, and its availability encourages the organization of interest groups, families, social circles, and friends. 

 

Acknowledgements

The staff at the Israeli Center for Digital Art
The staff at FabLabIL
The Welfare Department staff
Neta Weiner, Danny Meir, Meir Tati, Alma Yitzhaki, Elad Rosen, Hagar Ophir, Or Hertz, the Holon Municipality warehouses, Shay-Lee Uziel, Daniel Davidovsky, Adi Inbar, and Gilad Ratman
Our gratitude goes to everyone who helped, offered advice, built, contributed, and took part.
A special thank you to all the children participating in the project, and their families.

Gym is a space that previously served as the Weizmann School’s sports hall, which was renovated and modified by artists and local youths to create a space where people can create and think differently. Hall is an open space that offers a wide range of tools to create art: carpentry, sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, performance art, video, sound, and movement. Hall comprises various stations in no particular order – the order is determined in accordance with the project or the topic the instructor wishes to introduce. This concept differs from the hierarchical perception of the regular classroom space where the teacher possesses the knowledge and stands in front of the class – the Gym is a democratic space in which knowledge is shared. The workshops in Hall are suitable for different age groups.

Project Coordinator:
Avigail Surovich

Project creators and previous team:
Mai Omer
Luciana Kaplun
Ira Shalit
 

During November 2017, various activities took place at the Gym. We will creat a huge painting on the Hall's walls, make DIY plant pots, learn acro-balance and make tie-dye T-shirts.

August 2018>> Born in Jessy

As part of a a collaboration between various institutions in Jessy Cohen Neighborhood,  3 days festival for all the family, the Center invites the neighborhood's teenagers to get to know the Gym (Ulam).

Starting 7:30>>

- Grafitti workshop on the Gym's walls with Grafitti artist Paco.

-T-shirts workshop

- Rock concert of youth bands from Holon


On June 21 2018 the exhibition "Past, Present, Future" was opened at the Gym. in collaboration with "Yahad" School. 

The exhibition presented Paintings, Sculptures and models created at the gym during the recent year, and product from the Center's collaboration with ''Yahad" school located at the neighborhhod.   

At the opening event YouTube live clips recorded at the Gym during a workshop with nimrod Gershoni were screened, a joint ongoing painting was exposed, a spoken word performance, live DJ and more.       

Exhibitions & Projects
Archives

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

Gym
An Ongoing Art Project

The project is supported by Perion and by by Mifal Hapais Arts and Culture Council.
  

About the Project

Since January 2014, artists Luciana Kaplun Ira Shalit and Mai Omer have been working with a group of Ethiopian youth from Holon’s Jessy Cohen neighborhood, including Aviel, Adeno, Iyov, Elimelech, Angdau, David, Yosef, Yaakov, Yitzhak, Yeshambel, Michael, Moshe, Simien, Stav, Shay, and several others. The musician Neta Weiner join some of the group’s activities.

The group meets weekly, and the meetings vary in format: sometimes a lesson, at others an open workshop, or a game without fixed rules. The aim of the meetings is to teach contemporary art tools, maintain a framework that enriches everyday life in the neighborhood, and to form a group that creates together.

The activities develop and enhance an independent, local, non-institutional culture that challenges existing hierarchies.

The Hall, a public building that served as a school sports hall in the past, is a place to meet, create, and learn. It constitutes an alternative to the social activities the establishment does or does not offer. Thus it enables boys and girls from the different communities to gather, plan, build, and create as they see fit.

The Hall itself was collaboratively designed and founded by artist Ira Shalit and the group of youth who create content within it, assume responsibility for it, and operate it. It has been built for the most part from furniture discarded in industrial areas and municipality warehouses. The pieces of furniture were taken apart and reassembled, and the result is an inviting and open space that fills the neighborhood’s leisure time with activity, creativity, thinking, dialogue, and building.

The Hall was built in the spirit of “Do It Yourself” (DIY), and includes wheeled mobile units containing the tools to facilitate activities on different subjects, such as a film screening kit, a party kit, a learning kit, a repair kit, and so forth. It is a dynamic space that varies in accordance with the user’s activity. It can be used to hold lectures, screen films, hold parties, gatherings, and workshops; the existing infrastructures can be used, and new ones can be built.

Luciana Kaplun is an artist. She graduated from Minshar for Art and the advanced studies program at the Beit Berl College Faculty of the Arts (Midrasha). She won the Young Artist Award in 2014, and an Artist in the Community grant.

Ira Shalit is an artist. He graduated from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2011.

Mai Omer is an artist and curator. She graduated from the Beit Berl College Faculty of the Arts (Midrasha). She is a staff member at the Israeli Center for Digital Art.

The Hall Project | Credo | Why

“We can also distinguish art as utopian experimentation, attempts to imagine alternative ways of living: societies or communities built around values in opposition to the ethos of late capitalism” (Chantal Mouffe, Art and Democracy).

We need art that is created with the society in which it operates.
We need art that is created for the society in which it operates.
Art that is not satisfied with merely criticizing the current situation, but offers alternatives to it.
We believe that in addition to objects and images, art can also create infrastructures, structures, and communities. It has the power to change hierarchies.
Works of art based on long-term joint activity can create alternative infrastructures to those the establishment can offer. Moreover, this kind of art can create alternative infrastructures to those the establishment refrains from offering.
Artistic activity has considerable potential for social-political power. In its simplest and most immediate form, the artist’s “cultural aura” can open doors. It is easier for an artist to meet the mayor than for a social activist. Additionally, an artist can also act more flexibly than other professionals. He has the time and freedom to experiment without being committed to a predetermined outcome, and in the field of art the risk of failure is substantially lower than in other disciplines. No one will fire a painter for producing a “bad” painting, and the failure of an artistic project does not generally harm anyone.

In Western society art is one of the only disciplines in which emphasis is not placed on efficiency: the process is no less important than the outcome, and there are no clear-cut criteria for success.

It is not only the status of the artistic discipline that imbues it with strength. The artistic tools themselves are also effective tools for self-expression and social-political influence – and self-expression is not only a means to formulate personal thoughts and feelings. It is also a tool of the highest order for understanding and influencing reality.

Consequently, there is a close connection between expression abilities and political power.
Consequently, there is a close connection between silencing and political oppression.
Consequently, developing self-expression abilities not only benefits the individual, but also contributes to the social-political power of communities, especially excluded and disadvantaged communities.

Every human being has the right to self-expression, and every human being should possess the ability for self-expression – and the contemporary art field can facilitate this.

However, among the general public contemporary art is perceived as unimportant, irrelevant, inaccessible. It is perceived as a luxury. There are a number of reasons for this. First, creating and consuming art require leisure time, but leisure time is an expensive commodity nowadays. Only people of means can invest time and money in it. Moreover, from the outset Israel has not had a strong tradition of leisure culture. In its absence, and in light of the pressures engendered by the labor market and local economic policies, leisure culture which is limited in any case, is increasingly eroding. The time available to engage in hobbies, or anything not associated with work and livelihood, is gradually being depleted.

The world of art is therefore accessible first and foremost to those professionally engaging in art or adjacent disciplines. For the most part, these are people from the middle-class upward. The world of contemporary art in Israel primarily comprises Ashkenazi Jews from the center of Israel – a population typified in any case by privilege and influence.

Not only is Israel’s art world more accessible to people whose voice is heard from the outset, it is also closed and detached and does not make any particular effort to invite other populations into it.

A unique situation exists in Israel that makes self-expression even less accessible: there is no separation between civic and institutional activity, and there is no prevailing tradition of non-institutional self-organization.

The connection between the establishment and culture is very strong. In Israel it is difficult to create without the establishment – and the establishment has a hand in everything.

One of the reasons for this is the modernistic foundations of Zionism, which holds that identity and culture can be constructed. However, this perception inherently contradicts the development of an independent, non-institutional culture that grows from the ground up. Consequently, organizations of this kind will generally only be found on the margins (in the criminal world for example), or receive a “bear hug” from the establishment.

When the establishment in Israel seeks to provide individuals and communities with tools to express themselves, it does not merely remain a contributor or supporter, but becomes part of the expression itself.

This lack of separation between institutional and civic activity is the reason for the weakness of culture in Israel in general and protest culture in particular. It is impossible to criticize the Israeli establishment, offer alternatives to it, or challenge it without also challenging Israeli identity.

 

***

 

We are part of a society that exists in an overwhelming economic, emotional, political, and physical burden.

We believe that leisure culture and imagination should be encouraged – the space and time to create, think, and express yourself.

That is the key to social-political change.

In the Hall Project, we as a group are creating a framework. We are building a place that learns, enhances, and celebrates DIY culture, self-expression, and non-institutional self-organization.

 

The Hall Project | Guiding Principles

 

1.      Acquaintance

 

A renewing agreement
Our joint work with the group of youth from the neighborhood began with an agreement. One Friday evening we went to the neighborhood’s soccer field and asked the young people we met there, “Do you want to work with us?” And they said yes.

Every few months since then we ask them the same question in varying ways. Sometimes we ask the whole group, and sometimes each participant separately. But the aim of the question remains the same: to check if we have a partnership.

This renewed inquiry enables us to ensure that participation remains an act of choice, and is not continuing due to force of habit or discomfort. And since we invite the young people to act in a flexible and changing practice, with which they are less familiar, it is important to check each time anew if what we are doing together interests or bores them, is relevant or irrelevant to their lives, funny or embarrassing.

Additionally, for the young people themselves the fact that this is a framework they choose is meaningful. Unlike most of the frameworks in their lives, here they are responsible for the very existence of the framework, and they have the power to influence its character.

A long process
Although mutual learning, human connection, and mutual trust can be created in a short time, there is still special significance to months and years of acquaintance. This acquaintance deepens due to jointly contending with a variety of situations, and is built by creating a joint space.

A long work process also enables the development and deepening of content. When working with children and youth, length of time has particular meaning as they grow up and improve their ability to face challenges.

Examining the existing hierarchy; building a flexible hierarchy
Community art is always typified by a hierarchy at the top of which is the artist who possesses the knowledge and experience.
There is a hierarchy in the Hall Project too (adult/youth, [geographic] center/periphery, Ashkenazi/Ethiopian).
Even if we oppose the existing hierarchical structure, we cannot ignore it. We have to address it so that we can change it.
Hierarchies can be made more flexible, they can be challenged and undermined, and at times even annulled by jointly creating content, by learning, and by means of mutual interest, and willingness to learn from each other.

Conflict and an agonistic space
According to Belgian theorist Chantal Mouffe, liberal Western society does not in fact contend with insoluble conflicts. She argues that the attempt to reach compromise, “to agree to disagree”, is primarily an attempt to eliminate and silence the conflict. She speaks out against the “business” logic of compromise, against the tendency to conceal the conflict rather than address the state of disagreement. According to Mouffe, the flipside of the inability to contend with conflicts is fundamentalism, whereby disagreement has to be resolved by obliterating the opposing idea. In place of these two options, Mouffe encourages the creation of an agonistic space: a space that contains the conflict without attempting to silence it on the one hand, or resolve it by obliterating one of the sides to the conflict on the other. Principles that cannot be compromised can exist in an agonistic space. It is a space that contends with the discomfort of disagreement. According to Mouffe, only an agonistic space enables the creation of a strong community and true pluralism.

The conflicts between the participants in the Hall Project were evident from the very beginning of our joint work. It was important for us to create an agonistic work environment: an environment that allows room for conflict and disagreement on politics, lifestyle, and beliefs. A work environment in which it is the conflicts within it that enable deeper acquaintance between the participants, and help to clarify the views, beliefs, and feelings of each and every participant.

 

2.      Work

Collaboration
It is not only the work that is collaborative. The content is determined collaboratively as well, although there is still instruction and guidance. Much of the content is determined in the course of a debate that encourages suggestions for activity, and most of the suggestions (that are feasible) are accepted.

DIY

The Hall Project is entirely founded on the logic of DIY. The project’s esthetic language, the elements created within it, the objects, the music, the human interaction, and the work in an open workshop are all founded on the notion of producing something directly; on the notion of being present in the space, creating a culture, and building a place as an act that is a purpose in its own right. An act that the individual does himself, for himself.

We invest time in learning and creating tools that anyone can use and imbue with their own content.

Physical action

The work includes reference to the body, to physicality, and the presence of all the participants. Thus the work itself becomes another means for connecting people and establishing a community. In the course of our work the participants are required to be aware of their own presence, voice, activity, as well as those of others around them.

 

3.      Space

A dynamic hall
The space can easily be changed in accordance with the people working in it and the work being done in it.

We believe that a dynamic space encourages those entering it to make their own changes to it, adapt it to their needs, and thus make it their own. It is not a given space to which users have to adapt themselves. On the contrary: the space changes in accordance with the users. Just as in sports training an unstable surface can be used to strengthen balance and build up muscles, in artistic-community activity the dynamic space can strengthen ease and activeness.

Agonistic object
The space as an object around which to unite.

In the early days of our activity as a group, before we had a permanent space, we worked on creating a bicycle. The bicycle served as an object around which to unite: an object that creates a group and dictates the rules of joint activity. Once we were given the Hall as a permanent place, we abandoned the bicycle. The Hall itself became the object uniting the group, both concretely and symbolically.

Public space
The space functions as a continuation of the public garden and the neighborhood soccer field. The Hall is a closed space with infrastructures that enable additional activities. It is a rich and enabling public space; not merely a place “to pass the time”, but a place for leisure time and leisure culture. It is a meeting place for local groups, and its availability encourages the organization of interest groups, families, social circles, and friends. 

 

Acknowledgements

The staff at the Israeli Center for Digital Art
The staff at FabLabIL
The Welfare Department staff
Neta Weiner, Danny Meir, Meir Tati, Alma Yitzhaki, Elad Rosen, Hagar Ophir, Or Hertz, the Holon Municipality warehouses, Shay-Lee Uziel, Daniel Davidovsky, Adi Inbar, and Gilad Ratman
Our gratitude goes to everyone who helped, offered advice, built, contributed, and took part.
A special thank you to all the children participating in the project, and their families.

Gym is a space that previously served as the Weizmann School’s sports hall, which was renovated and modified by artists and local youths to create a space where people can create and think differently. Hall is an open space that offers a wide range of tools to create art: carpentry, sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, performance art, video, sound, and movement. Hall comprises various stations in no particular order – the order is determined in accordance with the project or the topic the instructor wishes to introduce. This concept differs from the hierarchical perception of the regular classroom space where the teacher possesses the knowledge and stands in front of the class – the Gym is a democratic space in which knowledge is shared. The workshops in Hall are suitable for different age groups.

Project Coordinator:
Avigail Surovich

Project creators and previous team:
Mai Omer
Luciana Kaplun
Ira Shalit
 

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

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

The project is supported by Perion and by by Mifal Hapais Arts and Culture Council.
  

Talk: The Leipzig Gallery for Contemporary Art
Art & Activism in Israel