Yonathan Amir and I announced last week that we are leaving our positions as editors of Maarav. We are starting a new independent media project in the field of Art and culture.
Maarav was a great project that we created with love and devotion and we cherish the opportunity we had to be the editors for so long. However we feel that Maarav’s organizational and financial structure prevented us from creating and developing Maarav in the way that we believed.
The New Project: In still in very early stages, but what we can say that we are creating a platform that will integrate art, culture and politics and will continue to fill the role that we took upon ourselves when we made Maarav. Â We will build an excellent of team in the field of writing, art and culture which will create a magazine that will provide great writing and art, lead and challenge the discourse, and maybe even be financial viable.
In February we will launch our new site called EREV RAV, and we are also planning in a later stage to come out with a monthly printed magazine. Further notices and the link to the new site will be posted here soon. Ideas, suggestions and comments are welcome.
Medinat Weimar is opening a two temporary bureaus in Stockholm, Sweden and Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
If you are in the area you are very welcome to visit (I will be in Stockholm until Sunday, October 25th). Please, notify and forward announcement friends and people that you think will find interest and that live in the area.
Medinat Weimar The Movement for a Jewish State in Thuringia
Stockholm, Sweden: Medinat Weimar is opening a bureau at the Tegen2 gallery in Stockholm, and will establish a temporary Swedish headquarters. The purpose of the office is to educate the Swedish public about the movement and to encourage them to support the idea. We believe that the Kingdom of Sweden – The current president of the European Union, with its highly developed economy and great tradition of democracy can play a role in forwarding the vision of the movement and can help persuade the European community as well as their German neighbors in the vitality of the idea. In edition in Sweden and in the city of Stockholm live large Palestine and Lebanon communities that we believe can connect and find hope in the ideas of Medinat Weimar.
Tegen 2. Bjurholmsg. 9b, T-bana Skanstull, 070-7161923, 070-2855777, info@tegen2.se, www.tegen2.se
23.10.09-8.11.09             opening: 23 October  17 – 20, 19.00 press conference and dicussion.
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Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Medinat Weimar is opening a bureau at the ‘Can You Speak Of This? Yes, I Can.’ Exhibition that opens in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and will establish a temporary headquarters. The purpose of the office is to educate the local public about the movement and to encourage them to support the idea. We believe that the Bosnia and Herzegovina – with its history of nationalism and ethnic violence, and its complicated relationship to the European Union, with its complex multi religious traditions can play a role in forwarding the vision of the movement and can help persuade the European people in the vitality of the idea. We believe that the people of the region can connect to our vision and find hope in the ideas of Medinat Weimar.
Where Everything Is Yet to Happen. 1st chapter: “Can you speak of this? -Yes, I can”. SPAPORT BIENNIAL 2009/2010Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Locations: Terzic Gallery | Salon of the Museum of Contemporary art | Banja Luka Fortress | Public spacehttp://www.delve.hr, http://www.protok.org
October 20 – November 15, 2009.     Opening: Banja Luka Fortress, October 20, 2009, 8 pm
OneState Embassy invited me to Vienna for two events as secretary Medinat Weimar!
1.
Post Conceptual Art Practices [Class], Prof. Dr. Marina Gržinić, Semperdepot, 1st floor, M1, Lehárgasse 8, 1060 Vienna
Thursday, 15. 10. 2009 – M1, Semperdepot lecture in English – open to general public 18:30 Ronen Eidelman (Tel Aviv-Jaffa): Medinat Weimar
Medinat Weimar is an art project that created a movement to promote the idea of the Jewish state in Thuringia, Germany, with the city of Weimar as its capital. The movements goal is to convince the German people to call the Jews (and anyone else who wants to be one) to gather in Thuringia, a post-industrial area emptying more every year, and found there another Jewish state. One that would not only satisfy the need for a secure Jewish home, appease the Palestinian Israeli conflict, help the German with coming to terms with the past, but would also save Thuringia from its own bleak future. In the lecture Eidelman, the Movements’ secretary, will present the Movement, explain the political and artistic context it was born in, as well as show other art projects he has created in the past that are related to the movement.
Ronen Eidelman is an artist, writer and activist engaged with linking art, culture and grassroots politics. Participated in many exhibitions and festivals, as well as creating independent projects in the public sphere. Born in New York City, grew up in Jerusalem and based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, Co-founder and editor of “Ma’arav” (www.maarav.org.il) leading online art and culture magazine from Israel. Graduate of the MFA program for “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies’ at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, and for more than ten years active in anti-occupation and anti-capitalist activists groups. Ronen likes hats and enjoys wearing many kinds. http://medinatweimar.org/,http://ronen.dvarim.com/
The lecture is organized by Eduard Freudmann and OneState Embassy in Vienna (Ambassadors Tal Adler & Osama Zatar will be present at the lecture – www.onestate-embassy.net).
Come and have denKarium-breakfast with the Israeli artist Ronen Eidelman in the “OneState Embassy” in Vienna:
“How to use art as a safe place for utopian ideas”? Saturday, 17. Oct. 10.30, at the “OneState Embassy”, Sieveringerstr. 167, 1190 Vienna.
We will offer a nice oriental brunch, children are also wellcome, the embassy has a wide garden and toys! Ronen will present his project “Medinat Weimar” and discuss the possibilities of political art actions.
A rites-event in cooperation with OneState embassy (Tal Adler & Osama Zatar)
Project made for The Prozna Project 2009. Prozna Street is the only street in Warsaw which survived the destruction of the ghetto.
In Jewish tradition upon first moving in to a new house, it is customary to leave a certain space on the wall free of decoration and furnishing as a remembrance of the destruction of the Temple (zecherlachurban). In many Jewish religious homes one can see a small square, usually around the size of a few bricks (+-45cm), with no plaster, paint or finishing – the material of the wall exposed. Similar to the tradition of breaking a glass in wedding, the costume reminds us that no happiness can be perfect and we should remember the churban(the destruction and in Yiddish also the word used for the Holocaust) also in times of celebration.
The building in Prozna st. is all a zecherlachurban, the bricks are exposed and there is no plaster or paint – contrast to the new big fancy building in center Warsaw. These marking in the corners of the building are a reverse to the old costume – a remembrance for the living -ZecherLahaim – A symbolic gesture of remembrance for life, for those who lived, for the homes and families who lived there and for those who are still living.
Building on Prozna st. with my project on right bottom corner (the photos of the old Jews are not related to me, its a n old permanent installation on the building). click picture to enlarge.
I’m participating in a great project in Warsaw, for those who cant make it i will post pictures and a description next week.
The opening is on Sunday, 30th August 2009, at 5.30 pm, Prozna Street 7/9. The exhibition is open from 31st August 2009 to 6th August 2009. Hours: 2 pm — 8 pm
Prozna Street is the only street in Warsaw which survived the destruction of the ghetto. Deserted, ruined, deprived of any inhabitants is still the evidence of war crimes and post-war indifference. The exhibition, which takes place in Prozna Street for the fifth time, aims to show how the modern language of art refers to Polish-Jewish history, common memory issue, intolerance and xenophobia, anti-Semitism as well as directly history and the condition of the place, where it is held.
The Prozna Project 2009 exhibition is probably the last one that will be organized in this place. There is a project of rebuilding of the building in Prozna Street pending to be realized. It is going to be a modernized version of the interior of the present building. Other conversions are likely to follow this one. In a few years it will be a completely different street.
The following artists were invited to participate in the Prozna Project: Hubert Czerepok, Inga Fonar Cocos, Oskar Dawicki, Daniela Deutelbaum, Wojciek Doroszuk, Ronen Eidelman, Zuzanna Janin, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Krystyna Piotrowska, Katarzyna Podgórska-Glonti, Jan Rusiński, Stanisław Wójcik, Ewa Stawecka, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, Waldemar Tatarczuk, Wojciech Wilczyk.
Curator: Krystyna Piotrowska
Photos of works from previous editions are available at the website: www.projektprozna.pl
A street art action on public historic perception, Budapest, Hungary, June 2009
Commemorative plaques, a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, or other material, are attached to the walls of many buildings are very common in Budapest. The plaques, bearing text in memory of an important figure that lived in the building (or event that happened there), are written in Hungarian and usually give you a condensed of the important person, the years they lived, and what they are famous for.
Visiting Budapest I was fascinated by these plaques – the amount, the different designs but mostly wondering as a non Hungarian speaker who are these people, what did they do to deserve a plaque and who decides who gets one. I asked myself if these people who are commemorated are really important to the people who live near and in the buildings where they are attached. In addition, I wanted to learn more about the choices made in Hungarian culture about who is considered important.
The week before the opening of CONTROL an Exhibition at 2B Gallery in Budapest that I participated in, Orsolya Fenyresi, who was my assistant and translator, and I, explored the different plaques on Ráday Street (the street of the gallery) and it surroundings. We interviewed the people living in the buildings and passersby and asked them and who ever was willing to talk to us – if they heard about the people named on the plaques, and if they did – how they felt about them. At the end we googled the names to check the stories we gathered and find more information.
With the information gathered, I wrote new texts, printed them with a basic design on marbled paper and hung my newly produced “street story†plaques witch I hung next to the original ones.
The outdoor video installation address the space between black and white, between Tel Aviv “The white City” of Bauhaus modern Architecture and the complete surrender to European modernism, to Tel Aviv of the middle east, including Jaffa and the southern neighborhoods. Here in Inbal, and Suzanne Dellal over the ruins of an old Girls school, at the dance center of Israel, on the seam between Tel Aviv and Jaffa right by Manshia neighborhood which was completely erased, another space is suggested – one which is not erasing its past. A space that seeks, accepts, and suggests an image of Tel Aviv which is not completely white.
Curators Carmel Kimchi and Tali Navon
Video Screenings, Thursdays, July 2nd and July 7th between 20:00-23:00
For more information: : 03-5173711, 0545-808111
Free Entrance
Ma’achaz (outpost ; handhold, foothold ; stronghold) marks the first participation of Medinat Weimar at the Venice Biennale. Rather than adopt to the reality that the Jewish state in Thuringia does not exist and the movement for the state has no financial ability to rent a space and hold a decent exhibition (like the Palestinian and gypsy participations), Medinat Weimar decided in the spirit of Zionism to defer reality and settle with a symbolic Pavilion at Giardini.
