Ronen.Dvarim — Deuteronomy – projects, pictures and words

http://www.erev-rav.com

New art & culture magazine in Hebrew

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.  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.

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 (zecher lachurban). 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 zecher lachurban, 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 - Zecher Lahaim – 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.

more photos in flickr

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.

photos by Dazz

The texts of the “new plaque”s: Read More »

Outdoor Video Installation, 2nd + 9th of July, 2009
Inbal+Suzanne Dellal courtyard, Tel Aviv

Ronen Eidelman, Batya Argov, Yael Bartana, Doron Golan, Ela Zaharano, Delight, Meir Tatti, Yuli Cohen, Itay Finkelstein, Yfat Libny, Sagit Geirman, Tali Navon, Doron Solomns, Yael Omer, Dafna Shalom, Micha Simchon

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

Liberating Space Through Art and Action:

Along Jerusalem Boulevard, the entrance into Jaffa, Radio Free Jaffa will be making a radio intervention into all radio transmissions in the proximity.

Radio Free Jaffa offers free space which is much needed in Jaffa, and deals with the current social and political situation in Jaffa by highlighting the housing crises and the evictions of Arab residents from the city.

Radio Free Jaffa will be roaming through Jaffa with a human antenna, broadcasting in close-range. It may not be noticeable, but if your radio starts behaving strangely, you can assume we are in the area.

The project will take place between 19-23.4.09 | The public is invited to join on Thursday 23.4.09, 10:00-12:00 and 15:00 – 18:00 | Please bring a portable radio for listening. Look for us on Jerusalem Blvd. at the northern entrance to Jaffa.

Please visit website to learn more: www.radiofreejaffa.com

Radio Free Jaffa is Kasia Krakowiak in cooperation with Ronen Eidelman.

I’m back to living in my old apartment in Yafo (Jaffa ) near the beach and a 10 minute bike ride to central Tel Aviv (see map).

I’m continuing to work on Maarav, the Online art and culture magazine which I’m co-editing with Yonatan Amir and developing the English section. Check it out!
This coming February we will launch the new topic issue of Maarav, which will be posted in both English and Hebrew.
Bellow is the call for works, papers and ideas for Maarav’s new issue, please feel free to send something.
I’m also teaching at the Minshar for Art in Tel Aviv. I teaching a class called visual communication for social change for third year students in the visual communication department. The plan is to execute different social campaigns around the city. I will keep you posted when things go down.

Read More »

Paul M. from the blog inicios.es made a nice interview with me. Enjoy!

The Israeli artist Ronen Eidelman shares with us his views about how art fights discrimination in our societies, the artist’s role, the relationship between activist artists and the topics they deal with, his new project of founding a Jewish state in Germany… And many other interesting topics I’m sure you’ll enjoy. I met Ronen last summer at a conference series within the framework of a Palestinian-Israeli exhibition at the Essl Museum, where I couldn’t help getting the impression that what the audience had to say (mostly artists from Israel) was by far much more interesting that what the speakers were -in a very politically correct way- conveying. One of those artists in the audience was Ronen and I think I was quite right…

read interview

In August 2008, Ronen Eidelman, known as The Artist, was invited by the Van Abbemuseum to conceive an art project for the Be(com)ing Dutch exhibition. Through bronze plaques, which he has created and installed throughout the city, he highlights the means of survival of people who are excluded from Dutch society. He aspires to portray them as heroes, resisters to an unjust system, political subjects who fight for their dignity, rights and freedom. The Artist received an honorarium from the museum. By working on these bizarre projects, and through journalistic work he does part time, he manages to live a happy and modest lifestyle in his base in Tel Aviv.

The project can be seen by those willing to explore city of Eindhoven and locate the series of plaques in the sites where these stories were told by their heroes. Hints on the locations can be found in the pictures.

Note: Gallery may take some time to load on slower connections.
Click arrows on bottom right to enlarge and then click image for details.

Read More »

The Israeli exhibition at the 11th Venice Biennale for Architecture will open its doors on September 12th. I was invited to participate in the exhibition with my project, “The ghost of Manshia Awakes”, but it did not work out. However the texts and pictures about the project are in the exhibitions wonderful catalog and it can be seen online.

Exhibition catalogue:

http://www.labiennale-israeli-pavilion.org/