Ronen.Dvarim — Deuteronomy – projects, pictures and words

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

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/

I’m showing the documentation of The Ghost of Manshia Awakes in Vienna, please come!

16/05/2008 – 26/10/2009
Opening: 15/05/2008, 07.30 p.m
Essl Museum, Exhibition Hall
Curators: Karin Schneider, Friedemann Derschmidt, Tal Adler, Amal Murkus

This exhibition of Israeli and Palestinian artists offers a rare and interesting opportunity to discuss different artistic practices from a conflicted area. Both Israeli and Palestinian societies contain a vast range of people, cultures and positions with rich and intertwined histories. This exhibition tries to bring together some of these voices, which overlap and sometimes contradict the more common and clearer positions usually heard.

Some of the 22 art projects that include all artistic media are shown for the first time. Many of them are based on civil society structures, as many of the artists in this show are themselves social and cultural activists. Four of the projects created for the exhibition are a result of artistic collaboration between some of the artists and civil society organizations, Israeli and Palestinian, who present interesting visions for understanding of the region and its challenges.

An information lounge with maps, glossaries and books will give visitors the possibility to better understand the complexity of this region and its connections with Austrian history – in particular the displacement and annihilation of Europe’s Jews during the Nazi-regime.

Artists: Tal Adler, Shalom Amira, Anisa Ashkar, Asad Azi, Raed Bawayah, Eyal Ben-Dov, Zoya Cherkassky und Avdey Ter-Oganian, Ronen Eidelman, Shula Keshet, Jumana Manna, Parrhesia, rites-institute, Yoav Weiss, Osama Zatar, Manar Zuabi, Masha Zusman

I gave an interview to Subtopia about the project in Manshia. I think it came out good so your are all welcome to read and comment. Irrelevant to me I think it’s a good site to check out anyway.

I remember when I found Ronen’s project (un)Documented Disappearance back in March I was blown away. I thought it made crucial reflections on migratory space today, filling the street drains of Europe with images and documents of refugees and immigrants trapped in the gutter, being washed away like trash in a perpetual stir under everyone’s feet, conjuring this kind of urban consciousness about migrant struggles as they ghosted past in the peripheries of our street-wandering eyes.
Well, his latest project is an awakening of the ghost of Manshia, a coastal Israeli city known today as Jaffa that was garrisoned from the Arabs back in 1947. This time Ronen has outlined with chalk the old boundaries of the Arab neighborhood just south of Tel Aviv before it was transformed by the Israelis.
I love this project for many reasons but mostly because of the way Ronen understands borders as outlines of memory, as ephemeral bodies in themselves, and not merely lines of state power.
Segueing nicely from my last chat with Jay Isenberg about the Israeli Security Wall and his future plans to retrace “the spaces of the uninhabited” along a “pilgrimage of hope” somewhere near the Israeli/Palestinian border, Ronen and I recently talked about his work as a public artist, his skepticism of archeology, what he hopes to achieve as a ghost chaser and No Borders activist, and different ways public art in the form of direct action can subvert the political regimes that cement themselves in structures like border walls.

continue reading on Subtopia…

smoking on Al_Yarmuk St.

During the Jewish Holiday of Sukkot (September, 2007) we marked out the grid of streets and houses of the Manshia Quarter with the help of soccer field marking equipment and simple paint rollers. The marking was done near the sea, on the border between present-day Tel Aviv and Jaffa. For a few weeks, the streets of the former neighborhood where marked on the Promenade and the grassy lawns of the Charles Clore Park. You can now stroll down Al-Yarmuk or Abu-Laban streets, sit down and watch the sun set on the corner of Irsheid and Hasan-Bek, have a picnic on the gardens of Al-Jauni street or play a game of football at the British police station. Read More »

Hassan Beck Street on the Corner of Abu Lughud the project of marking the Manshia Quarter on the lawns of Charles Clore Park and the Promenade in Tel Aviv-Jaffa has finished.

pictures of all four days of the marking can be viewed in my Flicker

photos: Tal Adler, Eyal Danon, Zsuzsa Katon and Maya Pasternak

Pictures from the first two days of marking the Manshia quarter on the lawns of Charles Clore Park, Tel Aviv.

Read More »

Hassan Beck Street on the Corner of Abu Lughud
Manshia Quarter – Charles Clore Park, Tel Aviv- Jaffa, Israel

Marking the Manshia Quarter on the lawns of Charles Clore Park and the Promenade

Ronen Eidelman

September 26 – 29, 2007
(The public is invited to join and mark with is from the morning until dark)

Project Opening Event:
September 29, Saturday Chol Hamoed Succoth, 16:00

With the help of soccer field marking equipment, Ronen Eidelman marks out the grid of streets and houses of the Manshia Quarter. The marking is done near the sea, on the border between present day Tel Aviv and Jaffa, on the grassy lawns of the Charles Clore Park, while families from Jaffa, laboring immigrants from Neve Sha’anan, students from Florentine and yuppies from Neve Tzedek sit around, play soccer and barbeque. A group of people dressed in white is practicing yoga; while brides and grooms are being photographed with the setting sun in the background.
The Manshia Quarter is buried deep beneath the grassy lawns of Charles Clore Park. It was established in the seventies of the nineteenth century as a Muslim suburban neighborhood of Jaffa. After 1948, Jewish immigrants, most of whom were Holocaust survivors, came to the quarter which had been destroyed during its occupation by Etzel. In the middle of the sixties the quarter was totally demolished and in its stead the Charles Clore Park was built.
Eidelman brings the streets and houses of Manshia up to the surface. The white lines delineate the quarter that lies under the grassy lawns of Charles Clore Park – the streets and buildings – the ghost of Manshia. The markings, made with white lines, are reminiscent of police markings at a murder scene, in this case the murder of the houses, the architectural murder, the cultural murder of Jaffa. At the same time he speaks in the language of soccer and the lawns of the park and the current use of it nowadays. The lines in the soccer field are quite clear; however they do not interfere with the traffic. Similar to the borders of the soccer field, Eidelman redefines the boundaries of the Manshia Quarter without constituting an obstacle or hindering the present day life that continues to carry on in Charles Clore Park; he only made a mark that must be taken into consideration.

In the framework of the “Autobiography of a City” project run by the Ayam Association – Understanding and Dialogue (RA) www.jaffaproject.org
With the assistance of the Tel Aviv – Jaffa Municipality’s Culture and Arts Division, Department of Arts / and the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon
Project website: www.jaffaproject.org/events