Ronen.Dvarim — Deuteronomy – projects, pictures and words

I’m will be giving a talk, a workshop and participating at a symposium and artist summer camp in Pärnu, Estonia. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by.

Symptoms of nationalism and critique of nationalism in the practice of
contemporary art

Date: July 11, 2008
Venue: Pärnu Artists’ House, Nikolai 27, Pärnu, Estonia
Info: www.publicpreparation.org

An international seminar in the series of “Public Preparation” events concentrating on the relations of contemporary art and nationalism in different places of the world.

The summer seminar furthers the current agenda of the “Public Preparation” project, continuing the thinking camp “Exercises on Adhocray” that took place in July 2007 and dealt with self-organisation and grassroots democracy in the field of contemporary art; it also follows discussions and debates from the international seminar “Translocal Express. Jubilee Edition” which addressed the growing tendencies of nationalism on Eastern borders of Europe (from Helsinki to Istanbul) and its relation to contemporary art. Let’s not forget, that during this year many European nation states celebrate its 90th anniversary — these celebrations provide a vivid and indicative context to inspect and rethink the idea of nation and nation state but also the role of art in these ideological constructions.

In the upcoming seminar a number of contemporary art professionals –artists, curators and art historians — will give a comprehensive insight into the art scenes and dominant mentalities in the social realities they are active in. The aim of the seminar is to get an overview about diverse cultural and artistic situations from the perspective of national values. The series of inputs could become a ground from which to continue with comparative analyses, mapping and examining of similarities and differences.

Presentations by Kendra Ballingall (Winnipeg), Remco de Blaaij (Eindhoven), Övül Durmusoglu (Istanbul/Vienna), Ronen Eidelman (Tel Aviv/Weimar), Eva Fotiadi (Amsterdam), Erden Kosova (Istanbul), Johannes Paul Rather (Berlin), Sára Stenczer (Budapest/Paris), and Tamara Zlobina (Kiev), moderated by Rael Artel (Pärnu).

Detailed programme is published at www.publicpreparation.org

The seminar language is English.
For better management please register at info(at)publicpreparation.org

If you are in Amsterdam please come, and tell friends that you think will be interested. The video can been viewed on http://www.visualcorrespondents.com from the 15.04.08. Their will also be a nice small interview with me. check it out!

For those of you who read dutch, the video and texts: volkskrant.nl/oog

Visual Foreign Correspondents hereby invites you to come to the launch of the sixth issue during the Globalised Crystal Ball, the international debating program in de Balie Amsterdam On the 15th April 2008

In the old town of Weimar, Ronen Eidelman built an armoured jeep, commonly used by the Israeli border police (magav). A closer look betrays that it is a two-dimensional model, a fake, similar to the historic buildings of Weimar, which through historical manipulations try to recreate the town as the romantic Disneyland of the East, devoid of its questionable World War II past. Like the touristy postcard perfection of Weimar, the ubiquity of security and control mechanisms works as a façade. Both function as cover-ups for what is really underneath….

Ronen is an artist, writer and activist. He has participated in many self-organized exhibitions and festivals, founded and edited over five cultural, art and political journals/magazines and produced many events linking art, culture and grassroots politics. For the past ten years Ronen has been active in anti-occupation and anti-capitalist direct action groups.

The Globalised Crystal Ball #6
The Military-Strategic Future Predicted

In 2004 the United Nations published A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, which advised the international community how to tackle common threats. The report suggests that it is time for a new security consensus, one in which “we all share responsibility for each other’s security. And the test of that consensus will be action”.

Speakers are:
Thomas P.M. Barnett is senior Managing Director at Enterra Solutions.
Andrew Small works for the German Marshall Fund in Brussels since 2006 as the co-ordinator of work on China and transatlantic relations.
Awil Mohamoud is a political scientist and the founding director of SAHAN research & advice bureau.

http://www.debalie.nl/

Location
De Balie
Klein Gartmanplantsoen 10
Amsterdam
Tuesday the 15th of April at 20.00

I’m back in Weimar after almost two months in Israel. It was a good visit but I’m happy to be back in Wimar and start the next semester.

On Thursday (12.04.07) I’m traveling to Hamburg to give a talk at the Kunstverein (Klosterwall 23, 20095 Hamburg www.kunstverein.de). The Talk is at 19:00 will be in English and in think it is for free.

The evening is titled: ART AND ACTIVISM IN ISRAEL
In my talk that I named, ‘The separation wall in Palestine. Artists love to hate it’, I will speak about different projects dealing with the separation wall in Palestine. I will raise try to raise many questions on how should artists, activist and artist who are activist relate to this significantly life altering project? I will look at how practices of art are used; on the one hand to reduce the damages of the Wall, or on the other hand attempts to raise awareness to its harms of and the political struggle against it? I will also explore if art could have any positive role in this political construction project? And why are so many artists attracted to do work on this Wall?

Afterwards the free radio group Ligna and Simon Wachsmuth (artist) will present art works which they realized for Liminal Spaces, an exhibition-project in Leipzig, Ramallah and Holon.

Here is the text written by Eva Birkenstock of the Kunstverein:

In a country which has not yet been, and perhaps never will be, freed from the policies of emergency, military zones are fluid and can be created within minutes; whomever demonstrates or operates on the margins knows that military zones are created with the same swiftness in which emergency laws are constituted. The way in which the I.D.F. prevents demonstrations or civil disobedience is by declaring a civilian area a closed military zone. A closed military zone can be any place within Israeli occupied territory to which the army wants to deny access to civilians. Thus groups of activists are arrested on their way to demonstrations or dialogues with Palestinians. Demonstrations are diffused prematurely, nipped in the bud, due to the army or the boarder police’s use of anti-demonstration tactics.

A new generation of artists has ensued that fights for social justice and believes art is not simply a mirror for society but that it can elicit social change. Such artists or artist collectives operate beyond the field of representation, in a more radical space where law is suspended and where art can operate between the metaphorical (or allegorical) and the concrete and thus disrupt the state of emergency’s enforcement.

The conference went well. Not many people came, which is a pity because the talks and presentation were really good and interesting. I feel bad that I did not make more of an effort to let people know about the conference. Hopefully we will gather the presentations and papers and make them public via web or maybe even print soon.
One of the advantages of inviting serious bloggers to an event that one organizes is that they blog about the event. So instead of me trying to write on what happened I could just link to the people who are doing a much better job in summarizing than I am.

Jan Schmidt in Bamblog writes in English a good overview of the conference. Thanks! Day 1, Day 2.

DonAlphonso, one of Germanys leading bloggers wrote in “Blogs!” that the conference was “Die bisher beste Konferenz”, which in English is, “the best conference”. So if you read German (or could deal with Google translate) you could read how much he loved it. Also like many bloggers he has more than on blog, so you could read more impressions about Isreal in GT blog (German).

From left: Ari Rath, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Ronen Eidelman (photo: Jan Schmidt)

I’m back in Israel and it’s nice to be home. It’s great to see family and friends and the weather is just amazing.

One of the reasons i came now to is real was because of the conference Boundaries of free Speech: German and Israeli Journalism and Growing Rifts Between the “West” and the “Muslim World” which I’m one of the main organizers.

The workshop aims to examine the boundaries of free speech in Israeli and German media, in connection with their role in the growing divide between the so-called “West“ and the Muslim world. After the debate about the Danish cartoons ridiculing Islam we want to ask: Is there really freedom of speech in western media as has been self-righteously claimed by the western world? As the media participates in the shaping of symbols that impart meaning for how we perceive current events, there are old and new forms of restrictions and other opinion-shaping mechanisms in each country. We want to explore them through recent events like the Lebanon war, Holocaust denial in the Iranian and Danish cartoon debate.

My main contribution (besides designing the program and flyer) was to bring to the conference the aspect of the alternative media; web blogs, cartoons and also new technology. Here are a few words from the introduction I will give on Wednesday morning:

When talking today about media and it boundaries we also have to look at of all aspects of public opinion shaping through media. The new widespread use of internet tools, particularly blog systems, has expanded and changed the way we receive and react to information and opinions. It is important that we raise these questions of boundaries with the full understanding of these alternative ways of media; the technology, the way it’s used and misused, and the different formats and mediums. Through this understanding we will look at the current debates and conflicts and the new ways of distribution of ideas and criticism. This will raise many questions, about authority, censorship, restrictions and borders and we hopefully we will examine how this is changing journalism today.

Click here for the program

press picture to see clearly