Mondays at the Center – May

All lectures are brought to you in association with the Curatorial Studies Program of the Kibbutzim College of Education

Erez Israeli

Jewish Lesson

Monday 2.5 at 10:00

In this second meeting with the artist, Israeli will mainly discuss his works from the past two years, with the particular emphasis on his exhibition “Friday Night” (Givon Art Gallery, 2009). This exhibition marks a turning point in Israelis main themes; from death and grief in the context of the Israeli military, into dealing with these themes in the context of Germany, Europe and the Holocaust. This exhibition was the base for his solo exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Shortlisted Artists, Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation the Israeli Art Prize 2009) – Curing. During his lecture Israeli will screen his work “Burn” for the first time, this work was originally supposed to be included in the “Curing” exhibition, but due to its difficult content was left out of the final structure of the exhibition. Israeli will also address the difficulties of creating a work for the exhibition dedicated to the memory of Gideon Gechtman, and will discuss the process of creating a statue for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Erez Israeli is a sculpture and an installation and video artist, a Beit Berl College graduate, and a graduate of the Bezalel Academy (MFA). He teaches in the Kibbutzim College of Education as well as other academic institutions. Israeli exhibited in all the important museums in Israel as well as many museums in Europe, such as The Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, the 10th International Architecture Biennale, Venice, Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome, and many more.

Yair Barak  Photography and Memory Problems

Monday 16.5 at 20:00

Barak will present a selection of works and will address the complicated relationship between photography and history, and between culture and the representation of it.

Yair Barak studied architecture at the Bezalel Academy, photography at the Camera Obscura school, and is a graduate of Bard College (MFA).  Barak is the head of the Photography department in the Minshar School of Art.

Msako Toda and Dr. Ayelet Zohar

Exhibiting Family, Displaying Death: Funerary Images in Contemporary Japanese Photography

Monday 23.5 at 20:00

In her presentation, Masako Toda focuses on the practice of funeral photo-portraiture (i-ei) in Japan, and its interpretation by contemporary photographers. Although it is a widespread custom to display i-ei—a portrait photograph of the deceased—its origin are a mystery. Until the end of the Meiji period, the contemporary style of displaying i-ei was to hang the black-framed photograph tied with a black ribbon on the top of a coffin.

Although no photograph is an i-ei per se—since every photographic portrait can become i-ei—some people prepare a portrait for use as i-ei advance. However, at the point of preparation, the photo is no more than a simple portrait. A photo becomes i-ei only at the time of one’s death. Photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, also known as “Genius Ararky,” had himself photographed while dangling his wife’s i-ei at her funeral. He hand-picked his favorite photograph of his wife Yoko as a young woman for her i-ei from a stack of her portraits. This fact shows that every portrait photograph, even when taken at the most lively moment, is shadowed by a mood of death. A photograph is essentially a foreshadowing of death even if it was taken at the very moment of one’s birth.

Masako Toda earned a B.A. in journalism at Sophia University in 1999, and a Master’s degree in literature at Tokyo University in 2006. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Cultural Resource Studies at Tokyo University and lectures at Musashino Art University and Tokyo College of Photography. She specializes in the history of Japanese photography in the modern age. Her research focus is on a discourse on modern photography and war photographs. The title of her in-progress doctoral dissertation is “a study of the modern photography movement in Japan during the Asian Pacific War”. She was co-author of 101 people of Japanese photographers published in 2008, and worked in collaboration with Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography to curate the exhibit “Press Photographers’ Story” in 2009.

Joseph Sprinzak – Art, text, sound Voice, disruption of language, disruption of origin

Monday 30.5 at 20:00

The art of sound text is an artistic tradition of a hundred years of usage of voice and speech as a material for art works which is placed between art performance and music. During his lecture, Sprinzak will introduce us to the media while giving examples from his own work.

Joseph Sprinzak is a sound artist and performer, one of the first sound artists in Israel. Sprinzak recently finished his PHD about the poetic aspects of the art of sound text in the University of Ben Gurion.

Entrance  10 NIS

Free entrance for friends of the CCA