This essay draws attention to the reciprocal relationships between the cultural industries, socia... more This essay draws attention to the reciprocal relationships between the cultural industries, socially engaged art, cultural policy, and the economy of friendships. It highlights Dutch cultural imperialism and the symbiotic relationships between ruangrupa, the Van Abbemuseum, and Arts Collaboratory. I argue that documenta 15 (d15) was a showcase for DOEN Foundation (Stichting DOEN) to present its achievement to future clients and peers in cultural entrepreneurship and development industries. Thus, ruangrupa’s action should be understood as part of a broader movement that turns citizens into entrepreneurs, creation into production, and art into an industry.
This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, beg... more This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, began as a conversation with Galit Eilat at Anadiel Gallery in the summer of 2005.
City of Collision - Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism, 2006
This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, beg... more This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, began as a conversation with Galit Eilat at Anadiel Gallery in the summer of 2005.
Ilekroć wyświetlano film Artura Żmijewskiego Berek, niemal zawsze spotykał się on z gniewnym przy... more Ilekroć wyświetlano film Artura Żmijewskiego Berek, niemal zawsze spotykał się on z gniewnym przyjęciem widzów. Galit Eilat twierdzi w artykule, że kontrowersje i gniew, jakie film wywołuje, mają korzenie w sporze o przedstawianie Zagłady i o to, komu przysługuje prawo do jej reprezentowania. Tak rozpoczyna się debata, czy istnieje „właściwy” sposób pamiętania o Auschwitz, a jeśli tak, to jaki? Być może jest to jeden ze sposobów, aby zachować pamięć o Zagładzie w teraźniejszości i nie zakopywać jej w przeszłości.
The year 1961 marked the entry of the voice of the repressed Israeli “other” into the heart of th... more The year 1961 marked the entry of the voice of the repressed Israeli “other” into the heart of the local discourse upon the opening of the Eichmann Trial at Israel’s Congress Center in Jerusalem. This formative event presented to the Israeli public, for the first time, the voices of the survivors who served as witnesses. Later on, Hannah Arendt would write in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem about Eichmann’s testimony: “It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”1
The 9th Muslim Mulliqi Prize Exhibition is curated by Galit Eilat and Charles Esche. The Muslim M... more The 9th Muslim Mulliqi Prize Exhibition is curated by Galit Eilat and Charles Esche. The Muslim Mulliqi Prize is the most significant exhibition for contemporary visual arts in Kosovo and aims to be one of the most interesting contemporary art projects in southern Europe. The exhibition features 29 artists. They were selected from a national open call together with invited international artists. The concept of the exhibition began with the idea of how to reinterpret the idea of beauty using today’s social and aesthetic forms. The curators were inspired by the idea of the Kaleidoscope. The word ‘kaleidoscope’ is derived from the Greek kalos ‘beautiful’ + eidos ‘form‘ + scopeo ‘to aim or watch’ and means ‘aiming at beautiful forms.’ This ambition runs through all the works in the show, but the kaleidoscope not only aimed at beautiful forms but also produces a new, artificial idea of beauty through its fragmented images reflected through mirrors. In the beginning, the kaleidoscope was a competitor for photography and related ‘tele-views’ such as the telescope, later the camera, and eventually television that captured reality and projected it at a distance. The first produced imaginary images while the other precisely recorded what it ‘saw.’ The idea of production and fragmentation is related to the curators’ personal experiences in Kosovo. While the pressures from history and the present are evident, there is equally a real energy to produce new realities and to see beauty in the possibilities that might lie ahead. Indeed, the close historical relation between truth and beauty—the one being found in the other—inspired the choice of the title and the focus on beauty in everyday reality. As well as each person’s own perception of their own environment, there are other people that tell the stories to a wide public through the media. This is true in Kosovo, where the dramatic changes in recent years have been subjected to the harsh lens of the press. In our contemporary culture, we could speak of the media as a telekaleidoscope, a single machine that gathers, produces, projects, and fragments our view of reality at the same time. In this environment, it seems important to discover where beauty might be found outside its traditional expression, and to learn how to see and value what is in the immediate locality. This is what the individual vision of the artist can bring to the situation and help others to see what was previously invisible. The artworks in the exhibition are principally intended to be a way to understand what we might mean by ‘aiming at beautiful forms’ in the early 21st century, both here in Kosovo and further afield. In today’s art, beauty can emerge in a moment of discussion, in light falling on a suburban landscape painting, or in the movement of a hand in a video. The exhibition also responds to the transfixing visual beauty of an image of crisis or collapse that lingers even after we know the real stories behind the moment.
Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according ... more Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long
Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according ... more Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long rejection of the Arab culture that lives within and around it, as well as of the culture of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, who are perceived as inferior. The representation of the Arab has undergone numerous metamorphoses, from the pre-1948 image of an aristocrat tilling his land to the shahid (Muslim martyr) of the 2000s.
Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for... more Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for Digital Art (DAL) in Holon. Galit Eilat emphasizes that trust and sociological imagination are crucial for soft power's negotiation, as an important option amidst Palestinians' ongoing occupation and the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations. As an example of how soft power is implemented in the regional art scene, Eilat unfolds the trajectory and conditions for a chain of art events which were lead to the Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani's 'Picasso in Palestine' project. In the past decade Hourani’s Picasso in Palestine has become a symbol of art’s triumph over the Israeli limitations on culture and transportation in the Palestinian occupied territories. Eilat senses that Hourani’s project along with other soft power art initiatives that she was involved in will eventually lead the local art scene to distance itself from the glorification of the unique art object and the genius artist/curator towards a much broader sociological imagination that envisions the breaking down of barriers between the west and the rest. [Hadas Kedar]
Marjolijn Dijkman’s practice can be defined as Decoding the Coloniser’s Mind. The decoding of the... more Marjolijn Dijkman’s practice can be defined as Decoding the Coloniser’s Mind. The decoding of the coloniser’s mindset requires identifying the evolution of the Enlightenment into contemporary practices, despite the prevailing opinion among many scholars that the fall of the Nazi regime ended the Enlightenment project and the colonial reflex.
WHAT WAS HAPPENING HERE WAS NEVER NORMAL ANYWAY / Versopolis, 2020
This text is composed of the used and unused excerpts of a conversation on the video works of the... more This text is composed of the used and unused excerpts of a conversation on the video works of the artist Jelena Juresa which is deal with the psychological effects of political violence. State-supported terror and its dehumanisation policies, collective silence, and amnesia on crimes that have been inflicted on masses, and the therapeutic mechanisms of memory are among the motifs of her recent practice.
When I was asked to write about multiculturalism in the Israeli art world, I reflected on the rel... more When I was asked to write about multiculturalism in the Israeli art world, I reflected on the relation of the term "multiculturalism" to Israeli reality, and on the ways in which it is given expression in the Israeli art field. On a superficial level, one may define Israeli society as multicultural, since communities from different ethnic backgrounds have chosen or have been constrained to live under Israeli sovereignty.
This essay draws attention to the reciprocal relationships between the cultural industries, socia... more This essay draws attention to the reciprocal relationships between the cultural industries, socially engaged art, cultural policy, and the economy of friendships. It highlights Dutch cultural imperialism and the symbiotic relationships between ruangrupa, the Van Abbemuseum, and Arts Collaboratory. I argue that documenta 15 (d15) was a showcase for DOEN Foundation (Stichting DOEN) to present its achievement to future clients and peers in cultural entrepreneurship and development industries. Thus, ruangrupa’s action should be understood as part of a broader movement that turns citizens into entrepreneurs, creation into production, and art into an industry.
This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, beg... more This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, began as a conversation with Galit Eilat at Anadiel Gallery in the summer of 2005.
City of Collision - Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism, 2006
This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, beg... more This interview with the Palestinian curator Jack Persekian, conducted in person and by email, began as a conversation with Galit Eilat at Anadiel Gallery in the summer of 2005.
Ilekroć wyświetlano film Artura Żmijewskiego Berek, niemal zawsze spotykał się on z gniewnym przy... more Ilekroć wyświetlano film Artura Żmijewskiego Berek, niemal zawsze spotykał się on z gniewnym przyjęciem widzów. Galit Eilat twierdzi w artykule, że kontrowersje i gniew, jakie film wywołuje, mają korzenie w sporze o przedstawianie Zagłady i o to, komu przysługuje prawo do jej reprezentowania. Tak rozpoczyna się debata, czy istnieje „właściwy” sposób pamiętania o Auschwitz, a jeśli tak, to jaki? Być może jest to jeden ze sposobów, aby zachować pamięć o Zagładzie w teraźniejszości i nie zakopywać jej w przeszłości.
The year 1961 marked the entry of the voice of the repressed Israeli “other” into the heart of th... more The year 1961 marked the entry of the voice of the repressed Israeli “other” into the heart of the local discourse upon the opening of the Eichmann Trial at Israel’s Congress Center in Jerusalem. This formative event presented to the Israeli public, for the first time, the voices of the survivors who served as witnesses. Later on, Hannah Arendt would write in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem about Eichmann’s testimony: “It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”1
The 9th Muslim Mulliqi Prize Exhibition is curated by Galit Eilat and Charles Esche. The Muslim M... more The 9th Muslim Mulliqi Prize Exhibition is curated by Galit Eilat and Charles Esche. The Muslim Mulliqi Prize is the most significant exhibition for contemporary visual arts in Kosovo and aims to be one of the most interesting contemporary art projects in southern Europe. The exhibition features 29 artists. They were selected from a national open call together with invited international artists. The concept of the exhibition began with the idea of how to reinterpret the idea of beauty using today’s social and aesthetic forms. The curators were inspired by the idea of the Kaleidoscope. The word ‘kaleidoscope’ is derived from the Greek kalos ‘beautiful’ + eidos ‘form‘ + scopeo ‘to aim or watch’ and means ‘aiming at beautiful forms.’ This ambition runs through all the works in the show, but the kaleidoscope not only aimed at beautiful forms but also produces a new, artificial idea of beauty through its fragmented images reflected through mirrors. In the beginning, the kaleidoscope was a competitor for photography and related ‘tele-views’ such as the telescope, later the camera, and eventually television that captured reality and projected it at a distance. The first produced imaginary images while the other precisely recorded what it ‘saw.’ The idea of production and fragmentation is related to the curators’ personal experiences in Kosovo. While the pressures from history and the present are evident, there is equally a real energy to produce new realities and to see beauty in the possibilities that might lie ahead. Indeed, the close historical relation between truth and beauty—the one being found in the other—inspired the choice of the title and the focus on beauty in everyday reality. As well as each person’s own perception of their own environment, there are other people that tell the stories to a wide public through the media. This is true in Kosovo, where the dramatic changes in recent years have been subjected to the harsh lens of the press. In our contemporary culture, we could speak of the media as a telekaleidoscope, a single machine that gathers, produces, projects, and fragments our view of reality at the same time. In this environment, it seems important to discover where beauty might be found outside its traditional expression, and to learn how to see and value what is in the immediate locality. This is what the individual vision of the artist can bring to the situation and help others to see what was previously invisible. The artworks in the exhibition are principally intended to be a way to understand what we might mean by ‘aiming at beautiful forms’ in the early 21st century, both here in Kosovo and further afield. In today’s art, beauty can emerge in a moment of discussion, in light falling on a suburban landscape painting, or in the movement of a hand in a video. The exhibition also responds to the transfixing visual beauty of an image of crisis or collapse that lingers even after we know the real stories behind the moment.
Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according ... more Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long
Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according ... more Adoption of western practices (the institutional organization of the Israeli art scene according to a European structure) is supposed to reaffirm the Zionist project as having moral validity, as a bearer of the Enlightenment torch in the region, “a western island in an eastern sea” or “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Hence, we have witnessed Israeli art’s long rejection of the Arab culture that lives within and around it, as well as of the culture of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, who are perceived as inferior. The representation of the Arab has undergone numerous metamorphoses, from the pre-1948 image of an aristocrat tilling his land to the shahid (Muslim martyr) of the 2000s.
Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for... more Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for Digital Art (DAL) in Holon. Galit Eilat emphasizes that trust and sociological imagination are crucial for soft power's negotiation, as an important option amidst Palestinians' ongoing occupation and the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations. As an example of how soft power is implemented in the regional art scene, Eilat unfolds the trajectory and conditions for a chain of art events which were lead to the Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani's 'Picasso in Palestine' project. In the past decade Hourani’s Picasso in Palestine has become a symbol of art’s triumph over the Israeli limitations on culture and transportation in the Palestinian occupied territories. Eilat senses that Hourani’s project along with other soft power art initiatives that she was involved in will eventually lead the local art scene to distance itself from the glorification of the unique art object and the genius artist/curator towards a much broader sociological imagination that envisions the breaking down of barriers between the west and the rest. [Hadas Kedar]
Marjolijn Dijkman’s practice can be defined as Decoding the Coloniser’s Mind. The decoding of the... more Marjolijn Dijkman’s practice can be defined as Decoding the Coloniser’s Mind. The decoding of the coloniser’s mindset requires identifying the evolution of the Enlightenment into contemporary practices, despite the prevailing opinion among many scholars that the fall of the Nazi regime ended the Enlightenment project and the colonial reflex.
WHAT WAS HAPPENING HERE WAS NEVER NORMAL ANYWAY / Versopolis, 2020
This text is composed of the used and unused excerpts of a conversation on the video works of the... more This text is composed of the used and unused excerpts of a conversation on the video works of the artist Jelena Juresa which is deal with the psychological effects of political violence. State-supported terror and its dehumanisation policies, collective silence, and amnesia on crimes that have been inflicted on masses, and the therapeutic mechanisms of memory are among the motifs of her recent practice.
When I was asked to write about multiculturalism in the Israeli art world, I reflected on the rel... more When I was asked to write about multiculturalism in the Israeli art world, I reflected on the relation of the term "multiculturalism" to Israeli reality, and on the ways in which it is given expression in the Israeli art field. On a superficial level, one may define Israeli society as multicultural, since communities from different ethnic backgrounds have chosen or have been constrained to live under Israeli sovereignty.
The political imagination, the politics of imagination or images, social changes, and art in the ... more The political imagination, the politics of imagination or images, social changes, and art in the service of the revolution all are empty gestures, which deal with form rather than content. How are exhibitionary acts supposed to generate political imagination? Does a political imagination lead to a political act? Does an imaginary exhibition lead to a political act? The danger is to end with an imagined exhibition as a political act. Therefore, one should ask what image evokes political imagination? Or maybe it is the exhibition itself that sparks imagination? Perhaps sparking people’s imagination does not need exhibitionary gestures because images are not necessarily retinal but mental? An exhibition is a place where people look at things, and people look at people looking at things. The potentiality of an exhibition to propose social change is as a ceremony / a ritual of going to an exhibition: What is exhibited precedes the exhibitionary acts.
The publication 'Symptoms of Unresolved Conflict' is the concluding project of the 52nd October S... more The publication 'Symptoms of Unresolved Conflict' is the concluding project of the 52nd October Salon, which adopted the title of Damir Avdić’s poem, “It’s Time We Got to Know Each Other.” The 52nd October Salon is the perfect example of a project that has tried to sustain non consensual democratic processes while encountering the inability of such a democracy to exist in the socio-political sphere of present-day Serbia. By non-consensual democracy we mean conditions that allow for the existence of conflict among its members, yet still preserve a unified social and democratic nature.
Not just a mirror. Looking for the political theatre today: Performing Urgency 1, 2015
The work of the Etcétera… collective oscillates between theatre, visual arts, and activist street... more The work of the Etcétera… collective oscillates between theatre, visual arts, and activist street actions, continuing a tradition of participatory art that has evolved in Buenos Aires since the mid-1960s under the inspiration of Oscar Masotta and the Ciclo de Arte Experimental (Cycle of Experimental Art, 1968), fusing artistic practice with leftist politics. Their recent works employ the theatrical methods developed by Brazilian director Augusto Boal during his Argentinian exile in the 1970s as well as the work of León Ferrari. While originally unconnected, the two older artists shared similar artistic strategies: using real life as raw material to politicize whatever found its way into their works.
I I Can’t Work Like This | A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art, 2017
In recent years, artists and curators have often been confronted with the political dilemma of en... more In recent years, artists and curators have often been confronted with the political dilemma of engagement or disengagement. The ideological, economic, or ethically objectionable circumstances of certain biennials and art exhibitions have raised the question of whether to continue and, if so, under what circumstances, with what consequences, and to what ends? From 2013 to 2015, biennials in Istanbul, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and São Paulo demonstrated that curating and art production can’t just carry on as if nothing had happened.
This reader is the result of Joanna Warsza’s course at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. It examines four recent cases of boycotts, presenting their political, ideological, and economic contexts, timelines, statements, as well as interviews with parties involved. It reflects on how certain biennials became the place where the power of art is renegotiated and why one simply “can’t work like this.”
The catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Short Memory', held in The Center ... more The catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Short Memory', held in The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv and at P.S.1 MoMA, NY. The publication includes stills of 'Wild Seeds', 'A Declaration', 'Mary Koszmary', 'Summer Camp', 'Kings Of The Hill', 'Trembling Time', 'Sirens' Song', 'Profile', 'Low Relief', 'When Adar Enters', 'You Could Be Lucky', and 'Freedom Border'.
Two Minutes of Standstill. A collective performance by Yael Bartana , 2014
Inspired by the Israeli memorial day Yom HaShoah, the holiday that commemorates victims and resis... more Inspired by the Israeli memorial day Yom HaShoah, the holiday that commemorates victims and resistance fighters of the Holocaust, Yael Bartana’s Two Minutes of Standstill took place on June 28, 2013, at 11 a.m., as part of the Impulse Theater Biennale in the city of Cologne. A symbolic interruption of everyday life, Two Minutes of Standstill was a political act, a social sculpture, and a collective performance. Historically, the act of a silent standstill is a way to commemorate the dead. Bartana’s artwork, however, also calls for a reflection on the present. During the preparation for the performance a range of reactions occurred that were both positive and critical. What does the specific way this history is told in Germany tell us about the country today? And why did Bartana’s performance provoke such strong reactions?
This catalogue is a documentation of Two Minutes of Standstill, revealing the ideas behind the work and the process that led to its realization. The book includes several essays that discuss possible interpretations and consequences of the artwork, questioning the role of history and commemoration in Germany today.
A voyage within the home of a gynaecologist who died. The heroine – a girl in a flower costume – ... more A voyage within the home of a gynaecologist who died. The heroine – a girl in a flower costume – moves around her house, searching for her roots. While she is scanning the furniture, medical equipment, books and other articles, some of the objects come alive and reveal hidden details about her life. Exhibition Catalogue | Graphic Design by Michal Sahar
Catalogue, 16 pages, FRAC Pays de la Loire/F, 2012
Includes 'You Are A Cannon', essay by Galit Ei... more Catalogue, 16 pages, FRAC Pays de la Loire/F, 2012 Includes 'You Are A Cannon', essay by Galit Eilat in Hebrew, Arabic, English and French.
Published in conjunction with Antonis Pittas’s exhibition at Hordaland Art Centre, in Bergen, Roa... more Published in conjunction with Antonis Pittas’s exhibition at Hordaland Art Centre, in Bergen, Road to Victory is a conceptual publication that extends Pittas’s artistic practice as well as an anthology of essays reflecting on his work and its various contexts. Together the book and exhibition present an artist-initiated re-reading of the seminal work of exhibition designer, Herbert Bayer, whose 1942 exhibition Road to Victory at the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented a highly aestheticised and celebratory representation of the American involvement in the Second World War.
It doesn’t always have to be beautiful, unless it’s beautiful. Muslim Mulliqi Prize International... more It doesn’t always have to be beautiful, unless it’s beautiful. Muslim Mulliqi Prize International Exhibition 2012 / 9th Edition. National Gallery of Kosovo. The exhibition features 29 artists. Which were elected from a local open call and invited international artists. The concept of the exhibition began with the idea of how to reinterpret the idea of beauty using today’s social and aesthetic forms.
This book is a reader of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2012) and a manifesto.
... more This book is a reader of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2012) and a manifesto.
Artur Zmijewski writes in his foreword: ‘This publication is a report on the process of arriving at real action within culture, at an artistic pragmatism. What interested us were concrete activities leading to visible effects. We were interested in finding answers, not asking questions. We were interested in situations in which solutions are implemented responsibly. We were interested neither in preserving artistic immunity nor distancing ourselves from society. We consider politics to be among the most complex and difficult of human activities. We met artists, activists, and politicians who engage in substantive politics through art. The book is the result of our encounters with those people.’
The Leni and Herbert Sonnenfeld Collection of photographs and negatives, donated to the Beth Hate... more The Leni and Herbert Sonnenfeld Collection of photographs and negatives, donated to the Beth Hatefutsoth collection, recounts the story of the Jewish people in the 20th century. The tens of thousands of photographs taken by the couple encompass a vast spectrum of experiences throughout the Jewish world, from Germany, where they began their career, through the United States of America where they immigrated in 1939, to Eretz–Israel and many Jewish communities the world over which they visited and documented on film. The concept underlying the exhibition Never Looked Better —introducing a current reading of Leni and Herbert Sonnenfeld’s unique vision by contemporary artists — poses a challenge of exploration to the Israeli audience, compelling viewers to look through and beyond the visible image. The interpretations offered by artists Yael Bartana, Michael Blum, Ilya Rabinovich, Yochai Avrahami, Yossi Attia and Itamar Rose are innovative and variegated, offering the viewer the excitement and thrill experienced by the Sonnenfelds as they witnessed the actual events or participated in them, in real time.
These letters are ghost-written by Galit Eilat, and are imagined as a conversation between artist... more These letters are ghost-written by Galit Eilat, and are imagined as a conversation between artist Yael Bartana and the notorious Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger (1880–1903). Weininger committed suicide at a young age, having renounced his Jewish identity in favor of Christianity. His publication Sex and Character was influential, particularly after his death, and renowned (1903) for its misogyny and anti-Semitism.
These letters written for 9 Artists catalogue, (Walker Art Center) each artist has contributed a 16-page artist's book exploring some aspect of their practice, often in collaboration with other artists, writers, or designers. Some contributions are purely visual; others entirely textual, ranging from new essays to ghostwritten letters, cease and desist orders, and cinematic diaries. An accompanying compendium of works provides a visual journey through past projects and ephemera, setting up an associative conversation between the artists' works. Additionally, exhibition curator Bartholomew Ryan's essay weaves together their various approaches, placing them in the context of broader contemporary art practice and the complex world we inhabit. As each artist has developed strong networks of collaborators, the volume is anticipated as a means to promote and create dialogue between the participants and their respective communities.
The publication A Cookbook for Political Imagination accompanies Yael Bartana’s exhibition “… and... more The publication A Cookbook for Political Imagination accompanies Yael Bartana’s exhibition “… and Europe will be stunned” for the Polish Pavilion at the 54th Biennale of Art in Venice. This is not a traditional exhibition catalogue but rather a manual of political instructions and recipes, delivered by more than forty international authors. Covering a broad spectrum of themes, the cookbook comprises manifestos, artistic contributions, fictional stories to elements of visual identity, food recipes, social advice and guidance for members of the movement. It is the first book published under the auspices of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, and has been edited by the curators of the exhibition, Sebastian Cichocki and Galit Eilat, and designed by Guy Saggee from Shual Studio (Tel Aviv).
Contributions by: Gish Amit, Yazid Anani, Ariella Azoulay, Marek Beylin, Achim Borchardt-Hume, Andrea Geyer, Anka Grupinska, Mika Hannula, Daniel Hendrickson, Rafal Jakubowicz, Wam Kat, Yuval Kremnitzer, Renzo Martens, Oliver Ressler, Sarah Rifky, Lia Perjovschi, Stefanie Peter & Phillipp Goll, Avi Pitchon, Chantal Pontbriand, Ila Ben Porat, Steven ten Thije, James Trainor, WHW, and others.
Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for... more Summing up for the first time a decade-long of activity started in 2004 in the Israeli Center for Digital Art (DAL) in Holon. Galit Eilat emphasizes that trust and sociological imagination are crucial for soft power's negotiation, as an important option amidst Palestinians' ongoing occupation and the conflict between Israel and the Arab nations. As an example of how soft power is implemented in the regional art scene, Eilat unfolds the trajectory and conditions for a chain of art events which were lead to the Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani's 'Picasso in Palestine' project. In the past decade Hourani’s Picasso in Palestine has become a symbol of art’s triumph over the Israeli limitations on culture and transportation in the Palestinian occupied territories. Eilat senses that Hourani’s project along with other soft power art initiatives that she was involved in will eventually lead the local art scene to distance itself from the glorification of the unique art object and the genius artist/curator towards a much broader sociological imagination that envisions the breaking down of barriers between the west and the rest. [Hadas Kedar]
Good Museums Copy, Great Museums Steal' reveals how misleading myths are perpetuated in instituti... more Good Museums Copy, Great Museums Steal' reveals how misleading myths are perpetuated in institutional narratives and used by cultural leaders for personal glorification. The abuse of power and moral harassment rely on cultural and social legitimacy, and cannot be eliminated as long as they are not defined as offenses in the written law.
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Papers by Galit Eilat
This reader is the result of Joanna Warsza’s course at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. It examines four recent cases of boycotts, presenting their political, ideological, and economic contexts, timelines, statements, as well as interviews with parties involved. It reflects on how certain biennials became the place where the power of art is renegotiated and why one simply “can’t work like this.”
This catalogue is a documentation of Two Minutes of Standstill, revealing the ideas behind the work and the process that led to its realization. The book includes several essays that discuss possible interpretations and consequences of the artwork, questioning the role of history and commemoration in Germany today.
English, Hebrew 2007
Includes 'You Are A Cannon', essay by Galit Eilat in Hebrew, Arabic, English and French.
Artur Zmijewski writes in his foreword: ‘This publication is a report on the process of arriving at real action within culture, at an artistic pragmatism. What interested us were concrete activities leading to visible effects. We were interested in finding answers, not asking questions. We were interested in situations in which solutions are implemented responsibly. We were interested neither in preserving artistic immunity nor distancing ourselves from society. We consider politics to be among the most complex and difficult of human activities. We met artists, activists, and politicians who engage in substantive politics through art. The book is the result of our encounters with those people.’
The concept underlying the exhibition Never Looked Better —introducing a current reading of Leni and Herbert Sonnenfeld’s unique vision by contemporary artists — poses a challenge of exploration to the Israeli audience, compelling viewers to look through and beyond the visible image. The interpretations offered by artists Yael Bartana, Michael Blum, Ilya Rabinovich, Yochai Avrahami, Yossi Attia and Itamar Rose are innovative and variegated, offering the viewer the excitement and thrill experienced by the Sonnenfelds as they witnessed the actual events or participated in them, in real time.
These letters written for 9 Artists catalogue, (Walker Art Center) each artist has contributed a 16-page artist's book exploring some aspect of their practice, often in collaboration with other artists, writers, or designers. Some contributions are purely visual; others entirely textual, ranging from new essays to ghostwritten letters, cease and desist orders, and cinematic diaries. An accompanying compendium of works provides a visual journey through past projects and ephemera, setting up an associative conversation between the artists' works. Additionally, exhibition curator Bartholomew Ryan's essay weaves together their various approaches, placing them in the context of broader contemporary art practice and the complex world we inhabit. As each artist has developed strong networks of collaborators, the volume is anticipated as a means to promote and create dialogue between the participants and their respective communities.
Contributions by: Gish Amit, Yazid Anani, Ariella Azoulay, Marek Beylin, Achim Borchardt-Hume, Andrea Geyer, Anka Grupinska, Mika Hannula, Daniel Hendrickson, Rafal Jakubowicz, Wam Kat, Yuval Kremnitzer, Renzo Martens, Oliver Ressler, Sarah Rifky, Lia Perjovschi, Stefanie Peter & Phillipp Goll, Avi Pitchon, Chantal Pontbriand, Ila Ben Porat, Steven ten Thije, James Trainor, WHW, and others.