Editor’s Note 

Critical Situation

The title of this current issue of Maakaf is Critical Situation, but it doesn’t deal with it,

at least not in a direct manner. It’s not for the lack of plays, dance shows, performances,

and other artistic endeavors concerning the Israeli reality. On the contrary: Niv Sheinfeld 

and Oren Laor in their new work Ship of Fools, Ido Bornstein and Shlomo Plesner intheir work Dogs, Muslala group, Irina Birger, Maria Pomiansky, and Masha Rubin 

in their group exhibition 3 for 10  - to name only a few of the artists dealing with the

subject in their current processes. And so this issue isn’t looking at the ways in which

contemporary artistic projects handle “the situation” but rather at the relationship between the performing arts and reality, between aesthetics and politics in its broader

sense.

The writers in this issue carry on a long philosophical tradition of dealing with thisrelationship between the aesthetic and the political. It could even be traced back to

Plato’s  Politeia, and his position in regards to the space the arts occupy within the ideal

state he had imagined, but the bulk of the essays in this issue rely on contemporarycritical dialogue.

In Marxism for example, arts are considered to be a part of the ideological struggle, in the

sense that they support, or challenge the fundamental value of a given society. And thus,for the Marxist, the value of art is defined according to its political value. At the basis of

this ideology is the assumption that art has a real and long-lasting effect on the various

aspects of life, including its cultural and material aspects, and it plays an active role inchanges taking place in the real world. It seems that a similar approach is taken byDana

Yahalomi, who is speaking with Tamuz Binshtok  on the work of Public Movement . The

group, founded by Omer Krieger and Yahalomi herself, is interested in “the political

and aesthetic possibilities inherent in a group of people working together”. 

Since November 2006 Public Movement  “studies and creates choreographies of the

 public, shapes of social order, public and hidden ceremonies occurring in the public

sphere”.

A critical approach to the Marxist point of view, that claims that the value of an art work

is defined by its relationship with political and social ideas, meaning on a criteria which

is essentially a non-aesthetic critique, were outlined by philosopher and sociologistHerbert Marcuse; Marcuse recognizes art as the container of its own revolutionary

 potential, which is derived from its aesthetics and form –  meaning, each artwork acts as a

subversive force against perception and understanding, denunciation of institutionalizedreality, as the appearance of the liberating figure. Art –  being the manifestation of the

aesthetic –  stands to renounce the given reality. On the other hand, since it inhabits the

realm of the aesthetic, it doesn’t posses the power to become an active force in the

context of the material, utilitarian reality. It’s essentially a perception of art as adichotomized, dual ideology: the one who is embedded in, and subservient of, the nature

of the oppressive civilization, and at the same time rebels against it and in doing so

exposes potential possibilities of liberation. The essence of art, and of the aesthetic ingeneral is reliant on seconds of affirmation and negation.

 

 

Hillel Kogan casts doubt on the possibility of art to exist only in its aesthetic

manifestation. Through discussing abstract art, music, painting and dance, Koganexplores the possibility of art that isn’t political. 

The French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, who any debate on politics and art cannottake place without mentioning his book Le Partage du sensible: Esthetique et Politique,

asserts that: “aesthetics and politics refer to the same thing –  the division of the

 perceived, the schematic nature of our perception, our framework, the direction of the

situation, our perception and understanding of it, our delineation of space and time, theways in which we experience togetherness, to situations of being here or there, in the

middle of something or before we begin…I believe that this is the subject of art, the

aesthetics. And in that context I said that there’s the politics of aesthetics, but also theaesthetics of politics” (freehand translation). That is not to say that every expression of

art is also necessarily a political act of sorts. Ranciere himself points at the idea of art

 being able to make politics is overrated, if not unrealistic. A performance doesn’t result inan immediate effect of fracture. However, it may offer (not just) information but also

what Ranciere calls “displacement of perception”, and thus contribute to the creation of

 political sensitivity. In other words, artists create different forms of small communities in

which they try new ways of perception, experience re-framing of data and looking atdifferent impressions of the world. Noam Segal agrees with Ranciere and wishes to

examine how different artists create “epistemology of visibility” and help the creation of

 political imagination within the communities in which they present their work. In heressay, Segal wishes to explore the relationship between artifacts created by artists, the

ways in which the audience view and participate, and the political responses that follow.

Boris Groys also points at the liberating aspect of performance art, despite the fact it

often gets overlooked. According to Groys, contemporary art encourages the audience to

contemplate the space around them, and their community with which they share the

viewing experience, and in his words: “art today, in its formal structure, is social and political, because it considers the gathering of a group of people in a public space, and the

creation of a community –  an independent reflexive process that isn’t bound in the

existence or nonexistence of a political message by a certain artist. This approach is present in a conversation between Ehud Darash, Assaf Aharonson, and Gilad Ben Ari,

facilitated by Lee Meir, in lieu of this issue’s Flies on The Wall . These young dance

makers are partaking in the 2011 Dance Arena Festival , centering on the topic ofresponse to reality, under the artistic directorship of Arkadi Zaides and Anat Danieli.

In his book, The Power of Art , Groys responds to the comparison between art and terror.

It is, of course, the same discourse involving Baudrillard, Z’iz’ek and others; only Groys

offers a slightly different point of view. The terrorist, in his mind, is an iconophile. His purpose is to construct powerful images that we perceive as “real”, as “iconic” of the

 political reality, immune to criticism of their representation. While many other theorists

 perceive these images as a return to the real, a visual proof of the end of criticism ofimagery, to Groys they represent the universally agreed imagery of the political sublime.

 

In Groys’ opinion we now witness not the return of the real, but of the political sublime;

nowadays all the political forces of the world are involved in the manufacturing of a

heightened political sublime –  by competing on the creation of the strongest image, themost powerful and terrifying one. To him, the most necessary criticism on representation

today, is threefold: “one that will analyze the usage of such imagery of violence as the

new icons of the political sublime; one that will analyze the struggle around winning the

symbolic status; that will analyze the commercial value of the strong imagery”. In hismind, an artistic context is perfect for this sort of criticism, which also seems to be the

one off ered in Yasmeen Godder’s Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder  discussed in this

issue. Godder describes how those representations of the political reality served as a basis

for her research and creative processes, and how their future re-presentation is used toinstigate discussion and raise critical questions.

Michael Kelly points at the fact that from the moment art became autonomous (separatefrom state), and ironically, because of its lack of dependency on state politics, it has

assumed a new role, a kind of moral weapon for public criticism, often against the state

itself. Dor Guez, in a photographic series from his exhibition Al Ludd , wishes to bring tothe public sphere the discussion around the forgetting of the old city of Lod, which is in

effect, the Palestinian Al Ludd. His photographs seek to bring attention to the gap that

exists between history and memory, as a part of the political struggle on the very images

that constitute these terms.

Sharon Aronson-Lehavi’s essay deals with the theoretical question of the possibility of

representation of the situation in drama. In the essay Aronson-Lehavi doesn’t dealdirectly with the Israeli (or non-Israeli) reality, and leaves it to the readers to make the

connections. It can also be argued that Maria Irene Fornes, whose work sits at the core of

Aronson-Lehavi’s analysis, presents in her unique way, values and positions which can

 be adopted or negated, without doing it directly in the context of ex-diagetic reality.And while thinking of this ex-diagetic reality, in this issue’s Biilboard section, readers

will be able to find information on Israel-based artistic-social-political platforms, relevant

international websites as well as the usual information on schools, festivals, residencies,

competitions and collaborative opportunities.

To summarize, since Maakaf set itself up as a platform for discussion, and in the

necessary shift from theory to practice in the real world, I invite you, the readers, to aconference initiated by the magazine committee, in conjunction with Dance Arena

 Festival  and the Israeli Choreographers Association. The details for the conference are at

the bottom of this page.

Ran Brown