Exit Strategies- אסטרטגיות יציאה

Exit Strategies was an art event held through the 28th to the 30th of May in Tel Aviv.

In this project, the city of Tel Aviv hosted several art events, performance pieces and exhibitions by sixty artists, all of which were located outside, in the open streets, parks and even projected upon buildings of the city.

I would like to write down some of my own (non-academic) thoughts regarding this interesting project.
Official site of the project: https://www.exitstrategies.info/

The art world took a hard hit as well as many areas in Israel due to the COVID-19 situation. Museums and galleries were closed, and most people had to remain quarantined. One might think that the name of this special art project means the "exit strategies" that the government was trying to implement during the end of May, meaning discussions and plans of exiting the current COVID-19 situation and the lockdown. One might suppose that the art world wanted both to show to the world that it held its head high during this difficult period and did not give up as well as to celebrate the occasion of reopening of the cultural sphere in Israel.

However, this particular name has another meaning. In the business world, an exit strategy is a planned approach to relinquishing ownership or terminating a situation that will either maximize benefit or minimize damage (link). Therefore, it is interesting to think about this project as criticizing the way the government has used and is using the COVID-19 situation to its own political, time sensitive benefits, or trying to minimize irreversible damage already done to the country's economy while implementing gaslighting.

I have decided to go to my favourite artists projects, including:

• Dede's Bandaid Lottery booth.
• Nitzan Mintz's neighborhood junction mirror sign.
• Sigalit Landau's "Fountain" piece.

First: Dede's Bandaid Lottery Booth

Nitzan Mintz (one of my favourite modern street-poetry artists, and Dede's partner), was sitting in the booth and giving out the tickets to the participants.

I was asked to pick out a number, so I decided upon 253 as I think 2 is such an elegant swan-like number, while 5 has always been one of my favourites and for 3 I also have some unexplained affection. She said she will call the winner at the end of the day (as I visited on the last day of this project).

Unfortunately, I did not win! However, I have the ticket and the memory associated with it... as well as a lovely tin box, which was given to participants, designed with Dede's iconic bandaids.

This was an interesting concept. Dede's bandaids symbolism  always felt like covering or "putting a bandaid" on the identity related and political problems of living in Israel. The concept of putting a bandaid on a wound does not cure a wound, it only makes it less visible to others, which at times, can feel like the logic which the Israeli society applies to its issues. That being said, band-aids are still a form of caring, and I feel that Dede, while obviously criticizing the way in which politics and identity formation works in Israel, is still very caring and gentle towards this war-ridden, male and military dominated Israeli society.

In this specific project the element of the lottery booth was added. The orange and blue lottery booths are a very common sight in Israel and can be seen on almost every street. It seems that the lottery is rather popular and has a strong presence in Israeli minds. Perhaps it is this game of chance and risk, which, for a nation whose future is always in the fog, captivates the mind. 

Dede's booth duplicated this kind of "But what if I win" mentality, and while in actuality the winner wins one of Dede's works, symbolically, the winner wins just another bandaid to cover, but not to cure its wounds.

Second: Nitzan Mintz's neighborhood junction mirror sign

"The heart pushes roofs towards the sun."

The first time I saw one of Mintz's poems, it was on an old building in the Florentine neighborhood in Tel Aviv, and I completely fell in love with it. 

This sign is located at the junction of  three Tel Avivian neighborhoods: Florentin, Neve Tzedek and Noga. Mintz writes that the base for the sign was actually an abandoned "skeleton" of a sign that was just left there (Mintz and Dede also work with abandoned places and found objects). 

Mintz writes that this glittery sign changes depending on the light and the passing vehicles (link).Mintz herself was actually born in Neve Tzedek while her and Dede's previous studio was once located in Florentine (perhaps the new one is there as well! It is a secret). 

The three neighborhoods mentioned above have a thing in common (beside this junction).

They all were, once, rather unattractive, poverty ridden places (in case of Neve Tzedek and Florentine) and areas of grey industrial shops and garages (in case of Noga), while nowdays all three are identified with artists and art studios.

Elegantly placed, but seeming kind of out of place, the glittery sign was put on an old decaying skeleton of a previous long gone sign just like the shiny upgrade those neighborhood got, although their history as troubled places remains.

The feeling of a heart pushing through the roof however, is ultimately a message of both hope and despair. Hope, if you take it as a motivational message, and despair, if the heart became too big for its own good, and breaks through the safety of the home, leaving it exposed.

Third: Sigalit Landau's "Fountain" piece

It is very much like Landau to take rusting faucets and turn them into a fountain piece! 

In a Duchamp-like manner, Landau creates a functioning, rather large and impressive fountain, near the Har-El gallery in Jaffa.

Themes of time and pain are still very much present in this seemingly unrelated work.

The "fountain" is, as expected, not very aesthetically pleasing, made of old, rusty water pipes and faucets, with water leaking from them in both a chaotic and organized manner.

This urban looking piece seems like it could have come not only from a poverty stricken neighborhood, but from a post-apocalyptic future (past?). While water is usually a symbol of life, we shouldn't be conceited and think that it is necessarily the life of humanity. This place is more of a space where humanity left its traces in old, molding pipelines (where still, although industrial and dirty, some nostalgic beauty can be found) while nature has taken over and is continuing its eternal reign.

Thank you for reading,

Alisa N.