Call for Artists and Humanities Scholars for a Residency in Sderot, Israel
How do we create a feeling of shared fate among a certain group of
people? How does the feeling of togetherness form?
Sounds/Voices of the Earth Festival and Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal’s new
dance center in Sderot Israel are excited to invite you to submit
proposals for a residency program aimed for artists and scholars of the
humanities who are interested in thinking together how do we create a
center away from “the center”.
Inspired by (4th century B.C.) Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou’s
Sounds/Voices of the Earth Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal’s Residency
program invites artists and or scholars of the humanities to spend time in
the border town of Sderot, Israel that is located a few kilometers away
from the northern border of the Gaza strip in order to discover, research
and get to know the place for all its intensities, aches and inhabitants.
This – in an attempt to see how this volatile complexity – with its entire
range of various populations – is influenced, shaped by and made even
more extreme by Neoliberalism, which has over this past half a century
turned human suffering into highly profitable markets, devoid of any
compassion and laid bare for the world to see. Famine epidemics, war
and climate disasters have become the basic commodities of this
economy which has placed the manufacturing and concentration of
wealth in the hands of a few above and most of the time in complete
contradiction of human rights, social justice, sustainability, community,
humanity, and love.
In sharp contrast with this hegemonic economic and social order
‘residing’ entails opportunities, places and moments, whereby people
can loosen the stranglehold of corporations over their lives, thus
bypassing their dependence on corporations for the acquisition of food,
health, security and – perhaps more essentially – a local culture, a
common way of life. Not such that is manufactured overseas, consumed
as entertainment and which produces separation between people, but
such that weaves together the local inhabitants, since it truly belongs to
them. Such which comes into being from simply being, out of flow, out of
finding the wondrous in the daily. In the gaps. Such that emerges on its
own in exactly the same way in which a piece of land free from the yolk
of corporations can knows how to yield infinite abundance.
The program provides a residency of a few days to a few weeks
depending on your needs. This includes a place to sleep, and a spacious
workspace with a dance floor.
The participants would be asked to give a workshop, lecture or meeting
of some kind with an audience of their choosing, as well as to perform a
piece in Voices/Sounds of the Earth festival which will be held in MAy
2018.
The proposal should include:
A description of your proposed residency.
A proposal for a workshop, lecture or meeting that would be held
during either the residency or the festival.
A proposal for a performance, lecture or meeting that would take
place during the festival.
The proposals should be sent to info@adama.org.il