What’s behind the Pastoral?

First steps toward an urgent historiography of Ein Kerem

The project “What’s behind the Pastoral?” is a series of activities, events, exhibits, and performances dealing with the present, past, and future of Ein Kerem and with the place of pastorality in Israeli art. The project takes place at Mamuta the Daniela Passal Center for Art and Media, where the works will be produced and shown. The project engages with the Center’s environs in the village of Ein Kerem and is accomplished in cooperation with various institutions and neighbors. This is a project in stages, of which the beginning is known, but not the end.

Projects:

What’s hidden behind the Pastoral? October 15-17, 2009, curated by Sala-Manca

Ein Karem Digital Archives , coordinated by Noa Guez (on going)

Many Say Yes -  Radio Play by Josef Sprinzak  (April 2010)

Compressing Data Principle by Helly Mizrai (June 2010)

Concept
The immediate environs of Mamuta the Daniela Passal Center for Art and Media is a central issue which the Center is treating at the outset of its artistic activity. A large selection of works presented in the framework of this first project will deal with the history of the village from antiquity and biblical times, through the Middle Ages, and up to the present.
The works and projects will deal with the concept of pastorality. This concept is central in the attempt to define the breathtaking and idyllic landscape of Ein Kerem, which is illusive and stands in contradistinction not only to the dominant language and themes of contemporary art, but also to the complex historical reality of the village, including the ideas, religions, and myths connected to it.

First project: First steps toward an urgent historiography of Ein Kerem and of Israeli pastorality, or first steps toward an anti-pilgrimage
The opening event of the Center will include activities, installations, and performances by artists working to collect and catalogue information on the subjects of: Ein Kerem, the village, and pastorality. The event aims to be a first step in the formation of an archive of Ein Kerem and pastorality through Mamuta’s “absortion office”

A. The Ein Kerem community, the artistic community, and the general public will take a central part in the event and in the establishment of the archive. The public will be invited to bring all sorts of material on Ein Kerem and on pastorality: home movies, archival photos, books, academic works, plants, stories, myths, clothing, jokes, etc., which will be recorded in Mamuta’s absorption office. These materials will be the basis for artistic works, scholarly studies, and advertisements of the Center in the coming years. Next to the absorption office and with its permission, various anti-pilgrimage projects will take place: departures from the Center into the wadi and into the village, guided tours made up of different narratives, outings for information- collection, off-the-beaten-track strolls, physical and visual dispersals.