Heara 3 - Sound Art

Aug 24 2002

The Argentinean House

Large margins

Suissa, Albert
Kol Hair
August 30 2002

Sound and text, event on the occasion of the issue of the magazine and the disk Hearat Shulaym No 3; Saturday evening, 24.8, Argentina House.

The group of artists sala-manca launched last Saturday evening the magazine Hearat Shulaym No 3, whose title is “Sound & Text”, in the two-storey building of the Argentina House, at the heart of the Nachalat-Achim area. The unexpected sight was quite remarkable. Imagine a sort of huge ear, highly sophisticated, attached to the heart of the city. At the entrance, nobody rummaged into your bag, and nobody asked the magic question: “do you carry any arm?”. In exchange for 25 NIS, you were supplied with the magazine and the enclosed disk and you immediately slid into the lower and upper ear’s ventricles, vibrating with heart and belly penetrating voice, image and text. Last time, on the occasion of the issue of the magazine and the video of “Earat Shulaym” No 2, which took place in the Seidoff court, the surprise stemmed from the impressive deployment of the different artists in the big space. Here the agreeable shock shone precisely from the smiling and assertive density of the many people who crowded together in the small building in a certain Jerusalem politeness. But none of the many persons who crowded together and saw the voices said, Jerusalem is a narrow place. More than 30 artists from different fields – painting, sculpture, installation, video, sound-poetry, poetry-performance, voice, electronic music, and record making – whose works relate to sound, joined together on a voluntary basis for the creation of this event. But the more important and impressive achievement of this modest group is the creation of the special atmosphere that reigned in this place. How do you describe an atmosphere? It is very hard. I would say that it is related to a rare feeling that this is not just another event, that something is happening here and now. Hark! No doubt that this event, thanks to its production, but mainly its content and quality, sets up the noise and the rings, which accompanies the culture leaders of the production of the marginal culture of the most respected institutions in the city, in the most ridiculous light. And still, just a question: are the leaders of the culture aware of the existence of such artists in our midst? Not that they have something to offer them without taking control of them, it is just a question of cultural curiosity.
Holding the magazine Hearat Shulaym of literature and art, one feels the highly subversive and special charisma, since reading it transmits a strong feeling of going through in the exposed nerves of a polyphonic work of art, totally ignoring the cheap and commercial communicativeness which has become so widespread. The magazine completely reverses the terms center and margin without any criticism nor apologetic spirit, but rather focusing on its objectives. The artists who contribute to the magazine are frenetic writers. Its lack of communicativeness at first glance stems from the immediate way by which every artist approaches the core of the matter that his sound & text deals with, from the naked directness, clean from every mannerism of art making.

Large Margins
August 30 2002. (Hebrew)

Hot Sounds
August 23 2002. (Hebrew)

The Underground Jerusalem
August 23 2002. (Hebrew)