A lecture series at the Center for Contemporary Art where artists talk about a project they created abroad: an artwork that was significant in their creative development, but that the audience in Israel is almost unfamiliar with. This is an opportunity to get acquainted with thought and work processes on complex projects that were realized overseas, through the challenges, doubts, and breakthroughs in their making.

In this edition of the series our guests are two Israeli artists based in Berlin and London, both here for the elections.

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Ariel Efraim Ashbel will speak about Fiddler! A Musical, which premiered in Berlin in December 2023, shortly after the events of October 7. A loose homage to Fiddler on the Roof—the Broadway hit that brought Yiddish art to a mass audience and reshaped Jewish representation in popular culture—the work explores twentieth-century Jewish performance traditions, from Russia through Berlin to New York, and their relationship to exile, expulsion, and state violence.

Ashbel will revisit the making of the work and the circumstances of its premiere, and discuss a new version that he is currently developing. The music of composer Ethan Braun, performed by Ensemble Kaleidoskop, took center stage in the original production. The show brought together Ashbel’s regular collaborators, alongside special guests including performance artist Perel and art-pop icon Peaches.

Following the presentation a musical performance by Y. Silver, who has collaborated with Ashbel on several projects. Nethertongue is a performance for solo amplified bass clarinet, a sustained exploration of unconventional techniques has allowed Silver to crack open the sound of his instrument, and release from within it swarms of cicadas, crooked birds, beasts of the underworld, and a multitude of forgotten noises.\

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Ariel Efraim Ashbel is a Berlin-based director. With his international, transdisciplinary team of friends, he creates stage spectacles at the intersection of theater, visual art, dance, music, and ritual. He is an associate artist at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. His work has also been presented at Kampnagel in Hamburg, FFT Düsseldorf, and other international institutions and festivals. Alongside his own work, he collaborates with fellow artists as a dramaturg, lighting designer, and performer, and teaches at art schools and universities.

Y. Silver is a London-based musician. An experimental bass clarinetist who has performed with musicians such as John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Evan Parker, Ana-Maria Avram, Steve Noble, Birgit Ulher, Toshimaru Nakamura and many others from the worlds of experimental and improvised music. He plays keyboards in Charles Hayward's band Abstract Concrete, has played in Ashley Paul's trio RAY, and was a member of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram's Hyperion Ensemble. He recently led a show of arrangements of Moondog's music (with Yifat Ziv, Adam Shaflan, Erez Meyuhas and Rami Gabai) and wrote orchestral arrangements for songs by Zohar Shafir / Nico Teen. He has also collaborated with artists and groups including Public Movement, Ariel Efraim Ashbel, Nava Frenkel, Naama Schendar, Daniel Blumberg and others.

The talk will be held in Hebrew.

Duration: Approx. 75 min.

Admission: 30 ILS

For tickets, click here

Photo credit: Mayra Wallraff