CURATOR, RESEARCHER
PROJECTS
WHO COMES AFTER US?
A yearly multidisciplinary event (2021- ) - CDA Holon
Who Comes After Us? is a yearly multidisciplinary event inspired by and in the spirit of Uri Katzenstein. Katzenstein was a radical artist whose work was typified by unique, uncompromising connections between performance, sound, video, and sculpture. In his work he frequently engages with essence of human existence in the world, the anomalies within it, and the presence of the body, its wounds, and its distortions. Katzenstein repeatedly pushed the boundaries of medium, and paved new ways for numerous artists who came after him.
RAKIA’S ART MISSION AT THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
2022
On April 8th 2022, the Rakia mission launched into space with Eytan Stibbe, Israel’s second astronaut and the first to go to the International Space Station. As part of this mission, a series of new works of art were created in microgravity conditions, curated by Udi Edelman.
INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC PRESENCE
2015-Ongoing
The Institute for Public Presence was established by Udi Edelman in 2015 within the Israeli Center for Digital Art as a new platform for research, scholarship and discussion of art and action in public space. The institute’s activities include the development and promotion of long-term art projects, a program for members of the public, discussion and action groups, screenings and lectures, as well as the archiving of artworks and actions in public space.
more info @ ipp.org.il
ATLAS OF MEDITERRANEAN LIQUIDLY
2020-Ongoing
Atlas of Mediterranean Liquidity is an ongoing project of interactive maps, regarding climate change’s effect on water problems around the Mediterranean.
MURALS
2019-Ongoing
Murals is an ongoing exhibition and project that explores Israeli wall art and the changing rationale behind it while also questioning its role in current public spaces. It has evolved through a series of new works established in the compound of the Center for Digital Art and will be extended to additional sites in the near future.
ACTION PRL
RESEARCH AND PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL OF PUBLIC ACTION
September 25-27 2015
Studio MDM, 9/15, Marszałkowska Street and the nearby area, Warsaw.
A project by Udi Edelman and Omer Krieger.
Produced by the Centre for Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
Performative actions in public space during the times of communist Poland were authored both by citizens and the State. In a 3-day festival of unannounced occurrences in public spaces of Warsaw, a group of performers, artists, researchers and activists spread throughout streets, squares and public institutions, embodying an archive of moments selected from the political and artistic history of The People’s Republic of Poland (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, 1952–1989).
The project revisits the PRL language of public presence, including forms of resistance and affirmation, acts of assembly, manifestation of power and collectivity, surveillance and invisibility. The Unannounced Festival translated selected historical forms into the contemporary political context.
The group’s announced and unannounced actions emerged from Studio MDM, a storefront space in the monumental Marszałkowska Street, constructed in 1952, which served as ACTION PRL headquarters and archive center. During the opening hours of Studio MDM, the projects' researchers from the Institute of Polish Culture – University of Warsaw (Agnieszka Sosnowska, Dr Dorota Sosnowska, Dr Magda Szcześniak) shared their research for the ACTION PRL Archive through individual conversations and micro-presentations.
for more info: https://u-jazdowski.pl/en/wydarzenia/akcja-prl
STATE<CHRONICLE
ONGOING PUBLIC PERFORMANCE PROJECT
2013 - Jerusalem – Under the mountain festival
2014 - Holon
A project by Udi Edelman and Omer Krieger.
For three consecutive Fridays, a new chronicle of the State of Israel was read out loud in Zion Square, at its busiest time, in the center of Jerusalem, while passers-by were invited to respond with an open microphone. Each event, the project exposed a section of the chronicle that relates to a decade in Israel’s public life. The text was read out by selected narrators with easily recognizable voices.
The chronicle, historical record of the State of Israel since November 1947, lists the intensive stream of events that underpinned Israel’s social, cultural and political experience, as well as the inherent struggles and associative dissatisfactions. Included in these records are the events that shaped the state in different ways - wars and peace agreements, political battles, economic developments and legislation, as well as important advancements in the world of art and literature, polemics, scandals in popular and high culture are being recorded.
The reading of the chronicles in public space, and especially in Zion Square, where multiple pivotal events have unfolded over the years, is primarily a call to remember and an invitation to the public to examine the events and eras that have and are shaping Israeli society. A call to respond to the accepted narratives of these events, the decisions that were taken, and to voice individual opinions in the presence of an historical record, as well as propose a broad, personal, congruent or oppositional interpretation. One voice against another.
This is also an invitation to strengthen the role of public space as a place for people who express opinions, and are not just consumers or obedient subjects of a regime, and to remind the public of the role of the city square as a place for open political debate where public opinion is constituted. The chronicle was first published in 1998 as part of a special edition of the critical academic periodical “Theory and Criticism”.
ORION VR
2016
Sculpture Field models : Ezra Orion | Concept: Udi Edelman | Scanning, modeling and VR environment building: Ziv schneider and Shirin Anlen | Sound Design: Dani Meir
One of the monumental works the late artist Ezra Orion designed is a series of enormous sculptures that were meant to be installed at a single site on the banks of Nahal Zin in the Negev. Orion worked on planning and advancing the project for many years, but the full project was never realized.
Plaster and metal scale models of various elements from the Sculpture Field are still stored in Orion’s Desert Sculpture Gallery. Their presence as a monument to an unrealized act, coupled with the desire to find a new way to document and preserve the objects, led us to an attempt to bring Sculpture Field to life with contemporary technology and recreate it in reality. The models were scanned in 3D and adapted for latest generation VR glasses (HTC Vive), enlarging and adjusting them as required. The result is a first opportunity to experience the sculptures in the huge dimensions Orion intended for them, and thus realize in virtual space the experience of the wandering spectator he saw in his mind’s eye.
Virtual field trip documentation: https://youtu.be/NEbQGtfLaA4
More tech info: http://cargocollective.com/zivs/filter/Virtual-Reality/Orion-VR
ICE HAPPENING IN JERUSALEM
2015
A project by Udi Edelman and Omer Krieger.
Under the Mountain festival, Jerusalem culture season.
Construction of an ice wall next to the Western Wall, Jerusalem. A reactivation of an artwork by Allen Kaprow from 1980.
American artist Allan Kaprow, the man who coined the term, "Happening," came to Israel in 1980. During this visit, Kaprow made several actions in public space, including a nearly-forgotten work that involved the construction of a large ice wall perpendicular to the wall of the Temple Mount, nearby the Western Wall. The work was part of a series of ephemeral structures Kaprow built from blocks of ice in the United States and Europe beginning in 1967.
In 2015, in the sweltering August heat, and with the participation of the public, we rebuilt Kaprow's ice wall in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, close to Western Wall.
TIME CAPSULE - JESSY COHEN
2015
Time capsule burial ceremony in the Israeli Center for Digital Art complex. The capsule contains artworks and personal archival items belonging to the Jessy Cohen neighborhood residents, artists, and the CDA staff. The capsule will be sealed for 40 years, to be open in 2055.