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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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”.