We met on Monday, 19 September, in Kiryat Sefer Park in Tel Aviv, shortly after the death of the Queen of England.

Itai: My initial thought was to combine the body of your knowledge concerning social, environmental, and local movements, especially around the Transition Initiative, and grassroots movements in general; to connect that knowledge, this set of values, and the practices adopted by these movements, with my thinking about public art institutions that are supported by public funds, such as property tax and other taxes, and the role they play, or their responsibility towards the fabric of urban life.

Yoav: The Transition movement proposes localism as a kind of cure-all solution for many of the problems in our era, which relies on fossil fuels, and wants to do everything faster, stronger, further. An era that aspires to progress, but on the way to fulfilling this aspiration, commits injustices, and causes environmental and social damage. I’m not only talking about the climate crisis (which is, of course, central – but not only…), and there’s a feeling that this balloon we’ve inflated needs to be deflated a bit, and return to something more local.

This is an action that promotes both mitigation and adaptation, which are two very important concepts in facing the climate crisis. Mitigation is how we reduce emissions. That is, in the context of localism, shifting towards a more local environment – then there’s less transportation of everything, and there’s a closer connection between production and consumption. The processes and distances associated with production-marketing-consumption-waste also become shorter, and, usually, they’re also attended by greater social responsibility, because the manufacturers and consumers are neighbors.

Adaptation is how we contend with the crisis that is already here. We’re talking about reducing our reliance on more distant things – food for example, and the potential danger resulting from this reliance. All this creates resilience – our ability to cope is connected to our local capabilities. And “on the way” a community is built – our ability to cope, as well as the psychological resilience of individuals, is reinforced.

The Transition movement seeks to create localism in as many aspects of life as possible: local economy, local food, local culture, local medical services, local education, etc. The more everything is adapted to the place, its needs and culture, the damage caused to the environment will decrease, and the potential for social contribution and community reinforcement will increase. To bring about this shift towards strengthening localism, every geographic community needs to explore and develop its own unique localism.

Itai: That really connects with my perception of what a theatre can be. One of the most significant strengths of a theatre is that it is a building, a particular physical infrastructure. In other words, it is local by virtue of its architectural materiality. It occupies considerable space in a particular area in the city and the neighborhood. And this grounding offers a certain rootedness that connects performing arts to a particular and singular localism. This also frequently translates into a theatre’s support mechanism. The German (and French) support model for example, where its primary support comes from the city or district. Beyond isolating it a little from national politics (since the funding body is regional, not national, there are fewer public furors on a national scale over scandals of one kind or another pertaining to the art content funded by the public) – it creates a feeling that the theatre has geographical belonging. But, more than anything, it signals that the theatre belongs to the city.

One of the most intriguing recent projects is The Munich Kammerspiele’s “What Is the City but the People?” The name of the project is borrowed from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. One of the interesting things they did in this annual project is a fashion show mounted by the city’s residents, with residents of the city and the neighborhood modeling recycled clothes.

One of the things I tried to promote in the Haifa group was community connections between the neighborhood residents and a theatre group, and at the same time with the numerous social organizations in the city. To transform the theatre building into a home for these organizations, make the theatre a second home for organization and assembly.

Theatre is a place of gathering and assembly. Florian Malzacher, one of the most respected theatre scholars today, has a wonderful podcast called The Art of Assembly. The podcast raises a great many questions about assembly as an act of political art. There’s a wonderful episode about an organization called ZAD | Zone à defender; it took over an agricultural area near Nantes, France, which was designated for the construction of a second (and unneeded) airport, and began holding resistance actions in the form of an agricultural colony. The colony brought together activists, local farmers, and artists who worked together, and, after numerous battles with the authorities, ultimately succeeded in preventing the airport’s construction.

Yoav: We’re sitting in Kiryat Sefer Park, which was once a parking lot, and was then designated for construction, and finally became a public park following a struggle waged by the residents. This ties in with the issue of the public domain – a place we’ve moved away from, as far as I know, in the field of art. The art institutions are in the public domain – they belong to the public and are connected to the public. At least that’s how it should be. And their buildings, too, should serve the public. They can serve as a place of assembly for groups of local activists. A public space, a Third Space as it is termed in social geography, that enables different people to meet, converse, plan, initiate.

Itai: Beyond a meeting place, these buildings are often simply physically big; their roofs can be used to grow vegetables, second-hand sales can be organized during the day – because they’re often closed during the day.

But it’s not only physical space; digital space can also serve as a stamp of tangibility, even certain prestige. If my new organization for a particular community objective is on the website of the municipal theatre or museum, then suddenly I exist. It can serve as substantial leverage. The institutionalism and importance of these buildings become usable, and can receive validation not only at the physical level, but also on the consciousness level.

Yoav: Absolutely, I can also think of another dimension that deviates from the physical and digital space of an art institution. I’m thinking of a community festival as a possible additional layer of activities for local art institutions that work for and with the community. And it’s interesting to see the boom of social festivals in recent years, festivals like “Under the Lamppost” in Ein Shemer, or “Sheikh Abreik” in Tivon, “Derech Hanadiv” in Pardes Hanna-Karkur, “Neve Ne’eman” in Hod Hasharon, “Nightlight” in Neve Shaanan in Tel Aviv, and many more.

If we look at an art institution as an entity that possesses knowledge and resources – it can change the entire space, the entire city into a theatre, a stage, a festival. It facilitates a kind of burst of creativity that can promote new connections between people. And that’s another point the Transition movement promotes: establishing new connections with members of the community, creating more spaces for meeting and forging connections. A festival is a place to present agendas and issues that interest us. There are examples of Transition initiatives around the world that have mounted festivals, including a carnival organized by neighborhood residents that engaged with sustainability and climate change issues – heavy issues, but the event was joyful and colorful like a carnival.

It’s also interesting for me to think about the perception of the public domain in cultural institutions. These are the first places that should undergo this process of “commoning” – it’s like the opposite of privatization, but it’s not nationalization. The idea is to turn things around, say a particular space, or art center, so they’re under public ownership. But more directly, not mediated by indirect government elements that create a situation where things are public, but they’re not actually of the people. Directly managed by the public it belongs to. It connects with the principle of localism – allowing local-public management to manage the public resources, the public domain, as much as possible.

Itai: Interesting… while we’re talking about localism and a certain grounding vis-à-vis the crises and catastrophe, it’s actually a proposition on how to live within it, a kind of worthy escape route.

And, yet, I also have critical thoughts about this way of thinking, criticism that’s associated with the privilege inherent in this kind of action. That is, going back to localism in developed countries conceals the global contexts and historical injustices that enabled that group to go back and gather in some kind of renewed tribalism. They can create new communication platforms, because they have a cellphone with a lithium battery – the cobalt for which is illegally mined in Congo, which is ravaged by war and poverty, for example. There’s a kind of blindness in it.

Yoav: This is, of course, familiar criticism against localism. Also the danger of local patriotism – a kind of local nationalism that can emerge; so, you’re right that it has to be within a broad context. Part of an understanding that we’re part of a particular history. The environmental movement can contribute here – if we put aside the perception that everything revolves around humans, and remember that the ecosystem provides our basic existence. So, this dependence should restore humility, and this inclusive connection.

In today’s reality, it’s harder to turn a blind eye, because of globalization and the flood of information, and at the generational level as well. The younger generations are more aware of these contexts. But we need to ensure this criticism doesn’t paralyze us from action and work. Because it’s a way of contending with the ecological and social crises banging on our doors. If we don’t start walking in that direction, we’ll go on sitting on the sidelines and tut-tutting our criticism. But yes – we need to constantly explore it and within it. Because this path creates an alternative within it. There are lots of methods to decentralize power, and a different inner stance, and work that enables us to look at ourselves as more whole. To bring our spiritual and inner world not only to work that is technical and detached from relationships. It’s important to stay alert to these dangers.

Itai: Another connection that can exist between these movements and an art institution is the place of imagination. Or to be more precise – the connection between imagination and action. How can we establish this connection? There’s something I heard, I think it was Slavoj Žižek who said, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. Despite the fact that capitalism is young… we’ve turned into a natural law, and we can’t imagine a world without the prism of free markets and capital. While I don’t forget the reduction in suffering capitalism brought with it to many places, it’s also part of the reason it’s perceived as so irrevocable in our thinking about the world. It’s precisely for this reason that places like theatres can be enterprises for imagining what life can look like. We need to create a connection between an executive branch and an imagining branch. We’d like to see theatres that ask how people live in a better world – or in a kind of realistic utopia, not at the level of political science, but at the level of people and stories and the possibility of bringing them to life.

Yoav: Many times, the deeper the institutions are within the establishment, the more they create a kind of replication or reproduction of the prevailing culture, of aggression or bureaucracy. But if there’s something decentralized in them that disperses their power, they can become laboratories for alternatives. And if we want to take this “laboratory” a step further, then a network of such “laboratories” will enable us to learn from experience, from each other’s mistakes and successes.

Itai: And then all kinds of people come, and there are “non-organic” encounters – and people can come and experience the proposals of people who think differently from them, or have a different idea of how to live correctly and fittingly. This can constitute the beginning of a conversation. There’s usually something very predictable between an artistic work and an audience. For instance, an artistic creator who hails from the political center-left, who directs a play and the audience that comes to see it thinks like him and votes like him. A kind of scratching the backs of center-left voters. Then the theatre becomes a place where liberal values are breathed and echoed without paying a price. Conservative creators pretending to be liberals for a conservative audience that likes to feel liberal between 20:00 and 21:45.

But what happens if theatres become a genuine home for diverse movements that don’t think alike? Suddenly there’s a spontaneous and organic encounter between artistic works and audiences in which the predictable conservative connection doesn’t take place. The theatre goes back to being a lively meeting place, a place of gathering and healthy conflict. All this because the theatre has become part of the urban and social routine for diverse audiences. And it’s interesting to think about the connection between all this and resilience.

Yoav: Yes, even at the basic level of maintaining relationships and connections between people who wouldn’t otherwise meet. A combination of physical infrastructures, such as a space that serves as a gathering place (like a church in the aftermath of an earthquake, or food stores – or the theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, that served as an air-raid shelter, and was then bombed), and ideational and conceptual infrastructures.

Itai: I also think about the connection between resilience and flexibility in the context of ecosystems, and whether it’s possible to translate it into public buildings.

Yoav: The resilience of ecosystems manifests in their ability to sustain changes without losing their balance. And it’s interesting to think about social resilience in ecological concepts. One of the important ways to build this resilience pertains to building diversity. Diverse relationships and diverse functions. That is, that every “individual” within the system should perform as many functions as possible within the system, and also have as many different kinds of connections as possible with other individuals in the system. This can be imagined as a network of connections, and the more complex and intricate it is, the more resilient the system.

We’ve talked about art institutions that create new relationships between community members, relationships that wouldn’t have been formed otherwise. Thus, these community art institutions reinforce that network of connections, and the community’s resilience.

With regard to new approaches to power, there’s more potential here to strengthen resilience. The ability to be involved in decisions and execution reinforces both personal and community resilience, because the power is in our hands. So, we should create mechanisms in these art institutions, institutions that practice this. For instance, create an executive committee with elected (or even drawn) representatives from the community, and not only people from the outside, who while they might be professionals, do not live in the immediate geographic space and social fabric.

Itai: Have you heard about this thing of city citizens assemblies? I read in Haaretz about this kind of assembly in Paris.

Yoav: Yes – and we engage with this quite a bit in the Heschel Center for Sustainability – it’s a renewed practice that trains us for a different kind of active citizenship – and if we imagine such institutions, it’s a way to create an opportunity for the local public to be involved in an additional form of active citizenship.

Itai: Milo Rau, the director, activist, and artistic director of NTGent in Belgium, stages spectacle gatherings for communities in the blind spots of conventional institutions. For example, “The Congo Tribunal”, which despite the spectacle in the act of assembly, creates a serious dialogue and discussion with experts, and invites politicians and jurists. This action begins with imagining, and utilizes the spectacle, but with strong persistence it manages to be internalized by the real world.

To sum up our conversation, I’d like you to revisit the component of surplus that you mentioned in our preliminary conversation.

Yoav: Alongside diversity, the multiple functions we’ve talked about, it is also important to create surpluses, which is also important in building resilience. Surpluses create a safety margin for times of shortage. In permaculture (a planning method inspired by observing nature) there’s an approach that seeks to ensure that every component in the system performs several functions. And every function in the system has to have at least three components performing it. Let’s say there’ll be at least three different types of fruit trees in my garden, and each tree will provide additional things besides fruit (for example, shade, to shelter for animals).

So, if we want to adapt this thinking to the topic of our conversation, then an art institution will not only be a home for artistic creation and art, but will also perform two additional functions. Let’s say, a place to grow food, or create community electricity, and also an area for gathering and community assembly.

And in conversely, according to this approach, we will also want to ensure that art is present not only in a particular local art institution, but also performs other functions in the space and community besides.

Itai: It’s very different from the way many art institutions act when they have exclusivity, which enables them to claim, “If I’m harmed, there’ll be no more art”. If there are surpluses, they’ll be redundant, and they’ll be placing themselves in greater visible danger. But what is it that we’re preserving? The essence of the institution itself? It’s an interesting thought.

Yoav: Definitely. If we return to the perception of the public domain, a public that adopts this perception can understand that it is an asset that belongs to it. It will be motivated to preserve it. It will realize that the institution not only serves the art, it also serves the public. What we are proposing here is a different role for art institutions and the local community’s relationship with them.

Itai: And renewed thinking about the responsibility an art institution has towards the public that funds it, from a community and local perspective. There’s a lot more to be done, and a great many connections to make. I hope we have forged the first connection here.

Yoav: Amen.