Recovery Plan: Join or Die

In March 2018, twelve artists representing three generations of Israeli art were invited to the Museum to initiate an action whose conditions, contents and nature they would agree on via an ongoing group discussion. Their mandate was to work and demarcate collectively all the action’s premises. Following an intensive process of meetings and lengthy deliberations, the group formed several tenets, modes of actions and a title for the exhibition that would realize their action: “Recovery Plan: Join or Die.”

The invitation aimed to introduce into the Museum modes of actions that are not generally compatible with the customary conduct of museums. Exhibitions are characterized by pre-defined processes that are carefully planned and based on intensive research. Letting the artists steer the decision making was an opportunity for the Museum to allow the unknown, the unexpected, to take a risk and to commit to the undecided, to an action that is formed as a live body in movement.

This process, however, challenges not only the Museum and its curatorial and work methods, it also affects the single artist’s stance: collaboration with artists demands that each of them, albeit temporarily, identifies with the idea of the collective and deals with the demand to create a joint project together with artists whose worldview is different — in aspects of medium as well as ideology.

The exhibition is composed of a collection of objects, sculptures, video and sound pieces, paintings, manipulated items, etc. Among them are also two foci that yearn for the viewer’s touch: a set of dimmers on a minimalist-style relief attached to the wall, awaiting the hand of a viewer tempted to modify the light intensity of several lighting devices.

In another space stands a wall of files, which will fill up throughout the exhibition with various materials by the artists and will be offered to the viewers to leaf through.

The artists created the exhibition’s various parts together and separately, under the umbrella of the exhibition’s title, discussing each and every idea. From the plethora of narratives and themes raised during the meetings, the final decision was to work within the values of “treatment” and “recovery.” The first element of the exhibition’s title, “Recovery Plan,” is a term borrowed from the field of business and organizational development. It refers to constructing a business plan for crisis management, identifying threats to the organization and dealing with them. The term is borrowed here for further contexts.

Throughout the exhibition’s duration, one of its inner spaces will become a closed treatment space, inhabited by artists — from among the exhibiting group as well as others. This is an active wing, offering its residents a personalized recovery or hospitalization plan. The wing is closed to the general public and information about its progressions leaks into the exhibition space through its walls and openings.

Real activities occur throughout the exhibition’s duration, yet for the viewers they are no more than hearsay. They can become acquainted with the activity only through the sounds beyond the walls and the two portholes attached to the closed wing’s door.

This text is being written at a late stage of realizing the exhibition and does not yet contain information on its various aspects and the changes about to take place once the exhibition opens. The artists’ activity at this stage eludes preliminary interpretation, promising a forthcoming continuation, accumulated or detracted charges. Nonetheless, some questions can already be raised: What kind of view of artist—viewer relationship arises from such an internal recovery plan, announcing “Join or Die” yet despite the acute call leaving the viewers behind, rejecting them empty handed?

What faith, or desperation, evolves from the action of a group of artists that aims to heal, to care, to improve, regarding art’s power and the artist’s contemporary status? What does the action seek to recover and heal? The idea of an “exhibition”? Art? Culture? The Museum as a system and a concept? The society within which it operates?

One week before the opening, the space is barely occupied, technical and digital solutions to some of the works’ requirements are still awaited, and bureaucratic debates with the Museum’s insurance and legal advisers are underway. The failed attempt to capture ahead of time the nature of the action is a vestige of the conventional relationship between an exhibition and the usual mediation processes that always take place in advance, with full knowledge of an exhibition’s nature.

The second element of the exhibition’s title, “Join or Die,” is taken from a 1754 political cartoon attributed to Benjamin Franklin, depicting a snake cut into eight segments, each label led with the initials of one of the British colonies in America. It was published alongside Franklin’s editorial exhorting the unity of colonies during the Civil War. The cartoon, as well as the editorial, pose a binary option: unite or desist.

The manipulated image accompanying the exhibition exchanges the labels naming the colonies with the initials of the participating artists. The call to unite, to join forces in order to engender real power, is apt for the gathering of artists into a group, and the joining of creative forces into a meaningful artistic act. It is also a possible call to the viewer who is exhorted to “join or die,” to participate; the call seemingly produces a life or death tension and warns of an impending catastrophe.

All these charges and possibilities, however, teem under an exhibition that features a strong element of restraint and various shielding modes. Some of the works refer to limpness, rest, reprieve. At times they impart a sense of anesthesia. Anesthesia is the exact opposite of a call to action, yet it is what enables the execution of the procedure, the incision, the operation.

Participating artists: Drora Dominey, Yael Frank, Ido Gordon, Gali Greenspan, Talia Keinan, Eli Petel, Tchelet Ram, Barak Ravitz, Ruti Sela, Ira Shalit, Lior Waterman, Alina Yakirevitch.

Opening: 17/07/2018
Closing: 20/11/2018

Location: Tel-Aviv Museum of Art
The Agnes and Beny Steinmetz Wing for Architecture and Design, Galleries 1 & 2, Herta and Paul Amir Building