Omer Krieger was asked to play with me, in a stream of consciousness, a sort of ping pong of thoughts and images. He kindly replied sharing experiences and visions.
Experiments in Techniques of awakening
Zion Square
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Public Movement, Positions (2009-ongoing)
Non-documented action
State > Chronicle in Zion Square
For three consecutive Friday afternoons, a new chronicle of the State of Israel was read out loud in Zion Square, at its busiest time, in the centre of Jerusalem, by a select group of radio broadcasters with easily recognizable voices, while passers-by were invited to respond with an open microphone.
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.
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First moon Landing
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Israel mourns its first astronaut Ilan Ramon, flags flying at half-mast (Associated Press)
New Public Art in Jerusalem
Under the Mountain 2011-2013, Public School Editions, p. 57
Communal space design
Positions
non-documented action
A political situation organized by 10 Public Movement members or by its authorized agents. A choreography for a demonstration based on a series of physical positions taken by individuals and the forming of two rival groups, which embody demands, preferences and aspirations. Two ad-hoc blocks of people are constantly formed and reformed according to calls which are made through a megaphone by 2 public movement agents, one on each side of the space. The calls are made in pairs, such as Socialism/Capitalism, Men/Women, Gay/Straight, and other pairs which manifest a political position, a worldview, a preference, taste, fact or a moral claim. At large, Positions is discourse-specific and serves to manifest conflicts and tensions which are relevant to the time, place, institution and nation state in which it is activated. It also offers the public to divide in relation to universal values.
Positions is Public Movement’s first action that can take place without the presence of its members. The right to activate Positions can be given to one public institution in each state in the world.
Poetical Licence, Sarenco
Omer Krieger, Now (The Clash), 2015
NOW (THE CLASH)
An urban confrontation between state power and civil movements. It is dance with traces of civil protests and resistance movements from history, in the bodies and in distinctively political places such as Tahrir Square, Gezi Park or Wall Street, Maidan Square or East Jerusalem. Confrontations between citizens and police become recurring political events worldwide. NOW (THE CLASH) researched their dynamics and involved the public in choreography that begins with a gathering and ends in conflict in Hamburg’s city centre.
NOW (THE CAMP/THE CLASH) is a performance in two acts. Part 1, entitled NOW (THE CAMP) took place on 30th May 2015 at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. It consisted of seven gatherings of commemoration and remembrance, as well as an artistic intervention.
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Omer Krieger is an artist and curator who composes performative actions, political situations, forms of assembly and civic choreographies in public spaces. Krieger studies the public experience and the performance of the state, and is interested in the relations between art, citizenship, politics and action. Co-founder of the performative research body Public Movement, Krieger has served for the last four years as artistic director of Under the Mountain: New Public Art Festival in Jerusalem.