The Beit Galim 10 festival, which celebrates a decade this year, has started in Haifa. Aki Flexer, met those responsible for the festival....
Shirley Meshulam, artistic director of the Beit Galim Festival tells Lahi Fe about the 10th Beit Galim Festival:
Happy to celebrate these 10 years which were actually a personal journey and a collective journey. The work is work under the definition of community art. One of the fascinating things I learned here is first of all to get to know the people, to pick up every stone in this place, to ask a lot of questions, to listen carefully while being considerate and sensitive to the collective environment in order to grow the art from within the community.
"What makes the Beit Galim 10 festival unique is that this festival emphasizes three features that characterize the Bat Galim neighborhood 1- This is Bat Galim architecture, which this year turned 130 years old, the architect Richard Kaufmann, a German Jew who created 644 projects in Israel, including Bat Galim. 2- The second element This is the issue of environmental quality and the preservation of the underwater reef. I did not know at all that in Bat Galim there is a group of sea guards who clean up the garbage and pollution and look after sea turtles, and raise a great deal of community and national awareness of the preservation of the underwater reef in Bat Galim. And for that it must be said that there is here Two very large exhibition spaces that combine together the surfers' community, the sea guards' community, the swimming group community and Tal Raz which guards the reef itself 3- The third aspect is the human diversity, which means at least we understand that diversity consists of many communities: the Russian scene, the Chabadnik guys, the anthroposophical community, The young guys, the doctors, the medical students, and so on and so forth. It's very exciting, it's very charming, it's extremely challenging. As an independent creator who has been dealing with art in the community for years and mainly presents non-institutional alternative spaces."
Matan Gazit, director of the Bat Galim Community Center:
The Beit Galim Festival is the holiday of the Bat Galim neighborhood and this is actually our opportunity as a community center that is constantly in touch with the neighborhood community to strengthen the people who work in our routine and budget capacity, and the fact that people come here both from all over the city of Haifa and from outside the city. This holiday strengthens the workers here in the routine and gives them volume and infrastructure for something bigger.
"Movement Studio - There are three women from the neighborhood who founded the studio that operates routinely at a school on Aliyah, the Movement Studio. This year we jointly produced a complex called the Beit Luvah complex, like the name of the studio, and basically they move their activities and place their teachers and performances on the boardwalk, and in fact it is a joint complex that they produce As part of the festival. If it's the Slam Tech, which is a food truck of guys who live in the neighborhood and it's a local business, it's part of our job to promote it. If it's the Melhaus, which is a local business that's very successful, next to it is one of the most interesting works of the festival by Gil Goren. The Bar Galim, actually Our outdoor events We close Bar Galim Street every year with the idea being to take Bar Galim's business which is an essential business and actually allow them to be exposed to a wider audience, more than what usually comes. And the fact that we close the event, close the street, beyond the economic capacity it gives For them to breathe, it puts them on the map at the municipal level and that is our goal. Our goal is for the festival to give its signals throughout the year and not just during these three days. Anyone who has been to the festival and passed through Bargil today knows the Bargil and will come next week and this is actually my success at the festival. Everything It's related to one thing, the Bat Galim community, and that's what's beautiful as far as I'm concerned."
Sapir Perezberg:
This is the eighth year that I am presenting here at the festival and in honor of the decade I decided to show what Bat Galim will look like in 100 years. For example, it is possible to show in the casino that they found the landing place of the aliens in the Hoi Ar video, you can see the part of the middle of the casino flying up. As if the aliens fly away from here after being discovered. In another part you can see that very special animals have been discovered here and in another part you can see that in 100 years it will be possible to heat the sea and you can enter both in winter and summer and the temperature will always be pleasant. The cable car in 100 years will be solar powered and it will be possible to travel with it on any wave and not on a specific route.