Venomous Snake (WIP)

'The Encounter' was a storefront workspace located on a main artery in Haifa at 7 HeHalutz Street. Established in June 2024, it was born from a desire to create an open sanctuary where passersby and locals could collide, share narratives, and engage in collaborative creation. For eight months, we immersed ourselves in a process of deep research into the private narratives of our collaborators, and from there, we began to create alongside them through various mediums such as video, sculpture, documented performance, painting, and photography.

In times when society in Israel is grappling with crises of identity, trust, and uncertainty, we sought to turn 'The Encounter' into a space that sanctifies simple and direct reciprocity. Our concept is rooted in the simple yet profound act of co-presence, which is not subject to goals or expectations. This served as the foundation from which we embarked on dreaming journeys and a return to physical matter, all while prioritizing the strengthening of human bonds.

Our ethos is deeply informed by Georges Bataille’s ideas in his essay on the economy of excess. Bataille highlights the value of non-utilitarian acts based on emotional and intellectual abundance, such as useless giving or generous waste. In this sense, the shared idleness we facilitate represents a yearning for the expression of inner wealth and a generosity that seeks to connect people. In this way, our space strives to be a fertile ground for partnership and creation, governed by the principles of recognition and acceptance.

Through our activity in the space, we connected with several key partners. Shmuel is a retired electrician who authored a self-help book describing the maintenance of the human body from a technical-electrical perspective, as if it were a mechanism of pumps and waterways.

Claudia has moved between Germany and Israel throughout her life; she was once a member of an avant-garde rock band in Berlin and currently survives by panhandling on a nearby street. Shlomo was formerly a captain of a banana boat and the head of the local Tenant Protection Association, and today he develops 3D puzzles while coping with significant visual impairment.

Our shared journey with Shlomo circled a singular driving force: the passion to find, establish, and maintain a home. This deep longing emerges from the totality of his stories and struggles. However, the sheer volume of information and experience that arose in our conversations was overwhelming and impossible to contain. In an attempt to process this abundance, we handed the reins over to the machine; yet, it mistranslated his words poorly, leaving us like the blind in his fields—groping in the dark and trying to glean the remnants of his thoughts and memories from a drift of linguistic glitches and disruptions.

With Claudia, we produced a short film titled "Ktana Sheli" in which her memories and original poems serve as the foundation for a documented performance that expands the perception of her presence on the street. The film weaves together symbolic, performative, and documentary layers within the public sphere, such as dragging a torch pole from the Garden of Remembrance, performing a ritual of recollection in her home alleyway, and our shared wanderings through the neighborhood. Shmuel’s book serves as the basis for sculptural and photographic actions that expose the link between the mechanics of the human body and the world of engineering and electricity, through the writing and practice of mantras drawn from his unique world.