top of page

The Tears Project- Arad Version

 

An invitation to actively dream of a sea in Arad and the area. Participatory work in the public space, stickers and permanent markers on an edited map, origin from the Geological survey of Israel’s website, 2023.

 

I came to Arad with the thought to create a site-specific version of the Tears Project, a project relying on participation that revolves the sea, limited freedom of movement and their combination. That train of thought led me to the utopian idea of creating a man-made sea made of tears. In the project, that was conceived during Covid days, I went from solo crying to creating a participatory network of collecting tears, in which every participant could choose whether to cry alone or in a crying gathering with me. Though meant to shed a tear, there is no anticipation that this will physically happen. In one way or another, in the gathering we exchange words, thoughts, feelings and perhaps, if we consented, bodily fluids. 

 

The work is political in nature and relates to the limited access to the waters beyond the Green Line and the Gaza Strip but in Arad it carries other internal contexts: It touches the lack of distributive justice of water sources in relation to the Bedouin communities in the Negev, of unproportionate exploitation of the Dead Sea, which is near Arad and the specific economic connection between the two, which has expressed as a significant hit due to lack of work and workers' rights in the sea's industry. Alongside, there is the physical distance- Arad is naturally relatively very far from a "regular" water source.

 

For this project, that was executed as part of the residency program of Arad's Contemporary Art Center, I wanted to create a site-specific version of the project that would relate to these issues as well as invoke a participatory action in the public space. Eventually, the work evolved into a project of its own, born in the Tears Project and matured into a separate work.

 

During the first week of my stay I came to the city's commercial center with a map of Arad and its area taken from the Geological institute of Israel. Along an informative text in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian, the predominant languages of the local communities, I invited the passersby to put a round light blue sticker on the place in the map where they wanted to have a sea. The invitation proved effective- everyday we collected 60-100 stickers in a two hour session. People happily participated, dreaming crazy dreams about a sea in their backyard and acting on it- putting a sticker and giving it existence in reality.  

Beyond the playfulness of it, it's possible to point specific locations where stickers assembled on the map more than in others, where there was special interest in creating a sea, or at least a body of water: The city Arad itself obviously but also Arad Park was a popular location, as well as other cities and communities in the area.

 

In relation to that, a spontaneous and important development in the work was the level of agency the participants took over the map: Throughout the activity days, participants asked to put a sticker next to locations that didn't exist on the map, and we added them together with a permanent marker. It was either big cities outside of the map's range (Be'er Sheba, Dimona) or Bedouin communities, some unacknowledged on official maps (Kseifeh, El Fur'aa and more). When adding a sea on a map, it can be called "dreaming" or "creating a new reality" but when adding a location of an existing place, especially  when unacknowledged by the authorities, it was actively surfacing current reality, claiming  ownership over the territory and establishing it on the map. It was a political action, going hand in hand with the water issues of Arad and it's surroundings,  and a significant reflection of the reality in the field.

 

Unlike reality, in the map there were no disputes: The light-blue sticker of Arad did not take away from the one of Kseifeh, El-Fur'aa's did not effect on Dimona's- there was enough sea and land for everyone. I wonder, perhaps the gap between the mutual dreaming and the current state of the water is truly as vast as it seems or it is actually solvable, and it's just a matter of decision making.

Assistant: Darea Kerikh
Documentation: Lihi Alon, Darea Kerikh
Took place as part of the residency program at Arad's Contemporary Art Center
Artistic director: Leah Abir

For participation- please contact.

© 2016 by Tal Hafner.
 

bottom of page