jerusalem design week 2023 plays tricks on the senses in hospice spaces

Jerusalem design week 2023 on deceitful artisanship

Long before the alchemists tried to turn metal into gold, people had pursued material transformations, seeking to make the cheap expensive, the rough delicate, and the coarse touchable. With this concept in mind, Jerusalem Design Week 2023 presents works from Israeli and international artists that use light, sound, and fog to play tricks on the senses highlighting the magical dimension of artisanship. From wrinkled ceramics to people swimming in blue smoke, the exhibition demonstrates sustainable solutions of material consumption.

Jerusalem Design Week 2023 plays tricks on the senses with the use of light, sound, and fog

all images courtesy of Jerusalem Design Week 2023

The 2023 Jerusalem Design Week sets out to examine and celebrate the designer’s role: fundamentally creating a manipulative concealment of truth or promoting honesty. Curated by Dana Benshalom and Sonja Olitsky, and under the artistic direction of Dr. Jeremy Fogel, the 150 different exhibitors explore the importance of illusions by deceiving and creating parallel realities, as well as the disclosure and honesty by examining the possibility of authenticity in the face of widespread Lies and Falsehoods. 

‘Jerusalem Design Week is the largest and most fundamental public event dedicated to design in Israel, which initiates and hosts extensive and diverse activities to promote design in Jerusalem and Israeli designers in general. This year’s theme Lies and Falsehoods is more relevant than ever before. The digital age has brought with it a comprehensive challenge to the concepts of trust, authenticity, and truth. The post-truth era has taken over both digital and analog reality. The designer’s work exhibited throughout the week oscillated between reality and fiction and explore the importance of illusions by concealing, deceiving, and creating parallel realities, as well as through works that deal with disclosure and honesty by examining the possibility of truth and authenticity in the face of widespread lies and falsehoods,’ express the curators.

Hansen House | image © Hanna Tayeb

Not only is contemporary consumer culture filled with misinformation, it relies on it; materials and ingredients no longer matter. Wrinkled, the ceramics wine glasses and teapots, abandon material culture, product development, craftsmanship, and the people who specialize in them. With his series of deformed objects, Eden Ohana responds to these changes.

Eden Ohana is an industrial design graduate from the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Alongside his career as a creative designer since 2012, he also contributes to the art departments of film and television projects, builds sets, and imparts knowledge on industrial design in Tel Aviv.

Wrinkled by Eden Ohana

a rug casts its shadow

Shadows are intangible and require three things to exist: a physical object, a light source, and a surface on which the shadow is cast. A shadow has no depth, it just moves depending on the positioning of these three things, leaving no sign of itself in its previous location which is what A Shadow is Present, by Studio Yarnatak, is trying to show. Carpets, on the other hand, are heavy and still, soft and insulating with fixed shape and texture. In this case, it becomes a possible tangible shadow, mimicking the floor it is placed on.

Studio Yarnatak is an independent handmade rug and design studio based in Haifa, Israel founded by Maria Feigin and Geaya Blory. They design and manufacture irregular shaped rugs, without any harm to animals.

A Shadow is Present by Studio Yarnatak

A Shadow is Present

swimming under blue fog in jerusalem

Based on an exploration of the possibilities of light, Llacuna by MEATS ELisava was intended as an homage to the past, using light to recreate the mysterious sensations of a swamp, as it reemerges temporarily in today’s urban surroundings. Amid the gardens refurbished heritage building of Hansen House, the aim is to immerse active visitors into a plane of light that evokes and embodies the atmosphere of a primordial swamp by erasing the urbanized ground and creating a misty humid feeling. The focus of the installation is on the people as they sink into the horizontal plane of light and generate shadows and discover the ambience of the life-giving water at the origin Jerusalem’s dryness. 

Llacuna by MEATS ELisava

Lead by Roger Paez, Toni Montes, Gabi Paré, and Maria de la Cámara, LLACUNA was designed and built for the LlumBCN light festival of 2018 by a team of architects, designers and students from the Elisava Design and Engineering Faculty of Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya UVic-UCC).  The school that promotes education, knowledge and research creates MEATS to explore how to rethink the aims, methodologies and results of architecture and spatial design practices in the era where temporary is the new permanent. 

Legend has it that the wondrous waters of the Fountain of Youth cure diseases, preserve youthfulness, reverse aging, and even grant eternal life. Throughout history, many researchers and adventurers have searched for such fountains, unaware that one exists right here, in the Hansen House courtyard. Transparent and elusive, there and not there, it holds the water and is the water all at the same time. In this era of drying lakes and melting icebergs, the search for life-giving water is more relevant than ever.

One of the artist is Idan Sidi, an Israeli designer and illustrator with a keen eye for detail and a passion for aesthetics. His work spans various disciplines, leaving a lasting impact on the world of design. His design partner Gal Sharir is a Tel Aviv-based multidisciplinary designer, visual artist, and developer who with a diverse skill set creates captivating designs that transcend traditional boundaries.

Fountain of Youth by Idan Sidi and Gal Sharir

close-up of Fountain of Youth by Idan Sidi and Gal Sharir

Agency for Unseen Sights is a newly founded agency that provides infrastructure to turn any place into a place of interest. Through objects, places that at first-hand don’t seem special, can be transformed into must-sees. Dutch designer Esmée Willemsen wishes for these objects to function as reminders, markers and guidance to frame a certain place or to merely attract attention. Can scenic views be enjoyed anywhere?

Agency for Unseen Sights by Esmée Willemsen

Fabricated Code explores a creative collaboration between a human and a computer, where both collaborators are integral and independent participants in the process. A computer encodes a card, which is then used to knit a garment in a semi-automated process. The formula is predetermined by the computer, but the production process requires human intervention, and the raw material is chosen by a human. The computer can optimize processes and eliminate human error, but in this case, it generates code without context, and its errors cause aberrations in the knitting process.

Artist Shahar Asor is a multidisciplinary industrial designer and researcher, specializing in parametric design, 3D printing and knitting on domestic and industrial machines. Her works aim to merge different fields of knowledge to produce new and surprising outcomes.

Fabricated Code by Shahar Asor

close-up of Fabricated Code by Shahar Asor

Wood is a common building and industrial material that is portrayed as a ‘natural’ resource. Despite its potential for reuse, renewal and biodegradability, the wood chain today is far from being circular. WoodenWood is a prototypical material driven design process that addresses the waste problem through the development of seating elements as a case study mat. Composed of wood waste in the form of raw wood, sawdust and cellulose-based natural binders, it suggests the potential to replace petroleum based materials in design applications and reduce large amounts of material waste from agriculture, municipal and industrial sites.

Avi Cohen, Yuval Berger, Yoav Dabas, Alon Nisan, and Shany Barath form the design-led technological research group called [say.research] within D.dlab. Located in Haifa, Israel, their primary focus is on investigating additive manufacturing workflows utilizing biobased, waste, and biological materials.

WoodenWood by Avi Cohen, Yuval Berger, Yoav Dabas, Alon Nisan, and Shany Barath

WoodenWood

Hidhud is a continuous experimental performance that seeks to design illusions through sound, exposing the hidden layer of sounds that our body produces. The performer, Nir Jacob Younessi, brings the small, mundane sounds people often ignore to the forefront of attention through movement and touch, using the different textures of his body and clothes, and motion sensors placed on his hands and feet. Breathing sounds like thunder, a caress sounds like an earthquake, and marching in place sounds like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. 

Nir Jacob Younessi is an Israeli based interdisciplinary artist and electronic-classical musician. Through programming, sensors, and natural materials, he engineers unique sound experiences with works that have graced theater, circus, and contemporary art venues worldwide. 

Hidhud by Nir Jacob Younessi

Nir Jacob Younessi’s Hidhud

Hansen House | image © Hanna Tayeb

project info:

event: Jerusalem Design Week 2023 | @jlmdesignweek

general and content directors: Smadar Tsook and Ran Wolf, Ran Wolf Company

chief curators: Dana Benshalom and Sonja Olitsky

artistic director: Dr. Jeremy Fogel 

curatorial assistant: Roni Yehezkel

chief producer: Yael Hershkowitz

content and marketing: Karine Shabtai
location: Hansen House, 14 Gedalyahu Alon St, Jerusalem, Israel

dates: 22-29 June, 2023

photography: Dor Kedmi | @dkedmi