Editors Note Critical Situation The title of this current issue of Maakaf is Critical Situation, but it doesnt deal

with it, at least not in a direct manner. Its not for the lack of plays, dance shows, performances, and other artistic endeavors concerning the Israeli reality. On the contrary: Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor in their new work Ship of Fools, Ido Bornstein and Shlomo Plesner in their work Dogs, Muslala group, Irina Birger, Maria Pomiansky, and Masha Rubin in their group exhibition 3 for 10 - to name only a few of the artists dealing with the subject in their current processes. And so this issue isnt looking at the ways in which contemporary artistic projects handle the situation but rather at the relationship between the performing arts and reality, between aesthetics and politics in its broader sense. The writers in this issue carry on a long philosophical tradition of dealing with this relationship between the aesthetic and the political. It could even be traced back to Platos Politeia, and his position in regards to the space the arts occupy within the ideal state he had imagined, but the bulk of the essays in this issue rely on contemporary critical dialogue. In Marxism for example, arts are considered to be a part of the ideological struggle, in the sense that they support, or challenge the fundamental value of a given society. And thus, for the Marxist, the value of art is defined according to its political value. At the basis of this ideology is the assumption that art has a real and long-lasting effect on the various aspects of life, including its cultural and material aspects, and it plays an active role in changes taking place in the real world. It seems that a similar approach is taken by Dana Yahalomi, who is speaking with Tamuz Binshtok on the work of Public Movement. The group, founded by Omer Krieger and Yahalomi herself, is interested in the political and aesthetic possibilities inherent in a group of people working together. Since November 2006 Public Movement studies and creates choreographies of the public, shapes of social order, public and hidden ceremonies occurring in the public sphere. A critical approach to the Marxist point of view, that claims that the value of an art work is defined by its relationship with political and social ideas, meaning on a criteria which is essentially a non-aesthetic critique, were outlined by philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse; Marcuse recognizes art as the container of its own revolutionary potential, which is derived from its aesthetics and form meaning, each artwork acts as a subversive force against perception and understanding, denunciation of institutionalized reality, as the appearance of the liberating figure. Art being the manifestation of the aesthetic stands to renounce the given reality. On the other hand, since it inhabits the realm of the aesthetic, it doesnt posses the power to become an active force in the context of the material, utilitarian reality. Its essentially a perception of art as a dichotomized, dual ideology: the one who is embedded in, and subservient of, the nature of the oppressive civilization, and at the same time rebels against it and in doing so exposes potential possibilities of liberation. The essence of art, and of the aesthetic in general is reliant on seconds of affirmation and negation.

Hillel Kogan casts doubt on the possibility of art to exist only in its aesthetic manifestation. Through discussing abstract art, music, painting and dance, Kogan explores the possibility of art that isnt political. The French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, who any debate on politics and art cannot take place without mentioning his book Le Partage du sensible: Esthetique et Politique, asserts that: aesthetics and politics refer to the same thing the division of the perceived, the schematic nature of our perception, our framework, the direction of the situation, our perception and understanding of it, our delineation of space and time, the ways in which we experience togetherness, to situations of being here or there, in the middle of something or before we beginI believe that this is the subject of art, the aesthetics. And in that context I said that theres the politics of aesthetics, but also the aesthetics of politics (freehand translation). That is not to say that every expression of art is also necessarily a political act of sorts. Ranciere himself points at the idea of art being able to make politics is overrated, if not unrealistic. A performance doesnt result in an immediate effect of fracture. However, it may offer (not just) information but also what Ranciere calls displacement of perception, and thus contribute to the creation of political sensitivity. In other words, artists create different forms of small communities in which they try new ways of perception, experience re-framing of data and looking at different impressions of the world. Noam Segal agrees with Ranciere and wishes to examine how different artists create epistemology of visibility and help the creation of political imagination within the communities in which they present their work. In her essay, Segal wishes to explore the relationship between artifacts created by artists, the ways in which the audience view and participate, and the political responses that follow. Boris Groys also points at the liberating aspect of performance art, despite the fact it often gets overlooked. According to Groys, contemporary art encourages the audience to contemplate the space around them, and their community with which they share the viewing experience, and in his words: art today, in its formal structure, is social and political, because it considers the gathering of a group of people in a public space, and the creation of a community an independent reflexive process that isnt bound in the existence or nonexistence of a political message by a certain artist. This approach is present in a conversation between Ehud Darash, Assaf Aharonson, and Gilad Ben Ari, facilitated by Lee Meir, in lieu of this issues Flies on The Wall. These young dance makers are partaking in the 2011 Dance Arena Festival, centering on the topic of response to reality, under the artistic directorship of Arkadi Zaides and Anat Danieli. In his book, The Power of Art, Groys responds to the comparison between art and terror. It is, of course, the same discourse involving Baudrillard, Zizek and others; only Groys offers a slightly different point of view. The terrorist, in his mind, is an iconophile. His purpose is to construct powerful images that we perceive as real, as iconic of the political reality, immune to criticism of their representation. While many other theorists perceive these images as a return to the real, a visual proof of the end of criticism of imagery, to Groys they represent the universally agreed imagery of the political sublime.

In Groys opinion we now witness not the return of the real, but of the political sublime; nowadays all the political forces of the world are involved in the manufacturing of a heightened political sublime by competing on the creation of the strongest image, the most powerful and terrifying one. To him, the most necessary criticism on representation today, is threefold: one that will analyze the usage of such imagery of violence as the new icons of the political sublime; one that will analyze the struggle around winning the symbolic status; that will analyze the commercial value of the strong imagery. In his mind, an artistic context is perfect for this sort of criticism, which also seems to be the one offered in Yasmeen Godders Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder discussed in this issue. Godder describes how those representations of the political reality served as a basis for her research and creative processes, and how their future re-presentation is used to instigate discussion and raise critical questions. Michael Kelly points at the fact that from the moment art became autonomous (separate from state), and ironically, because of its lack of dependency on state politics, it has assumed a new role, a kind of moral weapon for public criticism, often against the state itself. Dor Guez, in a photographic series from his exhibition Al Ludd, wishes to bring to the public sphere the discussion around the forgetting of the old city of Lod, which is in effect, the Palestinian Al Ludd. His photographs seek to bring attention to the gap that exists between history and memory, as a part of the political struggle on the very images that constitute these terms. Sharon Aronson-Lehavis essay deals with the theoretical question of the possibility of representation of the situation in drama. In the essay Aronson-Lehavi doesnt deal directly with the Israeli (or non-Israeli) reality, and leaves it to the readers to make the connections. It can also be argued that Maria Irene Fornes, whose work sits at the core of Aronson-Lehavis analysis, presents in her unique way, values and positions which can be adopted or negated, without doing it directly in the context of ex-diagetic reality. And while thinking of this ex-diagetic reality, in this issues Biilboard section, readers will be able to find information on Israel-based artistic-social-political platforms, relevant international websites as well as the usual information on schools, festivals, residencies, competitions and collaborative opportunities. To summarize, since Maakaf set itself up as a platform for discussion, and in the necessary shift from theory to practice in the real world, I invite you, the readers, to a conference initiated by the magazine committee, in conjunction with Dance Arena Festival and the Israeli Choreographers Association. The details for the conference are at the bottom of this page. Ran Brown