States of Response

Three years since October 7

Over the past three years, the war has reshaped the face of Tel Aviv–Yafo and the lives of its residents. It entered the streets and homes, the daily routine, and public space. The city, for its part, responded: squares became hubs of assembly and protest, hotels and public institutions opened their doors, civic initiatives sprang up, and people set out to act, to help, to create, and to be together.

States of Response is an evening of artistic actions that look at the ways the city and its people met the years of war – in protest and in action, in hosting and in aid, in mourning and in gathering, and in the forces that awoke within a reality that kept changing again and again.

Artistic direction: Yonatan Blumenfeld

The evening will take place in two sessions: 19:30 / 21:00.

Each session opens with the performance “Square Rap,” after which participants continue to one of three content activities, selected through advance registration.*

Part I:

Shared opening performance | Square Rap: When Action Becomes Voice

Production and musical direction: Itamar Brill

A large protest is made up of thousands of human moments: an action, an encounter, a glance, a spoken sentence.

“Square Rap” brings rappers together with the people, actions, and realities that shaped the city’s public space during the years of war. Ahead of the event, the rappers will dive into stories and materials from the City Museum’s story collection on changing urban space, activism, and protest, and write new pieces in response. On stage, actions that happened in the street become voice, and the stories of people and moments become part of the story the city tells about itself.

Featuring: Shir Gabai, Baalzvoov, Roni Chaver, N.G.

During the performance, there will also be a screening of the film “The Hostages’ Protest,” curated by Keren Oz, which joins the museum’s wall of protests.

Part II

Content session of your choice (1 of 3)

After the opening performance, participants continue with 1 of 3 activities of their choice, with advance registration:

1. Welcome Home: A performance around a table, on hosting, displacement, and home

Creator: Ayelet Golan

A performance-and-storytelling piece that brings together guests and hosts, home and displacement, personal story and shared experience.

During the years of war, Tel Aviv became a host city. Hotels, public institutions, communities, and private individuals opened their doors to those in need of a home, even a temporary one.

In “Welcome Home,” we gather around a table to meet some of the people who took part in these acts of hosting. Each brings their story to the table, along with something from the act of hosting itself: a gesture, a taste, a movement, or a moment that comes back to life in the encounter with the audience.

Featuring: Berhane Negasi, Michal Vaknin, and Yair Meyuhas

2. First Person: A headphone journey for individuals, following one person who started a movement

Creator: Mor Lidor, inspired by and in collaboration with Avichai Brodetz

What makes a person leave home and start a protest? What happens in the moment when the sense that you have to do something overrides uncertainty or fear?

Chairs and headphones will be available throughout the museum, and visitors will be invited to set out, each on their own, on a journey following a person who decided to act – before they knew who would join them or where it would lead. Through voices and moments of impetus, anticipation, solitude, and connection, we draw closer to the intimate moment that precedes the public act: the moment when one person begins.

3. Full Howl: A communal singing ceremony around mourning

Noam Enbar, in a communal singing ceremony around mourning

Through songs written and gathered in a time of crisis, we come together in grief, in its broadest sense, and give voice to the experience of what once was and is no more.

This is an invitation to mourn something or someone: a person who is gone, a home that was lost, a life that changed, an era that ended, or anything else that asks for a place.

Singers and performers:

Noam Enbar

Laila Mazal Yinishen

Amit Fishbein

Sapir Rosenblatt

Wall / Tell Me Anything: A public space for processing

Creator: Irit Sternberg

As they leave the performances, participants pass through a quiet space for reflection. There, they can write in their own handwriting and share an insight from the evening or from any other moment in the past three years.

They choose whether to release their words – placing them in a box that will never be opened – or to preserve them, handing them to the artist, who will assemble them into a temporary wall of memory and forgetting.

During the years of war, the walls of public space were covered with heartbreaking signs and stickers. The temporary wall seeks to take that practice apart and reassemble it – to turn the cry of the street into a gentle act of shared making, a remembrance chosen freely.

*The event’s content, schedule, or line-up of participants may change due to circumstances.