Returning for an 18th year, Jerusalem’s fascinating multicultural neighborhood will host dozens of international artists and musicians for a rich and dynamic program, “offering visitors a window to a new, complex, fickle and surprising reality.”
Expressing the Naggar Multidisciplinary School of Art and Society’s belief in the significant influence of the creative process on our perception of society and identity, the Musrara Mix Festival explores the political and cultural essense of Jerusalem through a hub of artistic and social events. The school welcomes the public to experience the Musrara neighborhood, be a guest in its yards, meet the residents, and take part in their empowering learning experience.
This year’s festival is centered around the theme Breathturn, about uncertainty and other disturbances. Coined by European Jewish poet Paul Celan, the term refers to the maintenance of balance in precarious times to provide hope.
A variety of artworks, musical performances, and seminars will be held across Musrara’s gallery complexes, courtyards, halls, streets, and public spaces, all free for the public to wander and explore.
One of this year’s special programs will include dozens of performance art exhibitions, called Behavior Problems. Held in the center of the neighborhood at Gan Haksamim, the program will actively engage visitors in the concept of unpredictability. In a secret location only exposed to audiences pre-registered at the information center, the festival will even host a surprise performance.
Musrara’s New Gallery will present Fragmented Vision, an exhibition showcasing Lior Gal’s investigation of realism and fantasy through photography, a video filmed in a volcano crater by two Italian artists, and Saverio Cantoni’s visit to Mars in an interactive performance, created special for the festival. Along with numerous other gallery exhibitions, the Derfler Gallery’s exhibition plans to, “unravel the familiar dynamics between curators and artists based on cooperation, control, and organization, to examine and rebuild them on the principles of uncertainty.”
Throughout the festival, Musraropera, a collaborative radio opera, will broadcast “evocative acoustic images” based on the voices recorded in the neighborhood flowing through the streets. Creating an innovative artistic-technological project, 20 artists in art, code, hardware, music, and movement will participate in a two-day marathon collaboration, Hackathon, to be presented at the festival’s closing event.
The Musrara Department of New Media students will present virtual reality works, while photography students work with artists on large-scale projections and photography exhibits, and the music department will perform in a variety of ensembles as well. Meanwhile, the week will also host many renowned professional artists and musicians such as Noga Erez.
Numerous international artists prepare to present a symposium and panel titled, Art and Technology in an Age of Uncertainty. Ending the festival of a multitude of other workshops, exhibits, performances, lectures, and engaging experiences, experts in a variety of fields gather to discuss the scientific, cultural, and psychological unknown in Aftershock.
Head out to Masrara May 29-31, 19:00 to 23:00, to investigate the essence of Jerusalem in all of its deeply intricate cultural and political wonder, through the inspiring power of innovative art.
For more detailed explanations of the series of programming and a full schedule of events, visit their website.