FACTORY is a bi-focal international exhibition that opens on May 25th in two sites in the city of Bat Yam. FACTORY offers a contemporary stance on the relations between artistic and industrial production, while critically examining the relations between public and private space, and the meanings and possibilities of artistic action within these realms.
FACTORY exhibition brings to the surface the critical tension that resides in production processes of different art practices (video, sound, installation, performance etc.) between the live event, concrete artifacts and their display and consumption. The same tension will arise and echo in the relationship that will be formed between the two venues of the exhibition – an institutional space (the museum) and an alternative one (the industrial area, a non-artistic space and nonetheless a much desired location for art display in the last decade, because of its seemingly raw nature). The artistic activity in each of the sites will be shaped according to the unique characteristics of each space. The exhibition's theme was inspired by Andy Warhol's famous studio, which during the 60s carried diverse functions – a gathering place for the New York bohemia, a site in which both superstars and marginal characters dwelled, a place that shaped the public and artistic persona of Warhol and his companions while functioning as an artist's studio in the full sense of the word, generating artistic production in various mediums.
Parallel to the opening of an exhibition in Bat Yam Museum of Contemporary Art, we will hold a three-day live artistic event, done much in the spirit of Happenings, in the industrial area of the city. This event is the culmination of a wide artistic and curatorial research – 15 artists arrived to the industrial area during May and created site-specific works in collaboration with the local factories and businesses. FACTORY exhibition relates to the renovation process that Bat Yam's industrial area is undergoing these days, as it is transformed into a "business area", materializing a vision of an urban city. The two locations of the exhibition, the industrial area and the museum, are controlled by similar economic and political powers, and are in midst of transformation, thereby creating a rare opportunity to act in a local, exposed and temporary state of affairs. The framework of the industrial area requires a reexamination of curatorial and artistic positions, being aware of the impossibility of seamlessly integrating in the area and of the necessity to articulate the intervention in relation to, and as a part of, the processes that it is going through. We arrive and place one thing on another. The result might agree, overlap, or create a dissonant.
Participating Artists 22quadrat (Denis Vidinski and Patrick Voigt), Angela Klein, Anna Okrasko, Bill Vorn, David Sherry, Ger Ger, Hadas Hasid, Hadas Ophrat, Karolina Freino, Michal Naaman, Nadav Assor and Daniel Davidovsky, Noam Toran and Onkar Kular, PEMA (David Behar Perahia, Caterina Margherita), Dorota Buczkowska, Rakefet Viner Omer, sh.Pixel (Dani Bacon, Ben Benhorin and Hovav Oppenheim), Shay Id Alony, Shelly Federman and Kerem Halbrecht, Szpilman Group (Patrick Koch andTina Kohlmann) and Szpilman Award Winners (Catrin Bolt, Martin Flemming), Wojciech Gilewicz, Yom Gagatzi (Ohad Fishof, Uri Katzenstein, Binya Reches), Yonatan Shilo and Dana Yoeli
Curators Milana Gitzin Adiram, Leah Abir
Opening Mon, May 25th
18:00 Bat Yam Museum of Contemporary Art
19:00 Industrial Area of Bat Yam
Transportation during the three day event
Free transportation between the two sites in Bat Yam between 1800-2300 h
Free transportation from Tel Aviv from to Bat Yam and back (for details please check with MoBY's administration)