Upon entering the new, modern, well air-conditioned and aesthetically pleasing Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, I couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu from my last year’s annual pilgrimage.

As I walked in, I saw an immense poster hanging from the high concrete ceiling, depicting the images of our fellow countrymen still held in Hamas captivity. A stone-cold slap back into Israeli reality. I understood in that moment that my déjà vu would be quickly erased by the contemporary traumatic setting of the Bezalel Graduate Exhibition 2024, emanated by the main exhibition on show, titled “Simultaneously: Creating in Times of War.”

Art is a form of expression; it transforms an idea, an emotion, a desire into something that can be experienced by others. Art is how we communicate in ways that words simply cannot. This notion is the backbone upon which Bezalel operates. The academy provides a free-flowing license for its students to take their emotions and channel them into a professional art platform that resonates with the observer, conveying a wide plethora of messages and sentiments for the audience to experience.

This audience arrives from all parts of Israeli geography and sectors of society, from the most liberal Jews to the curious Orthodox ones. Arabic translations appear on every single exhibit, encouraging all sectors of Israeli society to come and seek something new. Among the crowds are excited friends and family members, curious to see for themselves what their loved ones have managed to create, having toiled for four years in an attempt to passionately perfect their craft.

‘Emergency Routine’ by Peter Levin & Liv Wetli

I first entered an intriguingly dark room located in the middle of the academy’s entrance. A huge screen came to life, with two bright and contrasting words appearing in its center.

The film depicted a short but captivating sequence of daily Israeli reality during the past 10 months of war.

Emergency Routine shows an elderly woman preparing her breakfast while a dire news update rattles out of an old radio. An Orthodox Jew saying a silent prayer before breaking into uncontrollable dance during the annual Nahlaot neighborhood Purim street party. A female combat soldier returns home, and all she can do is remove her boots before sinking into a blank stare. A young man lies in his bed, his eyes rooted to the bare ceiling. The camera slowly zooms out to reveal a neglected room, emphasizing the emptiness he feels.

I left the dark room with a deep sadness and an even deeper understanding: This year truly is different.

Dealing with trauma during everyday life

I caught up with Peter and Liv, the creators of this surreal project.

“We’re very connected to the Nova community," they said. “Some family members and friends went to the festival that took place prior to this last one. It struck us very deeply, and so we wanted to incorporate these feelings in the movie.“

"Imagine you're at a party in central Israel. A few hours in, the sirens sound, the music stops, and everyone takes cover where they can. After the rockets land around you, the music returns, and so does the dancing. This is a reality familiar to many Israelis; it embodies the apex of surrealism,” they added.

"Since October 7, we've been experiencing situations and realities that we simply could not comprehend, finding ourselves living through moments quickly shifting between trauma and normality. These moments of contradicting realities made us take an outside perspective on ourselves and everything that was going on around us. On the one hand, the situations we were exposed to struck us as completely absurd, yet in each of them, we found something deeply human at its root.“

“We remember seeing that famous video of surviving Nova DJs performing in front of hostage pictures stapled to wooden poles. We were shocked at their ability to perform like usual, using music as a release mechanism,” they said in bewilderment.

A second inspiration, one that starts off their project, is a scene depicting five soldiers conducting a yoga session in the heart of Gaza during an ongoing bombardment.

We felt like this scene embodied precisely these contradictions we were so constantly confronted with. They have long become part of our everyday life, and we felt that we, as creators, need to shed light on them. We want to give the people who live in this 'emergency routine' a moment of consciousness. To see the heaviness, the absurdity, the pain, the sorrow,  and the bright moments despite everything, and maybe eventually the normality in all of this, that we are all just human beings trying to cope with an uncopable reality.“

Peter and Liv are currently in Switzerland promoting their powerful project, aiming to show the Israeli reality of the past 10 months to as many audiences as possible, emanating their mission to share the emergency routine we are all currently experiencing.

The project’s creators lifted my spirits. And with this confidence, I entered perhaps the most visually intriguing section of the exhibition: industrial design, the department where boundaries are truly limitless. Anything goes: any function, any material, any size. The results were incredible. New construction blocks made of pure natural salt; a backpack that turns into a three-person campsite; a versatile Magen David Adom-designated unicycle that can easily transport any wounded individual with greater ease and dexterity than a standard stretcher. 

I saw countless graduates who are honestly and adamantly trying to better society. I was deeply moved by this.

mehpetr.work@gmail.com 

‘PATCH’ by Michal Harkabi

The project that resonated with me most was Michal Harakbi’s PATCH. In collaboration with Ben-Gurion University’s biomedical department, she has created a scar-tissue healing, fully customizable silicone patch for a vast array of injuries and epidermis-related issues.

“I was in reserve duty for the first four months of the war,” she said. “I was on the verge of postponing my final year here, but I decided that if I come back it will be to use my abilities and the tools at my disposal to help those injured from our national tragedy heal inside and out.”

Scars were the perfect example of this desire. “They carry a difficult memory on the inside and portray an external mark of previous bodily harm,” the healthcare innovator explained. “Israelis love to ask about scars: It’s indicative of our classic tactless manner. Scars are an integral part of us, a permanent unwanted tattoo of sorts – and like tattoos, they all have a story. I wanted to celebrate that story.”

You often see athletes with these colorful straps on their knees and shoulders, but no one deems these plasters bad or wrong, Harkabi pointed out. “No, we admire the athletes’ ability to carry on through the pain; we see them as displaying signs of strength, not shame. Survivors of severe wounds are no different. Scars should be celebrated, especially while healing.”

The patches you see are all created to mend the damaged scar tissue as much as possible, she said, but they are also completely customizable to fit the shape of your scar, highlighting its presence rather that covering it up in some “skin-colored,” oversized patch that does not help you process your wound but renders you constantly ashamed of it.

“We will soon see many wounded friends and family members that are only now emerging from our hospitals with countless new scars,” Harkabi predicted. “It’s time we take pride in our stories of survival when facing all forms of danger. It will be not only for those scarred; it will strengthen us all.”

michal@harkabi.com

‘Phantom Limb’ by Eden Ishay

Filled with inspiration about what truly amazing things can be created when you combine an idea with the determination to materialize it, I drifted from the industrial design exhibit toward the visual communications department, one I remembered fondly from last year.

The exhibition consists of several dark rooms, each complete with a bench and an expansive screen. There are explanation plaques in every room, but I tend to simply pick one at random and wait to see what’s in store. When Eden Ishay’s Phantom Limb appeared on the screen, my method paid off big time.

The short film begins with a typical yet peaceful scene taking place in one of Jerusalem’s lush green parks. Kids play on the swirling tube-shaped slides. Newborns cry and fall back to sleep in their comfy strollers, with overwhelmed parents praying they succeed. Cooped-up dogs tirelessly chase each other in play-like fashion, letting off as much steam as possible before the leash comes back on.

This idyllic vista is obscured each time by Ishay’s worrying comments. “That kid on the slide is going to sprain his ankle.” “Doesn’t that mother notice her baby twisting and turning in agony?” “One of those dogs is going to bite some child and traumatize him for life.”

Like phantom limbs, the sensation felt when a person feels pain in body parts that are no longer there, the filmmaker sees danger when there is none yet to observe.

The scene then transitions to Ishay’s apartment, where she arranges to have a new nursery designed for her future child. The walls are painted in a serene sky blue, surveillance cameras are installed, metal bars are added to the existing ones for extra safety, and smoke detectors and a hefty fire extinguisher are not overlooked.

She then begins the final preparation, assembling the crib, all while attempting to contact every Israeli hotline and information center out there in the hopes of being reassured about her never-ending fears of imminent disaster for herself and her child, a child that as the film progresses is revealed to be a figment of her imagination.

Phantom Limb ends with Ishay reinforcing the crib to such an extent that it reaches the ceiling, rendering it a useless wooden prison cell for her imaginary baby.

Letting anxiety run loose 

I was quite enthralled by this project and simply had to speak to its creator. I contacted Ishay right away, and she was very happy to share her story.

“Children are the most important thing in this world, and so losing them is the biggest fear out there,” she explained.

“This war and this year have really sparked that fear within me, that and [losing] control of my reality. If I feel such a strong sense of helplessness. How can I bring a child into this world? I am genuinely afraid of the life it will have in this country.”

She said that she knew full well that she was experiencing anxiety. “But instead of trying to analyze its properties, I decided to let it simply unfold and take over my life. The Jerusalem park scene portrays just how anxiety easily takes over reality. You see good, I see bad. You are carefree, I am worried.”

The project expresses these feelings of anxiety through agency. “I use the nursery as a tool to measure how far anxiety takes me. I end up wanting to protect my unconceived child to such a drastic extent that I end up creating an inhospitable bedroom for it, showing how my anxiety not only obscured reality but created one of detriment rather than constructive precaution,” she explained.

“Anxiety is real, we all feel it. I wanted to show how it can take over our sanity if we allow it too much room in our lives. However, if we talk to each other, if we share our feelings and don’t keep them unhealthily bottled up, we can control them and their negative effects on us,” Ishay said.

“I wanted the audience to laugh at anxiety while acknowledging its legitimacy. Only by processing these difficult emotions will we be able to continue living here, bringing new life and happy memories into the world,” she said. “I will continue to create stories that promote this important idea.”

edendino329@gmail.com■