Hanging Garden
גן תלוי
Site specific performance at Safra Sq, Jerusalem, 2021
Safra Square, Jerusalem Municipality
45 minutes
"Hanging Garden" is a performative piece that takes place in Safra square - the center of Jerusalem's municipal facilities. The piece aims to create an immersive and engaging listening experience within this bustling environment. Twenty-one performers gradually inhabit the space, creating a temporary deterritorialized area that becomes a performative zone. The performers move through the square playing, singing, and choreographing movements that produce a dynamic sound experience. Their actions constantly modify the boundaries of the "garden."
"Hanging Garden" reinvents the square as a highly sensitive environment of sounds and movements. This blurs the lines between intentional performance and incidental occurrences, making the audience - municipal workers, passersby, and others in the square significant contributors to the creation and continuation of "Hanging Garden” (“hanging” in Hebrew also means “dependent”). Within this estranged environment, even everyday events like a street-cleaning vehicle crossing are perceived as significant occurrences.
The entirely acoustic music incorporates parade motifs, horn blasts, polyphonic textures, syllabic singing, echoing, antiphonal techniques, and extended silences.
The conception of "Hanging Garden" coincided with the ongoing mass protests in Israel against government corruption. Taking cues from the demonstrations as an alternative public space performance, "Hanging Garden" nurtures an immersive environment that spotlights each distinct voice, sound, and action, underscoring the reverberating impact they collectively generate.
Credits
Creation, composition, production: Tom Klein
Violin: Ilan Barkani, Ido Zohar, Maya Pennington, Tamir Friedrich, Sharon Elazar, Amir Bultzman, Dorin Amitzur, Dor Magen, Noam Achdut, Bar Eran, Gideon Levi, Amit Fishbein, Tamar Shalit, Ido Akov, Noga Segev, Rafael Enderlin, Grisha Lomize
French Horn: Ido Hayek
Tenor Saxophone: Eli Korman
Bass Clarinet: Nitai Levi
Barrier Tape: Anna Rozman
Flower Design: Polly Geltzer
Artistic Consulting: Amnon Wolman, Tamar Borer
Video: Tania Shrayfel
Photo: Natasha Shahknes
special thanks to Steve Horenstein and Matti Gur for lending violins.