Vacuum Service | The Outdoor Sculptures series
Vacuum Service: Noa Itzhaki, Dori Cohen Forster, Einat Segev And Inbal Hacker
Site-specific choreography in public space.
“Vacuum Service” is a cleaning and maintenance group that operates in artistic spaces from a stance of care and attention. The group uses tools of choreography to create differentiation and an expansion of the everyday act of cleaning, directing an aesthetic and critical gaze toward it. Until now, the group has worked within the museum walls, and this year, in the two performances that will be presented at the Manofim Festival in the Outdoor Sculptures series, the group will venture into public space for the first time.
With the support of the Visual Arts and Public Space departments, Culture and Arts Division, Jerusalem municipality
Produced with the assistance of the Lottery Council for Culture and Art
The Outdoor Sculptures series #1 Homage to Jerusalem - Stabile (The Red Sculpture)
18:00-19:30The first piece was created for the sculpture Homage to Jerusalem (1977), the last ‘Stabile’ by Alexander Calder. Its six red steel arches, weighing about 65 tons, were erected as a monumental and eternal testament echoing the surrounding mountain lines. The sculpture is located on Mount Herzl, on a threshold area between the city and Wadi Ein Kerem, and its bright red color is meant to contrast with the opposite mountain landscape. In its exposed existence in the public space, the structure collects graffiti, dust, and remnants of time and urban life.
In their work with the sculpture, the group will clean the plaza surrounding it. Against the eternal steel of the Stabile, the action of the passing human body offers a formal resonance to the spaces and arches of the structure. The choreography of cleaning seeks to reveal the tension between the weight of the monumental and the sculptural delicacy of the work, and invites passersby to look again at the outlines of the sculpture and the landscape seen through them.
The Outdoor Sculptures series #2 Water
12:00-10:00In its work with Micha Ullman’s sculpture Water (1996), the group operates alongside the two parts of the artwork, which are hidden in the urban space. The sculpture consists of two cast-iron water system manhole covers set at sidewalk level and bearing a handprint — one in Zion Square in the western part of the city, and the other near the New Gate, in the east.
The action moves in a sequence between the two sites. The act of cleaning, which itself tends to hide in the routine of the street, functions here as a choreography that draws the eye to its awkwardness; it invites passersby to look together at the water system manhole covers and at the space between them.
