Harmonic Chaos . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . Bezalel
Academy Of Arts & Design
Hilal Jabareen
Seminar//The Big City// Oded Mendah-Levy //October 2014 . . . . . . . . .
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A research about cities. A mix of my visual memories and experiences from cities and the thoughts of people that wander, go through, live, work, search, study, party & maybe one day even die in those cities.
Hilal Jabareen
Lat: 39.191477, Long: -123.573581
Name ? Hilal//
Age ? 25// Live in? Jerusalem// City ? Yes// Born there ? No// For how long ? 3 Years//
Why this city ? To study and get away from home to start my life as a grown-up// What do you do in it ? Try to get the hell out of it//
Like somthing in it ? My friends from Uni and coffee in the old city//
Where would you like to live & why ? In every city I will stumble upon, for a limited amount of time, then move on to the next one. I love exploring places and their people and learn more about myself this way//
Lat: 45.5, Long:-73.583297729492
Nairooz //26//Haifa//Yes //No//5 Years// Universtity //Study//Work// Social life //Friend gatherings// Coffee//Bars //Freque of shows & concerts//None, Nature
Lat: 37.384498596191, Long:122.08809661865
Ross //25//San Fransisco //Yes//No//1 Year //always wanted to// Work//Nightlife// General atmosphere // Madrid, best lifestyle.
Lat: 31.825099945068, Long:34.747398376465
Ayed //27//Haifa//Yes// Yes//Living// working//breathing //Kicking// Everything, except its regime// Barcelona, I love the people over there //Learn spanish //Eat lots of Paeah!
Lat: 32.332901000977, Long:34.859901428223
Isaak //35//Zoran//No// Yes//Too crowded and noisy //Accessibility to everything //Nightlife//I prefer living in a more suburban or even rural place near the sea.
Lat: 45.5, Long:-73.583297729492
Adi //33//MontrĂŠal, Canada//Yes//No //Five months //It was a mutual decision with my girlfriend, to follow our passions& to get the hell out of israel//Music & study French for now //The atmosphere, ambiance, volume, the vertical shapes& it's nature//Palestine Because it's still utopian.
Lat: 45.5, Long:-73.583297729492
SAMIHA //31//MONTREAL //Yes//No//5 Months //To immigrate from Palestine where I didn't feel i could find inspiration and be able to fulfill my dreams //I'm establishing my life and lookking for a work oppertunity as an architect and interior designer //The scale of the city where you have calmness of the country side and chaos of the city. The rich cultural life. music, film and art. amazing culinary experiences. nice resturants and bars. parks everywhere. calm people. Limasol,Cyprus. it's on the sea. my best friends is there, it's a city of medeteranian tradition.
Lat: 52.516700744629, Long:13.39999961853
May //21//Berlin//Yes// No//5 months//To study//Look for a flat, learn german, and work//The vibe //Not any, a quite village maybe.
Lat: 32.815601348877, Long:34.989200592041
Amal //57//Haifa//Yes//No //43 years//Studies// Live//It has a special "atmosphere" //Haifa, as above.
Lat: 31.5, Long:34.75
Ohad //28//Jerusalem// Yes//No//3 years //School//Work & study//The food,The people //Tel Aviv, It's more happy.
Lat: 31.5, Long:34.75
Rabia //35//haifa//Yes// No//4 years//study// Work//almost nothing//In village cause its more harmonic for my taste.
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EPILOGUE A city's atmosphere, in my view, is determined by two variables. The first is the people of the specific city. The second is the state of mind of the person perceiving this particular city. I realised this during my travels and when iI moved to Jerusalem, a city that can change dramatically in a matter of days, depending on the collective mood/ feelings of its inhabitants. What you saw in the previous pages are simple, intuitive answers, of people from different cities, to even simpler questions that I asked. I was seeking for these simple impulsive answers for the sake of keeping a bigger place for maneuvering my imagination and personal impressions, so I can create a collage that visualizes my thoughts and the peoples thoughts of a particular city. I must note that I visited all of these cities and lived in most of them. That makes me both a spectator and former resident. and as a "resident" I could notice the reflection of my mind-set on the impression of the people who came to visit me. Even though i'm just a single soul in a big metropoline. so I can imagine what a collective state of mind of a big group of people can do to a visitors experience of a particular city. Why did I choose to make collages you may ask. Well, the first reason is because this is my favorite way of
expressing myself visually. The second reason is that I view cities as a forced combination of different kinds of people, cultures, thoughts, atmospheres, colors, smells and what not. But somehow harmonic! Exactly like a collage. Or at least how I view a collage and how I view myself. Harmonic chaos. A collection of objects & entities forced upon each other for a certain purpose and somehow managing to harmonize and create something bigger, a city. Something strange that I noticed after collecting the answers of people is that only one person (Amal) chose the city he lives in now (Haifa) as the city "he would like to live in". Haifa is where i was born and raised and I'v always wanted to move out from it, when I finally moved out I started reminiscing about Haifa and wondering wether it was because I live there most of my life and feel most comfortable there, or, maybe it is actually a special city with special people that make a special atmosphere. Others chose more exotic places like Cyprus or Spain which i can kind of understand (Sun, Beach, Europeans !!). But another interesting thing that drew my attention is that 5 out of 10 people would like to move out from the city to the nature or a village, somthing that I didn't expect from the Post-Modern city dwellers that I asked ! To conclude I will say that it was a fun experiment that made me think more about the City and specifically the people of the city and the people as a race that somehow ended up building these huge artificial habitats and got so attached to them, physically and mentally. A city wouldn't be itself without the people and people are not themselves without the city !
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. . . . . . . from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino "Travelers return from the city of Zirma with distinct memories: a blind black man shouting in the crowd, a lunatic teetering on a skyscraper's cornice, a girl walking with a puma on a leash. Actually many of the blind men who tap their canes on Zirma's cobblestones are black; in every skyscraper there is someone going mad; all lunatics spend hours on cornices; there is no puma that some girl does not raise, as a whim. The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind. I too am returning from Zirma: my memory includes dirigibles flying in all directions, at window level; streets of shops where tattoos are drawn on sailors' skin; underground trains crammed with obese women suffering from the humidity. My traveling companions, on the other hand, swear they saw only one dirigible hovering among the city's spires, only one tattoo artist arranging needles and inks and pierced patterns on his bench, only one fat woman fanning herself on a train's platform. Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist."