From the exhibition text, Haifa Museum:
A project that emerged from the daily life of the singer, creator and composer Talya Eliav who wanted to get to know her neighbors, and not just the voices emanating from their apartments.
Eliav invited her neighbors to listen with her to the sounds that fill their private and shared daily lives in Bat Galim neighborhood, (Haifa, Israel(. In these encounters, the sea, the road, the construction site, the sounds of the vegetation, the chirping of the birds, as well as the private thoughts, all those things that make up the so-called banal everyday soundtrack, were revealed in all their complexity. The shared listening allowed a dive into the public living space, and into the private experience as well. The practice was documented in listening-diaries, which described the private listening experiences of group members and the sounds accompany them in daily life. The attempt to transcribe and translate, whether in words, writing or drawing the listening experience is an essential part of the project, and allows a glimpse into both the participants personal world and attempts to define the elusive experience of sound and listening, which our vocabulary and images are too narrow to contain.
In the work placed in the Art Center of the Haifa museum, Eliav creates a space that is ex-territory, which seeks to allow a meditative experience of listening by neutralizing the centrality that is usually given to the sense of sight. In this space, the sounds of the Arts Center mix with the everyday sounds of the Bat Galim neighborhood, sounds that Eliav recorded and sampled. The experience of devoting oneself to listening requires intention and even effort on the part of the practitioner, but it involves a re-discovery of the existing, and a renewed fascination with the everyday and the familiar.
The "Listen" notebook given in the exhibition, offers a taste of the participants private diaries and the practice experience.
Participants: Nehami Caspi-Druk, Gili Martonovitz, Eli Fridman, Mark Fishman, Tanya Sikora-Shefer.
Mix: Shai Lowenstein
Mentoring: Oded Hircsh
Curators: Oz Zloof, Anat Martakovich