ABOUT THE FESTIVAL The MusraraMix festival is an international interdisciplinary event that takes place in the Musrara neighborhood in Jerusalem. It is created and produced by the Naggar school in Musrara. The festival is a focal point on the seam-line between east and west, a center for artistic activities that incorporate the social and political essence of Jerusalem and Israel. The festival gathers people from various groups: social activists, neighborhood residents and creative forces from the fields of art and philosophy. The result is a three day event of international discourse, packed with artistic and social activities. Exhibitions are shown in the public spaces of the neighborhood, as well as in residents’ backyards: Video art, photography, animation, installation, performance, dance and experimental film. Alongside the art events, the department of New Music in Musrara has taken over the main stage, where you’ll be able to experience an ecstatic and groundbreaking marathon of live shows from Israel and overseas: school graduates, students and guests. In recent years the festival chose a theme for each year: “The Other”, “Why Jerusalem”, “The Inner Courtyard”, “Foreign Work”, “World. Islands”, “The Fourth Wall”, “Savage and the City” and more. This year, 2012, the festival will be dedicated to the social and political changes that Israel and the world have undergone in the last year, with an emphasis on deconstructing and reorganizing the subject of ‘home’ as a parable to the revolution. The festival manifests the ideology of the school: the belief that art has a strengthening and constructing role in society as it turns our gaze into society and the identities within it. The Musrara school of art invites you to take part in each of the events of the festival, to experience the neighborhood, tour its alleys, be a guest in the backyards, meet the residents and enjoy some of the best interdisciplinary art made in Israel and the world today. We would like to thank our partners: firstly the residents of Musrara, the public funds and organizations from Israel and abroad that sponsor our activity, and of course our students, teachers and school staff. Avi Sabag Musrara school director and head curator - - - Chaos in Musrara - The revolution begins at home The MusraraMix festival will take place for the twelfth time this year. Every year, the festival aims to shed light on the meeting point between art, music and society. It is located in the public spaces and the backyards of the Musrara neighborhood. This makes MusraraMix a unique festival that connects to the residents by showing exhibitions in their backyards. This year’s art events will respond to the social and political changes in Israel and the world in the past year. We live in an era where people look into themselves, and their homes reflect outwards into society and the streets. It is a reciprocal gaze that is the basis of many of the artworks in the show. Technological breakthroughs and social crises have led us to behave in contradicting manners: on the one hand we shut ourselves in our private space, away from the alienated public space. On the other hand the lines between private and public are blurred. The festival will focus on homemade revolutions, fantasizing about home as a revolutionary agent, one that can create chaos and then make a new order. A kind of revolution that will make us see ordinary and routine things in a new light. The various artworks shown in the backyards exhibition deconstruct familiar elements and reorganize them after giving them a twist and a new meaning. The heart of the chaos will take place in the refurbished school building with a celebration of artworks: video, sound, installation and performance, some of which will be created and change over the festival. In the same way that the festival literally challenges boundaries each year by being set in the neighborhood backyards, so do the artworks this year, by dealing with renewed sensitivity to restriction, understanding the opportunity to grow as a personal identity in this situation, and bringing different people from different backgrounds to interact. The festival will present video works, installation, performance and interactive works from local as well as international artists. Saron Paz and Sharon Horodi Curators - - - Eight performances, eight fairy tales about "home": In time where the number of social and political events increases, questions arise about the meaning of “house” as a place to rest, a place we long for, we work and live in, but also as a place of mystery, fear and uncertainty. Eight performances and actions dealing with: Tradition, consumer culture, the private sphere, the interior and the exterior, body and pain, music and sound, action and mystery… Lior Amir Kariel Curator of performance program