Tel Aviv Central Bus Station on a Saturday Night quite a performance! (…and the ZAZ festival 2012 – International Performance Art Festival)

I felt like I had walked into the streets of Bangkok!  The Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv is a cultural center for all the foreign immigrants – I felt Like I had landed in a foreign country!

But first, the reason I had went –   the International Performance Art Festival – ZAZ 2012.  (to see the invite on facebook, press here)

I called my good friend Lazaro – who is a walking breathing performance artist, and we went to check it out.  It was difficult to know where to go.  At first what I thought was a performance, turned out to be a group of Filipino women practicing for a Christmas performance.  After a while, I did see one woman dragging a ball with her foot (or the other way around, another man walking barefoot and filming people’s feet and another woman walking with one shoe on and one off.   A bit more interesting was this woman sitting in a wedding dress cutting out little doll figures from a dictionary.

I must admit that I have a love/hate relationship with performance art.  I am very much drawn to the medium of Performance Art.  I like the transitory concept of it.  I like the form of it as a material for creating and communicating art.  In fact, I think that it has the potential to be one of the strongest forms of art today.

However, I also have a big problem with most performance art I encounter.  If I look at a painting or sculpture, I can spend as much or little time looking at it as I like.  With performance and video art, I am forced to observe for a pre-determined time, and usually I get bored.

So with my inner conflict in mind, when I saw the ZAZ Performance Art Festival’s schedule, I decided not to go to the set performances (where I would be trapped), but just to walk around at the open performances. – sorry organizers 🙁

Overall, I was a bit disappointed, but the central bus station is not an easy site to perform in.  – I should have gone to the set performances.

HOWEVER……The real performance was just being at the central bus station in Tel Aviv on a Saturday night.

I felt like I slipped into a time warp, a different dimension.  The place was full of foreign workers and it was like a city within a city.  There were food booths, and travel agencies, and places selling everything from banking services to food to cosmetics (same store!) A television was set up with movies running; a karaoke screen was getting a lot of attention as people waited for a chance to sing.  I didn’t want to take pictures of the people, since most were probably illegals, so I suggest going and experiencing the place for yourself.

And Christmas!  Here was one place in Israel that I could feel the Christmas preparations begin – small fake Christmas trees, shiny sparkly ornaments, and Santa outfits!

On my way to my sister-in-laws to eat sfinge (Morocan donuts) for the first night of Hanukkah  I found myself singing Christmas carols!  Trala la la la la la la la