Begin forwarded message:
From: Yasha Rozov
Date: July 8, 2011 1:54:04 PM EDT
To: Dan Walsh
Subject: Re: check it out now...question:
Sorry,
It was called "desert generation" and it was one of a few events marking 40 years...
Here is the link:
http://www.art.org.il/en/exhibition_about.php?id=199
click on "exposition" to see images.
Yasha
On 7/8/2011 3:33 PM, Dan Walsh wrote:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/jerusalem-1
Can you send me a link/info/contacts for "40 Years of Occupation" ?
Dan
Begin forwarded message:
From: Yasha Rozov
Date: July 8, 2011 5:54:27 AM EDT
To: Dan Walsh
Subject: Re: Did I get this right? I added all your links...Dan
Thanks Dan,
That's cool. I would call it "Jerusalem".
Take care,
Yasha.
On 7/8/2011 12:04 AM, Dan Walsh wrote:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/the-departing-lion
Begin forwarded message:
From: Yasha Rozov
Date: June 23, 2011 7:52:28 PM EDT
To: Dan Walsh
Subject: Re: The Palestine Poster Project Archives
Dan,
Thanks for all you wrote and it has been an interesting discussion for me. Your rational makes sense and I think our differences of opinion are easily bridged.
I am touching base on a few things:
The poster I sent you simply says "Jerusalem" at the bottom. I designed it in 2000 and it was a personal response to the city i was leaving that year (hence the leaving lion). Of course it may be read politically and ive exhibited it in an exhibition called "40 years of occupation" and under other projects as well.
Projectflag I sent you the link and all the info is there.
projectHerzl I sent you is a participatory art project whereby I ask people of all ages and backgrounds to draw what Herzl would see were he alive today. There drawings are can be "read" subjectively and for me personally tell a story of disillusionment, differences, social and political fragmentation. Anything and everything is accepted.
When you have the autofill option on your web you may send me an update and ill forward it to my students. Home can be featured anywhere on your site. no problem by me.
All the best for now,
Yasha
On 6/17/2011 4:08 PM, Dan Walsh wrote:
Yasha,
See my comments in blue...
On Jun 17, 2011, at 7:42 AM, Yasha Rozov wrote:
Dan,
I understand your intent. I think the website can be construed as politically inclined even if it does not purport to be and this is my concern as I work with schools mainly in Israel but also around the world and cannot be seen as promoting one politics or another.
Thanks for your reply. I can see/feel the commitment you have to both art and politics. Yes, I suppose any project may be construed as political if the disposition of the viewer is such. I also work, almost exclusively, in/with schools and the PPPA is extremely well received there. Most of the Advisory Board members are educators, including several American-Jewish teachers as well as Israelis. Not one single issue/comment/complaint has been registered since the site went up. Indeed, Israel is the Number One country that uses/visits the PPPA according to my Googlestats for the site. Not only that but Israel provides the fastest-growing visitor category, currently almost 700 visitors/month. To my mind, this is a form of validation/feedback vis-a-vis the site's apolitical status.
The name "palestinian poster project" already can be construed as favoring one side rather than another even though I know that is not your intent.
Forgive me, Yasha, but the name of my project is "The Palestine Poster Project Archives". Not "Palestinian". You misread the title. Bear in mind also that I am not in the least dedicated to creating/building a site that is popular/comfortable for Israelis. Not at all. It is most honest for me to say that I am indifferent to the feelings/preferences of Israelis. And Palestinians. And French people. And the Chinese, among others. To try to accommodate the comfort levels of distant, disparate and ever-changing emotional landscapes would be a form of intellectual prostitution, IMHO.
To my mind, a better approach, the one I have adopted and which comports with the "best practices" of the American Library Association, the National Council on the Social Sciences, Georgetown University and a host of other leading educational institutions is to embrace transparency, accountability and completeness in my work. I welcome all rational feedback, from whatever source.
'Liberation graphics' so prominent also does not bode objectivity for many Israelis..Many Israeli designers will have a problem "living" under that heading as it is not percieved as neutral or inclusive.
I disagree. Not one single Israeli artist/designer that either I contacted or who has contacted me has ever raised a single complaint regarding the issue you raised. See under "Tartakover" or "Rachel Stomel" or "Sani Arazi" or any of the other Israeli artists/designers whose work is featured at the PPPA. I am not saying that there might not be a basis for your statement: I am saying that the empirical record does not support it. Even the artist I contacted from the HOME exhibit, Vera Vakrat, agreed to have her poster at the PPPA site, although, interestingly, she is one of only two other people, both Israelis, to raise the issue of the PPPA's name.
I think that (And this you may perceive as meddling insolence on my part so please forgive - it's for the sake of the conversation) If the name of the site/project was something of the order of The Israeli/Palestinian or the Palestinian/Israeli poster project
I don't consider you "meddling"...I welcome your comments. Since you took the effort to comment in an open and honest way I am morally obligated to respond in kind. You misunderstand my work. The PPPA is not a site dedicated to Israeli poster art. Or even Zionist poster art. It is dedicated to a GENRE. Not just one wellspring.
I think it might be useful for you to read the "About" section listed at the top of the site's banner and perhaps to view this timeline:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/historical-timeline-of-the-...
(Note: a better/bigger/clearer jpeg is in the works)
As you can see the genre did not emerge from either Israeli or Zionist sources. It emerged from international/commercial origins. The earliest posters were dedicated to visiting/traveling to "PALESTINE". That is the rubric under which ALL the posters that came after the original, seminal poster are organized. For approximately 60 years Zionist agencies published/commissioned/printed/distributed thousands of posters with "Palestine" captions on them. See:
"Visit Palestine"
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/visit-palestine-original
"Come and See the Palestine Exhibition - Vienna 1925"
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/come-and-see-the-palestine-...
Build Industries for Palestine!
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/build-industries-for-palestine
To suggest that "Israel" which did not exist in 1898 (and which was for the most part not even mentioned in Zionist-published posters until May, 1948) be included in the brand/logo/name of the PPPA only makes sense from the perspective of contemporary Israeli/Zionist sensibilities. This would, in all likelihood, be the way an Israeli or Zionist archivist would organize the PPPA's content, however, that would, ironically, render the site fundamentally "ideological". The central issue I think you are struggling with has to do with the fact that the largest, fastest growing and in all likelihood, most complete online archives of Israeli/Zionist poster art is not the product of either Israeli or Zionist scholarship. As such it does not reflect those biases. My intent is to stamp an emphatically impartial (I do not believe a person can be free of bias but I do believe a neutral point of view is possible in a work) tone and format with the PPPA. Israelis and Zionists tend to privilege their history: the PPPA does not.
that would work more to your benefit as it would demonstrate an ideological neutrality on your part.
See above.
I am not even saying palestinian/zionist since I do not consider myself zionist in the classic sense of the word as many of my colleagues do not either but since we do not actively object to having Israeli nationality I guess 'Israeli' befits us as a collective heading. The other option is to have a neutral name which connotes maybe the geography or something culturally common to all peoples of the region..
"Palestine" IS a neutral name and it DOES connote geography.
I have a book called "both sides of peace" - you may be familiar with it as it is a catalog of Israeli and Palestinian poster design. That title also suggests a possible approach in terms of nomenclature not naming specific players.
I am very familiar with this book (Which is full of errors). See:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/category/special-collection/both-s...
This book repeats/promotes a fallacy: It suggests that there are only TWO sides involved in the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. In fact, there are others. There is, for example, an American perspective. Creating a forum within which and through which American high school teachers and students can explore and comprehend the conflict by considering the poster art associated with it (from all sources) is my objective. It is no part of my project/worldview to limit the discourse to only two perspectives or to privilege any perspective. Also, I do not mention any "specific players" in my project's title. Ironically, your suggestion (to add "Israeli") would do just that.
I am writing this because I admire what you are doing - It is of great historic and cultural significance and maybe stemmed out of a less broader framework when you began research.. Now that the site contains so much content It may be time to rethink the "brand" so that anyone will feel it can house them if they are operating in this cultural and political arena no matter what their individual agenda is...
And I respect your work as well...it is for exactly that reason I contacted you and am offering a platform for the wider visibility of your projects. I see much pedagogical value in the HOME project. Moreover, you are right and quite insightful to grasp that the scope of the project DID grow with time. It is for exactly that reason that I am so glad I chose "Palestine" as the key (neutral/geographical/historical) identifier for the project. In fact, I did not even know of the existence of the Israeli/Zionist sources for "Palestine" poster prior to my studies at Georgetown. However, to suggest a "brand" name change at this point is not only not possible, it makes no sense except as a sop to Israeli/Zionist sensibilities, which are for the most part always in flux and utterly opaque to my demographic.
All that said - I have a practical suggestion - first of all - The copyright belongs to the students - You may contact them individually to get their permission.
Thanks for this. Unfortunately, contacting all the students individually is way too much work/time for me to even consider. I have more than 3,000 additional posters to upload (more posters/exhibits/collections come in every week. In fact if you will notice I have halted uploading at 5,000 poster just to catch my breadth). If this is the only way to add the HOME exhibits I am sorry to say it will not happen. A new feature is being added soon to the PPPA ... an "auto-fill" form where the artists/publishers take control and fill in the page info themselves. This is meant to free me up from all the detail work and also to allow the artists to make their own statements. I will send you a notice once it is functioning and perhaps you can send it to your students? The ones who want to participate will...
2nd- I would stress the artist rather than the project but im not that weary so its your discrection.
I add both...artist and exhibit. That is the "best practice" suggested by ALA, et. al.
3- if you need translations of individual posters please note them and ill try my best to translate.
ALL the HOME posters need translations to English. The ones I added to the PPPA already I sent out to my Hebrew tranlsators (all university professors/professional translators) and they had enormous difficulty with them. I cannot add them without translations.
On a sidenote - I am concerned with these issues very much and you can see this commitment in projectFLAG which is a project I began years ago and also in projectHerzl - both projects may be percieved as very critical.
I will look at these now. Promise.
I am also sending you my poster "Jerusalem" for inclusion in the archive.
Translate and contextualize this poster and I will add it immediately.
Shalom, Dan
Sincerely,
Yasha
On 6/17/2011 2:04 PM, Dan Walsh wrote:
"but the home poster project is a-political in it's dispensation"
Hi Rasha,
Just so we are clear...the PPPA is also apolitical....completely so.
I do not take "sides". I have my own politics, of course, but the site is a library/reference site. It is not engaged as a combatant in the Palestinian-Zionist conflict.
ALL posters are treated exactly alike. ALL parties are represented to the degree they have published posters and those posters are available.
For the PPPA...the goal is to render the HOME posters comprehensible. Period.
That they feature Hebrew-only captions and have no contextualization makes them incomprehensible to the PPPA's target demographic: US high school teachers and students.
I do not want to "edit" or "package" the HOME posters...I want only to see them leveraged into presentation that will allow the messages the artists incorporated in them to be understandable to non-Hebrew speakers.
Does this make sense?
Dan
On Jun 17, 2011, at 6:56 AM, Yasha Rozov wrote:
Hi Dan,
I am the curator and founder of the project. It is ongoing and I have just returned from curating more posters in Germany.
Regarding skype - let's try unannounced - if you add me as a contact I can try you when I see you online.. I can also call your landline.
Regarding adding the posters - I would like to have a short dialogue about it. I appreciate what the PPPA site is doing and my personal politics are not very far off but the home poster project is a-political in it's dispensation (not to say that individual posters don't have a political dispensation and that is of course good) so as to be inclusive.
I want to see how we can manage this and that is why I would rather we talk before making any commitments.
Best,
Yasha
yasha_rozov on skype
On 6/17/2011 1:22 PM, Dan Walsh wrote:
Hello Yasha,
I do have a Skype account but it is impossible for me to know when I will be available.
(Even my daughter complains about this!)
So, while we try to figure out how to skype can you tell me a bit about HOME and the two Israeli exhibits?
Are you the curator?
I would like to add these posters with translations and contextualization at the PPPA site.
Possible?
best,
Dan
On Jun 15, 2011, at 6:14 PM, Yasha Rozov wrote:
Hi Dan,
I would be interested in discussing details with you. do you have a skype account? Yasha.
On 6/16/2011 12:14 AM, Dan Walsh wrote:
Hello,
I am writing regarding the HOME poster exhibits titled WIZO Academy of Design and the Holon Institute of Technology.
I would like to include all these posters in the PPPA site:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/
I have created a new Special Collection for the HOME posters which now has three posters in it:
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/home-internatio...
I have written to several of the artists asking for translations from Hebrew to English.
Q: Do you have translations for the Hebrew texts in these posters?
Q: Can you tell me if these posters were published/printed and whether or not copies are available?
Q: Can you tell me if the artists submitted statements/interpretations of their posters?
Q: Can you tell me if HOME has sponsored or plans to sponsor any future exhibits that feature Palestine/Israel posters and artists?
Thank you very much,
Dan Walsh, Archivist