Public and Private Space in the New Covid Reality

"Body without Organs", a joint project between the Tel Aviv and Berlin municipalities, designed by Lilac Chitayat, lecturer in the Department of Interior Design and artist Gabi Schilling, was published in the German magazine for art, design and theory - "DAMN".

Lilach Chitayat, a lecturer in the Department of Interior Design and Berlin-based artist Gabi Schilling, created an installation which was presented simultaneously in Berlin and at the Liebling House in Tel Aviv, which explored the intermediate space of body and architecture and of private and public.

Lilach says: "We both explored the movement of body in space, freedom, political action and pluralism in public spaces.

The lock-down in Tel Aviv and Berlin forced a new and simultaneous reality on us. The digital window served as an opportunity for both of us to look at new hybrids between the physical and the virtual and between Berlin and Tel Aviv.

This is a project done entirely in cooperation between the two cities and between us, when each in turn, responds to a photograph, model or sketch of the other. We started with photographs of home spaces during lock-down and continued to operate in the gallery in Berlin and on the balcony (a place that is itself neither an interior nor an exterior space) of the Liebling House in Tel Aviv.

We took measurements of the “body” -- the architecture and the minimum space needed for the game -- and we created elements, soft and hard, a kind of new language of objects. Some make a sound, some connect two distant places and some are for one person or several people.

We examined what happens to the public space when actions and interactions change it, and redefines the functions it performs.

The "Bodies without Bodies" installation presented simultaneously in both Berlin and Tel Aviv, examines how the presence of bodies and people affects issues of civil responsibility and the ability to act independently, and explores the place where the public and the private collide, differ and change.

Posted: 08/02/2022