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Insiders No.1
Live Square, Tel Aviv Museum, Curator: Ruti Direktor
Insiders No. 1 (2021)
Durational performance piece for three people
INSIDERS - TEASER | Performers: Tamar Rosenzweig, Amitay Shulman, Kobi Swissa | Cinematography: Asaf Einy
Photography: Iddo Pedhazur, Tamar katz
Tel Aviv Museum Presents
Insiders by Tamar Katz
While the trio operates in coordination, a clear power hierarchy emerges. One figure appears as the architect behind the event—a "sorcerer" with the power to move both objects and people. On the game board, he arranges cones, spheres, and beads in shifting configurations that immediately translate into physical choreographies. If the board is the microcosm of the square, and the square is the architectural motif of the building, the Insiders' movements echo something existential: we are pawns in a game whose rules we attempt to decipher while in motion, governed by forces hidden from view. Meanwhile, on the square board, small objects rise and fall, organizing and collapsing—perhaps as proposals for environmental sculpture, or perhaps as an invitation to a ritual of magical healing. Overlooked by Dani Karavan’s wall relief and shadowed by the cultural subtext of the 2017 film The Square, the museum’s floor offers itself as both a potent symbol and a visceral field of action.
Ruti Direktor
Insiders is a site-specific performance piece created for and inspired by the entrance plaza of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. It is the third chapter in "The Living Square," a series of events curated by Ruth Director. The series takes place in the Ricklis Foyer of the Main Building, centered within and around a floor square measuring 8.40 x 8.40 meters.
Three performers inhabit the square. It is their domain; they are its "Insiders"—so deeply integrated that they seem to merge with its geometry and palette, as if manifested from the site’s own structural DNA. For three days, the square is transformed into a sovereign piazza governed by the trio, who navigate it like a playground or an arena with its own internal laws. A game board placed at the center of the square serves as a microcosm for the surrounding actions: every maneuver on the board dictates the movement in the physical space. Using a private sign language, the Insiders direct one another and navigate the environment. Passersby crossing or skirting the square become—perhaps unknowingly—part of a mysterious game orchestrated by the group. This is the logic of the site: to understand the rules of the game, one must know the language. If you are not in, you are out.