Skip to main content

DIY: 2019 – Liat Rosenthal & Alex Eisenberg: Shiduchs, Shabbes and Shmucks

Exploring artist responses to Jewishness and antisemitism by spending Shabbat (the Jewish day of rest) together.

Deadline for applications: 2pm, Thursday 20 June

This DIY is supported by Southbank Centre, LondonSouthbank Centre

Project summary

Shiduchs, Shabbes and Shmucks*  brings together a group of participants to explore the performance of Jewishness, in the spectre of the recent debates about antisemitism in the UK. This workshop is structured around ‘Shabbat’ – the Jewish day of rest – expect chicken soup, fish balls and fried fish** alongside rabbinic interventions, partner study, and time to make artistic responses inspired by the word ‘schmuck’.

This DIY emerges from a deep fondness for Jewish culture whilst at the same time a yearning for artistic spaces that can approach it critically, radically and humorously. Across three days we will create a homely space for participants to wrestle with these ideas and think about what it means to be ‘out as Jewish’ in artistic contexts.

Antisemitism can be hard for people to talk about. “Am I saying the right thing?” “It’s not my issue.” “I don’t know enough about it to respond.” We think Live Art can play a vital role in opening up some of these questions and conversation about antisemitism and by extension, Jewishness. We see this DIY as a space to have honest, critical and possibly difficult conversations around these issues.

*Yiddish for ‘matchmakers’, ‘day of rest’ and ‘contemptible people/penis’

**vegan options also available.

How to apply

Calling artists, creatives, thinkers, movers n’ shakers to join us for a DIY in which we will eat, drink, discuss, debate, learn, reflect and create.

This DIY is open to anyone working with Live Art and related disciplines. We welcome artists from a diverse set of backgrounds, especially those who make work about minority identity and are concerned with Jewishness, antisemitism, Palestine/Israel, islamophobia, anti-black/asian racism and homo/queer/transphobia.

We’re keen to foster an intimate space, so keeping the group size to approx 10-12 participants.

Dates, times and location

Dates: Friday 4 October – Sunday 6th October 2019
Location: Southbank Centre, London

Schedule:

Friday 4th October – Preparing for Shabbat including cooking and Friday night dinner. A domestic space (address tbc)

Saturday 5th October – Shabbat – day of rest. A domestic space  (address tbc)

Sunday 6th October – Film screenings and artistic responses to the idea of the ‘shmuck’. Southbank Centre, London

Other Notes:

Food will be provided Friday 4th and Saturday 5th. Please bring a packed lunch on Sunday 6th.

Sorry but we are not able to provide accommodation. If you have specific accommodation needs please let us know and we will endeavour to facilitate something for you.

This DIY is presented as part of Jewy Jewy Jew Jew, an artist-led research project exploring all things Jewy.

The artists

Liat Rosenthal is a Curator (Tate Lates, Tate Modern) and Creative Producer, specialising in widening participation across art forms. Since 2015, she has been leading on some of Tate Modern’s most ambitious projects – from Turbine Hall festivals, to the Launch Weekend of Tate Modern Two, to the launch of the London’s largest free gallery event, Tate Modern’s Tate Lates. From 2011-15 Liat was in role as the Head of Community Programming at JW3, Europe’s largest Jewish Community Centre, and since, set-up House of Schmutter Festival (Richmix, 2016) celebrating contemporary Jewish arts practice rooted in East London’s heritage.

Alex Eisenberg is an artist, producer and curator working with live art, performance and video. He performs as Gaye Rimmer in The Rimmers, a queer, stereotypical and grotesque Jewish family. In 2019 he is working on a short film and a series of durational performances with his collaborators Candy Gigi and Tom Joseph. Since 2016 The Rimmers have hosted, Buttmitzvah, the popular queer Jewish club night. Alex also works part-time at LADA on a variety of projects, events and initiatives. In 2017 he was a recipient of an Artist International Development Award (Al-Ma’mal Gallery, Jerusalem) focusing on performance art in Palestine. Between 2007 and 2012 he performed as part of the artist collective Present Attempt and curated SHOWTiME (RichMix/Riverside Studios 2010-13), a platform for performance in London. He is a visiting lecturer at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

For questions about this DIY, please contact the artists.

Banner image credit:

image credit: the artists

We are looking for a better quality image for this page or to replace it if it's missing.

Part of DIY: 2019

Professional development projects – BY artists FOR artists – across the UK.

DIY: 2019

DIY

Professional development projects – BY artists FOR artists – across the UK.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Adam Patterson: Green Screen Charivari

DIY

Parading for the right to be unfixed, letting surfaces slip and slide, transgressing horizons, bodies, identities and worlds

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Adriana Disman: The confusing space between

DIY

A residential workshop for multi-racial performance people on an island in the English Channel.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Ania Bas & Amy Pennington: Performance for shy people. Playwriting for dyslexics.

DIY

Two day experiment at performance production by shy people and performance writing by bad spellers.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Bean & Nicola Woodham: (de)coding performance

DIY

Learn to build and program wearable sensors for use in sound based live art.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Beverly Thomas: The Silence

DIY

A 4 day residential workshop for artists of Colour to explore silence and revitalize their creativity.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Cade and MacAskill: The Making of Pinocchio

DIY

A playfully theatrical DIY for trans, intersex, non-binary and genderqueer artists exploring notions of realness through the desires of a wooden puppet to be “a real boy”.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Call for Participants

DIY

Applications are now open for 24 national professional development workshops by artists, for artists

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Call for Proposals

DIY

Invitation to propose unusual and exciting artists’ workshops

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Charlie Ashwell & Es Morgan: ANDROGYNY!

DIY

A weekend of dance and discussion for anyone interested in thinking about gender through dancing.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Claire MacDonald: Curse Bless me Now

DIY

Daring to curse. Blessing when the world is ending.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Daniel Oliver: Scripting Unscriptable Performance

DIY

Writing down and getting someone else to perform performances that can not or should not be written down and given to someone else to perform.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Edythe Woolley: SWEAT: the sky leaks I leak

DIY

Un-straightening, leaking and oozing towards queer entanglement, through an embodied practice of sweating.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Fox Irving & Eva Peskin: Step One! Sharing

DIY

A two-day workshop on the art of sharing in collaborative encounters for artists in the North West.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Jack Tan & Annie Jael Kwan: Potluck Stories

DIY

A weekend of intercultural grocery shopping, culinary adventures and sharing stories about ingredients, journeys, migration, nationality and material culture.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Jenny Gaskell: Have you tried screaming your heart out and pretending to be Cher?

DIY

Creating a connection practice based on karaoke and daydreaming and oversharing and shared chips

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson: To The Ritual Knowledge Of Remembering

DIY

3 day immersive workshop, exploring the body, ancestral memory and the land. To liberate creative actions towards a Decolonised Future.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Oozing Gloop: COMMUCRACY NOW

DIY

Creating a revolutionary vanguard that will develop and present a new economy of government; COMMUCRACY.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Phoebe Patey-Ferguson & FK Alexander & Andre Neely: THE CULT

DIY

Are you feeling fed up and pissed off? Are you confused and overwhelmed? Are you isolated and unfulfilled? Are you ready to welcome ART into your life? THE CULT WELCOMES YOU.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Quiplash: Unsightly Drag

DIY

Bringing visually impaired queers and drag performers together to share skills and fuck shit up.

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Stacy Makishi: Proud Mary!

DIY

What’dya get when you cross: Tina Turner, Mary Wollstonecraft and The Virgin Mary? A Proud Mary! The triple-decker-mother of workshops!

Read more

DIY: 2019 – The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein: ’Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’

DIY

Reimagining Scale, Ambition and Access for Monsters in Performance, through the lens of Feminist Sci-Fi

Read more

DIY: 2019 – Tim Jeeves & Lena Simic: The Party Calls You

DIY

Between climate breakdown, austerity and Brexit, the UK is facing its greatest political crisis in decades. What place is there for artists within the UK’s political institutions?

Read more

DIY: 2019 – VORTESSA (Lady Helena Vortex and Miss Giovanna Maria Casetta): GILF Island

DIY

Pack your cases, ready to embark on a Dark Romance of the ageing self, Exploring, releasing and adoring the inner GILF

Read more

Also

DIY: 2012

DIY

Unusual professional development projects conceived and run BY artists FOR artists

Read more

DIY: 2016 – Rhiannon Armstrong ‘DIY Public Selfcare System’

DIY

exploring acts of self care we have to perform in public

Read more

DIY: 2012 – Call for Participants

DIY

Professional development projects BY artists FOR artists

Read more

Donation

£