“Black Box” is an independent initiative that exhibits contemporary art in the public space. In this framework, for the third year in a row, viewers and creators are invited to a joined experimental journey where art can be found on the street. For a period of ten days, 70 artworks were displayed on public billboards in the streets of Jerusalem.

The goal of the project was to temporarily use the designated Advertising Space as a place to present visual contemporary-future-futuristic art. The new images that appeared in the city created new autonomies: portals to another place, unexpected enclaves that challenged the location, viewing habits, the routine of looking at signs and strolling outside. In this project, any passerby is welcome to participate and be part of the regular art crowds in a situation that allows freedom of thought within an existence that is normally under constant control of power mechanisms. The title Black-Box is borrowed from the technical term of a machine/mind -  a camera containing a disastrous memory. The memory/camera, however flawed, still has our trust as an object that h has the power to represent the past.

In August 2014, during the early stages of the project, the Israel–Gaza conflict took place. In this bleak present, we found it hard to imagine. In a time of immense political tension, we chose to be diverse a concept that presented a critical strategy. For this reason, we focused on “future planning” - an ongoing action that has both irony and optimism within it. The annually chosen topic offers the research of the future as a territory for artistic action. In regards to site-specificity, we asked to relate to the city of Jerusalem. A city renowned for its tensions, the artworks were asked to communicate with that tension as their base.

The commissioning of artworks in print is based on identifying trends in the contemporary era. Nowadays, art materials include the virtual and digital in addition to the traditional. With the infusion of the information revolution, photography is made possible without the actual camera, cameraman, and chemical paper. Artists appropriate without pathos, prefer creativity over technical virtuosity, and identify conceptualism as it can transcend the inner art-world discourse.
 

(contemporary)- future -futuristic

Historians of contemporary art pinpoint the moment the terms have changed in what we call Modern Art to what we call Contemporary Art. By conceptualizing future-futuristic, we aimed to promote reflexivity. Future art, which will be made, is unfinished by its essence and therefore focuses on an idea. Diagrams, sketches, scribbling, proposals, thoughts, simulations studies, inventions, and innovations. This type of art, characterized by a sort of rawness, provokes a kind of viewing as food for thought. Futuristic-art, on the other hand, focuses on the finished image, ignores whatever exists now or is practically possible in the present and showcases a vision of the future. Since it is future fantasy there's futuristic aesthetics as seen in Futurism (beginning of the 20th century) and in Neo-Futurism (beginning of the 21st century). These movements hover over this exhibition as referents. Our perceptions of the future constantly change in relation to the present that becomes past... If to quote from one of the artworks (by Naama Bar-Or and Omri Heilbronner) “The future is not what it use to be...”
Perceptions of the future, in the eyes of the artists chosen, are manifested through conceptual works that view the sign as a medium in which a disruptive act is made. At times by switching the content and keeping the appearance and at times by using the surface to present something variant in the familiar space.

Restrictions and constraints turned into freeing tools for those artists creating with posters/ads/commercial/architectural in mind. Other artists internalized the concept and actualized it in their own way through direct/staged photography or by using appropriated or digitally processed photos. The artists pushed the limits of digital painting and sculpting to produce the illusory effects that allowed a longer viewing in the public space. This viewing aimed to change the gaze of the casual viewer.

In that year’s exhibition, there was a collaboration with “Hazira- Performance Art Arena” where authors of theater play worked with graphic designers to create works that were exhibited around the public space in Jerusalem.

An interdisciplinary act in itself, all the artworks were put in signs in order to produce a dialogue between the works and the surroundings, and with proper reference to site-specific art and curatorial practice. This visual performance could be experienced as a series if the viewers chose to move in a route. They could choose either a fundamental and comprehensive experience or a random and partial one.

We hoped the brief appearance of the art pieces will leave images in the memories of the public, that as the time and the place is an integral part of making Art possible.