Tel Aviv July, 2009

Neve Tzedek and Florentine are unlike many other parts of the city, in that the walls of these neighborhoods are covered in all kinds of “writing.” Ranging from graffiti to street art, posters and flyers, this writing screams and whispers for the attention of passers-by.

Reading walls while walking both requires and trains a sense of the city that is difficult to get by perusing the statistics of the planning department, or attending community meetings. The discourse on the walls is of a different character—a kind of ubiquitous white noise, noticeable in an otherwise clean, “white” city. Let’s take up the task of reading while walking this city. Because the writings on the walls, and the experience of reading them, provide a complex commentary upon the ongoing physical, economic and political transformations faced by Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

these flyers began appearing this fall, on the makeshift walls of construction sites around my neighborhood. Get a close-up look:

WALLS

I hang a picture on the wall, then I forget that there is a wall,
I don’t remember what stands behind this wall, I don’t remember that there is a wall.
It is nothing but a rest for the picture. But I forget the picture as well,
I don’t look at it any more, I no longer know (how) to look at it.

– Georges Perec (translated by Itai Kriss)

“That’s what street art is for, to remind us we are surrounded”

–SHAMELESS