Aside

In essence, it’s a show about garbage. Or perhaps about trash, junk, rubbish, filth, waste, residue – depending on one’s perspective. Our project delves into all these aspects, the ones we typically prefer to get rid of, pushing them aside.

The work traces the route of the garbage trucks as they collect, transport, bury, burn, and recycle waste, leading to residual landscapes across Israel. These routes take us to discarded items that are no longer useful, landfills, incineration sites, neglected peripheral towns, prison facilities, ruins of Palestinian villages, and even the landscapes of the aging body.

“The remnants, the removed object, is not necessarily physical. An event can also be removed (e.g., a study book), as can information (like a computer file), memories, ideas, emotions…”

Yet, even when it is removed and deeply buried beneath mount of garbage, the waste continues to ferment, reclaiming its legitimate place in the personal and public agenda. By wandering among “what and who that were excluded or blocked in their path”, as described in Tamar Berger’s book, the show seeks to ask personal and collective questions about mechanisms of rejection and exclusion.

In the performance Aside, the theatrical action itself generates processes of sorting and classification, converging and diverging around stations and routes, traversing between sites of residue and the figures of the discarded from the Israeli landscape.

Throughout the entire journey, musician Ilan Green accompanies with live music, playing on the fragments of discarded objects which he disassembled and reassembled to create the musical world of Residual landscapes.

The show was produced with the support of the Israel Lottery Council For Culture & Arts  

The show is based on the book ‘Aside’ by Tamar Berger; All rights are reserved to Kibutz Poalim Publishing House.