Noam Toran:
A Shining Meteor will Light the Path of the Worker
Social Bauhaus, Haifa, Israel.
November 28–30, 2019
Project organizers: Leah Abir, Adam Haj Yahia.
Social Bauhaus curator: Galia Bar Or
"A Shining Meteor will Light the Path of the Worker" has taken as its catalyst a quiet, under-acknowledged historical occurrence: the rail workers’ strikes of the mid-1930s in Haifa, and the activity of joint Arab-Jewish workers’ unions in Palestine of that period. Proposing an alternative, ‘citizen-based’ historiography, the project drew visitors into a dynamic, messy engagement with local myth-making as it relates to the national identity formation of the period, and Israel's contentious socialist credentials.
For the project’s iteration in Haifa – following its first rendition as a solo exhibition at RawArt Gallery in Tel Aviv – the work was reconsidered as a backdrop for a program of performances, lectures, and actions in collaboration with local individuals and organizations. The program focused on three main themes – "Female Workforce,” "The Theater on Trial," and "Cosmopolitan Haifa," each addressing the histories and legacies of labor and its cultural representation in the region and locating Haifa centrally within a remapped geo-political landscape.
