A Shining Meteor...
2019
A Shining Meteor will Light the Path of the Worker takes as its catalyst a quiet, under-acknowledged historical occurrence: the railworkers strikes of the mid 1930s in Haifa and the activity of joint Arab-Jewish worker’s unions in Palestine of the period. Dramatising the events and political intricacies which surrounded the strikes, Toran has imagined an original theatrical production as if performed by a workers community theatre from the period. The play weaves historical, satirical and supernatural narratives, and is manifested in the gallery through its different parts (a synopsis, sets, props, etc.). Proposing an alternative, ‘citizen-based’ historiography, the exhibition draws visitors into a dynamic, messy engagement with local myth making as it relates to national identity formation of the period and Israel’s contentious socialist credentials. Exhibition Catalog/Play Synopsis
The work was initially exhibited at Rawart Gallery in Tel Aviv, curated by Leah Abir, and was part of Social Bauhaus in Haifa, curated by Galia Bar-Or. For this iteration the work served primarily as a backdrop or background for a program of performances and talks developed in collaboration with Leah Abir and Adam Haj Yahia, extending the project’s constellation into the contemporary, and also towards analogous histories that needed to be celebrated and honoured. The work is produced in collaboration with Leah Abir and Adam Haj Yahia, and supported by the Tel Aviv University Department of Theatre Arts, the Art Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and with the generous support of Het Nieuwe Instituut and WAC-MAAN – Workers Union and Sindyanna Fair Trade. Half of the exhibition proceeds will be donated to “Bread and Roses,” an initiative of WAC-MAAN.