RONI HAJAJ

“From This Place” launches a new series of soundscapes commissioned by the Urban Artistic Hosting Platform (UAHP/ עירוח) titled ‘urban records’ / ׳עיר תקליט׳

The sound work by artist Roni Hajaj and Alisa Lyudinshina was created as part of the ‘UAHP at HaDira’ exhibition at the Liebling Haus by artists Anat Litwin and Sally Krysztal, curated by Sabrina Cegla, devoted to the exploration of critical forms of artistic hosting in the city.

The album was created during the HaDira residency in which Hajaj and Lyudinshina participated as guest artists, and features a series of field recordings and analog improvisations recorded during the quarantine of the building, located at Idelson 29, Tel-Aviv. It explores the history and sonic memories which the Liebling Haus and its close surroundings hold, and puts the relationship between the domestic and the urban, the public and the very intimate - at its cornerstone.

The album, printed as a single copy vinyl record, was conceived as an imminent part of the installation titled ‘Field Bed’ by artist Anat Litwin, set in the living room of the apartment. The installation surrounds a large cabinet which displays an array of materials and objects, becoming a site for artistic exploration and rest while suggesting a prototype for domestic hosting. Central to the installation is an old record player with the album ‘From This Place’ playing. The album becomes the soundscape of the installation and of the exhibition at large, enveloping the viewers and guests as a vivid sonic site-specific interpretation.

The soundscape can be seen as a meditation on transmission of memories and fantasies emerging from the act of embodiment of space. The recordings took place in different spaces of the building and in various rooms of the apartment, capturing the movement of the body in the city on its way ‘home’, the sounds of playing on the construction of the modernist building, its old pipes, bricks, metal stoves and wooden doors. Itit samples the domestic ambience of the apartment on the third floor, which used to serve as the home of the Scheuer family and recently has been transformed into a home for cultural exploration devoted to hosting artists, with ghost piano notes resonating the old piano which once stood in the Scheuer’s home and sentiments evoked through a distorted lullaby tune. Iit documents the emptiness of the city and bareness of the space during winter lockdown, winds and thunders captured from the rooftop and balcony. All these interwoven, form together moments of connection, doubt and bliss, a moment in time and space, forever recorded.

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The Urban Artistic Hosting platform (UAHP), is an academic and artistic based initiative, which examines the role of art in the city through exploring critical practices of artistic hosting. It calls for a reconsideration of the connection between the field of art and planning, and strives to develop new postcapitalist cultural paradigms which see art an inseparable from new forms of urban living and urban citizenships. UAHP asks to embed art in the cappilaries of home and in the urban surroundings challenging the boundaries between public and private realms. 

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Released May 28, 2021