Culture

text and photographs by Alexandra Belopolsky

I've been following his strange creatures for years. Fox-like predators with sharp teeth, giant birds with menacing beaks, monstrous fish. All staring at the passersby through big, human-like eyes full of sadness. You can see them all over Tel Aviv - on crumbling buildings and electrical cabinets, on walls and on rooftops, in hidden corners and in plain sight. Klone Yourself (or simply, Klone) is one of Israel's most prolific and creative street artists. His pseudonym is a comment on the modern lifestyle. "We all go to school, enlist in the army, carry smartphones, watch TV – it's a form of self-cloning. We all follow a norm. The point is to be a different type of clone, a clone of yourself, so to say. An original one".

I meet him at his studio, in a warehouse in Tel Aviv. Looking at him you would never guess that this 29 year old guy, of average height and build and straightforward features, is the mind behind some of the most haunting images of the city. Throughout our conversation he never stops cutting shapes - on August 23rd he opens his first solo exhibition abroad at the Urban Spree gallery in Berlin, and there is still much work to be done. It will be a massive paper installation, mostly in black, white and brown, akin to the one he presented in Tel Aviv in 2011. Klone's art varies in accordance to the location – his gallery work, his street work and his studio work are all inherently different. "I believe that what's done in the street should stay in the street. A gallery is a completely different stage, and it needs to be treated differently in terms of space and medium".

This moto is carried into his street art as well – he never repeats the same work, making it a point to create something unique for every place where he leaves his mark, especially in the past few years. "I no longer paint simply for the sake of there being a painting", he clarifies, "I paint for the sake of leaving a particular painting on a specific location". Recently, his palette changed as well, leaving the bright multi-colored works a thing of the past. "I don't see the need for color now", he says. "I can now express myself well without hiding behind the colors. A lot of times when you create a colorful work, the viewer is hooked on the colors. I like dealing with my subject by going down to the basics – black and white, and maybe an additional color. I think it tells a lot more about me as an artist, in the same way that a good sketch tells more about an artist than some amazing painting where you can't see the brush strokes".

As someone working in a field where his work can be, and often is, destroyed at any given moment, Klone is more than comfortable with that risk. He has been known to go back and paint over locations where his previous work has been erased, sometimes several times on the same spot. But that, to him, is an essential part of being an artist, street or otherwise. "Things need to be erased and renewed", he states, presenting a philosophy that might sound radical. "Nothing should be eternal .I think it would do the art world a lot of good if we were to dilute about 10 percent of it every year. This incisive preoccupation with what's already been done… Just the sheer costs of storing all that! When they could have gone into supporting young art and new generations. How many people do you know who have actually seen the real Mona Lisa? Is that really important? It's already public domain as far as images on the internet go. No one has actually seen it. People know the image, they learn about it, but when you go to look at it you find some picture behind glass as thick as a wall and guards. You don't get to really see it."

The Berlin exhibition came about after the curator of the gallery discovered online the book which Klone had independently published last year – a collection of works he describes as a travelogue. It was the curator's first encounter with the artist's work, in spite of the fact that there are places in Berlin (as well as Amsterdam, Paris and Saint Petersburg) where he left creative testimonies of his previous visits to the city. But perhaps it is understandable, since he makes sure to choose the less central and more run-down spots for his art wherever he goes. "I want to relate to a place that accepts me", he says when I wonder whether painting in a posh part of the city may not be considered as a challenge, to bring his world view to the people who want to hear it the least. "In an overly primped area the painting would look like mere decoration, regardless of how subversive it might be. The most subversive work, if you put it in a gallery in a nice frame, under good lighting, would look like something to be hung in some rich man's living room. I prefer to work in less groomed areas."

Yet groomed or not, painting in a city where he doesn't live is a completely different experience for Klone: "I'm not used to how the city reacts to me. It's a different vibe. When I travel, I stay in the city for a while and only then do I paint something. But it still doesn't feel like, say, Berliner art. It feels like my own art. When I paint in Tel Aviv it's different, it's a part of Tel Aviv. It's Tel Aviv art".

Klone was not, however, born in Tel Aviv. He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, back when it was the USSR. When he was 11 years old his family immigrated to Israel. The uprooting from his home and the displacement did not come easy for the young boy. Five years later he took up a can of paint and, years before evolving into street art, joined the world of graffiti tagging. For the young émigré struggling to fit in, it felt natural. It was a way of bringing himself out, of leaving his mark on Israeli society, of saying "Here I am!". He was not the only one – many graffiti and street artists were immigrants. They still are - Klone is a member of a group of artists, which include such locally well-known names as Know Hope, Foma and Zerocents – all immigrants. They hang out together, and often go out on painting missions together. Some might argue that perhaps it was the immigration experience that turned them into street artists in the first place. "Had we stayed in Ukraine, I would probably have become an engineer, like half the people there", laughs Klone. Seems as though design of urban spaces is in his blood, after all.

by Sandro Marques

On its last day, Cafébabel went back to ACUD to take some final impressions about the festival. During four days, more than twenty events were programmed at this nonprofit Arts Association in the Veteranenstrasse 21, in Berlin. From Thursday to Sunday, 26 to 29 May, all the courtyards, corridors and balconies, rooms and lobbies shared one language, the language of theatre. For those in Berlin, who have opted to use the French language to express themselves on theatre this was The Event. La Ménagerie took, once more, the risk of producing it. After seven months of hard work, the team made by dedicated volunteers was preparing to celebrate their achievement. We had the chance to talk with one of the main producers and President of La Ménagerie, Hélène Lebonnois, and make her some questions regarding also the future.

Cafébabel Berlin: This edition is almost at the end. Can you make a balance now about how was it? Hélène Lebonnois: I am really glad with this year’s edition. We had a great feedback from everybody who attended the performances and all the events in the program. There was always a nice atmosphere around.

Cafébabel Berlin: Are you happy with your choice for ACUD as the place for the Festival? H.L.: Indeed, they have here a great team and their space allowed us to experiment several solutions like the one on the opening day, where we had a very creative evening of interaction between most of the artists who performed during the rest of the weekend and the spectators who came by. Also all the people who worked as technicians and all those who helped were really great.

Cafébabel Berlin: What about the process of organizing such an event? Are you willing to continue with it? H.L.: La Menágerie, is made by volunteers and we are doing this because of our love about theater. We are very grateful to all of our sponsors and partners that supported us, in particular, with the communication of the Festival. We wouldn’t have made it without their help. I am convinced that it was, once more, a positive experience but we have to think about how we will continue. Our main goal is to function as a network of people who live in Berlin, speak French but doesn’t know about the other’s work. We focus our work on Theater and other scenic arts. We will have to think about next year because this is becoming very demanding and we all have other things to take care for. We need to find a balance between doing it with more support and in a more professional way but without losing the flame that we bring to it as volunteers.

Cafébabel Berlin: Thank you Hélène.

It was time for the last show and Hélene had to go. From our side we thank La Ménagerie for the invitation and will be waiting for the 3ème édition du festival des arts de la scène francophone à Berlin.

Photo: Johanna Perret

by Sandro Marques

Re-Belle, taken to stage by Compagnie Qui Vive directed by Aline Steiner and performed on stage by Patricia Bakalack, was the first of two guest companies to perform on this year’s edition of the “Festival des arts de la scène francophone” produced by La Ménagerie.

The effort to invite companies from outside of Berlin’s scene was another step forward in this year’s edition. Qui Vive comes from Paris and Mobile Homme Théâtre which performed Saturday, 28 comes from Nîmes, in southern France. Taken to stage at ACUD, the theater house was once more full. The subtitles may have helped the German speaking audience. It was a diverse audience, both in origin and age, just as Berlin is.

Re-Belle tells the story of a child soldier, which became part of an army at the age of 12, as far as the child can remember. Starting with a soft song, the kind of music that children listen to, Vipèr plays on the ground and slowly, from different stripes of clothes makes her own wrap doll. This in itself is a symbol for what the play is all about.

In its current form, Re-Belle was premiered during this year’s Festival. In this monologue Patricia Bakalack superbly went through as many transformations as a child that becomes a soldier, a soldier that becomes a woman, a woman that becomes a refuge, and as one can only try to imagine. The ranges of psychological beings that such a person has to live with are amazingly performed on stage by the actress.

If we think that such diverse characters are all embodied in one child’s memories we can probably grasp a bit of the trauma this reality constitutes. The silence and immobility from the spectator’s part may be a sign that this time the reality was stronger than theater. At a point, there is a reference to the metamorphosis that a butterfly goes through, from caterpillars into marvelous winged beauties. Vipèr’s metamorphosis is at the reverse pace: From child into a soldier. Vipèr c’est pas Belle elle est Re-Belle.

Photo: Cristina Aibéo