Tel Aviv Poetry on the route – Shira al haderech 2010

In my previous post I have mentioned a ‘secret’ project. Well, by now my secret has been reveled.

The bi-yearly Shira al haderech-Poetry on the route project, realised by the Tel Aviv municipality, was confided in my hands this time round.

The project presents poets and poems by established poets as well as winners of the recent Shira al Haderech poetry competition.

The way in which the project is present in the public domain is through printed media; large banners in various formats (some 3mX1.7m, some 4.5mX1.7m) As well as posters on bus stops, waste disposal lorries and smaller banners.

More than 50 poets and poems, printed on more than 150 banners, stretched between the trees in the Rothschild, Hen and Ben-zion boulevards.

The project invited me to confront a skill in which I consider myself not to be at my very best- portraits.

Therefore, I started looking for an approach that would reduce the weight of the facial portrait of the poet in question, and will present her/him, in a wider context.

That context, for me, were the boulevards in which the posters, banners were hanged.

So, I have devised a Layout for the project which involved: a branch of a ficus tree, suggesting it is stretched out of the tree to which the banner is attached to. The poet’s figure, positioned on that branch, while reading or writing, and the citation or the entire poem next to it, respectively.

And thank you Mr. Kandel for persuading me to go and see it. It was well worth it.

So here are some of the banners with the names of the boulevards in which they are exposed: