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Nitzan Gaon: Dear Techelet, a little less than four years ago, I traveled to Moshav Ma’ona to visit your exhibition, “Meonot.” A winding dirt road led me to the British Pool, a vast, hard, historic concrete surface upon which you had placed the delicate cardboard booths, like little possibilities for shelter. There was something strange and moving about it: on the one hand, a charged, exposed, almost monumental site; on the other, fragile, temporary, and very human cubicles that invited you not only to look at them but to actually dwell within them, to imagine the possibility of life there.

Four years after the project, your artist’s book,*Meonot*, was published, and I sought—and certainly found—that same feeling in it. The book, with its hardcover and delicate paper dust jacket, creates such a physical whole of place, body, material, and time. It invites you both to linger within it and to hold it in your hands. I’m really happy to be having this conversation with you, especially after that moving visit to the exhibition four years ago. When you were working on the project, did you think there would be a book afterward?

Techelet Ram: No. While I was working on it, I thought about putting out something small, a sort of booklet. There was also a text written specifically for the exhibition—the last text that appears in the book, written by Shani Poker, who later wrote the additional texts. But the idea of a catalog—that is, documenting the project in a book—didn’t really appeal to me, and I even found a contradiction between the act of preservation and the ephemeral nature of the work. During the exhibition, I focused solely on the time and place where I was.

However, I had already been thinking about the relationship between text and image as they appear in a book. In 2018, following the exhibition “Third Wheel” at the CCA, I published a catalog in the format of a daily newspaper and invited various writers to write about the works in the exhibition. I sent each of the writers a single image from it and asked them to write something inspired by it. The only instruction was: Don’t try to write about the artwork—try to move beyond the image toward something else; treat it as an object in the world. Even then, I asked them to treat writing as a medium in its own right, rather than as a product that serves the function of interpretation or explanation.

So does this artist’s book continue that same methodology?

Yes. In those respects, it’s a continuation of the same idea. Although additional layers were incorporated, and the framework of the work was different, the exploration of the ways in which image and text connect, the functional nature of curatorial texts, and the human need to “understand”—all of that began there. However, unlike the exhibition at the CCA, the “Meonot” exhibition was based entirely on its transience and the site where it was installed. The entire space—the pool, the water storage cycle, the vast space that engulfs the viewer, the engineering structure alongside untamed nature, the bird’s-eye view that cannot be captured by the body. All of these were central to the exhibition; they drove and animated it. It was clear to me that I couldn’t convey these sensations in a book.

So what made you want to create a book, after all, if there’s such a vast difference between the exhibition and this object?

Diana, the director of the Parasite collective, insisted on it. And I’m grateful to her for doing so. But I didn’t want to publish a record of something I’d intended from the outset not to remain in the world. That seemed absurd to me. It also seals the thing off, fixes it in place, confining it to being a single entity without allowing it to evolve. It was precisely the gaps between the different spaces—the physical space and the space of the page—that drew me toward the book. I realized I had to think about ideas that go beyond the physical space of the exhibition, that the book should be another work within the project, and one that stands on its own.

As soon as I realized this, I began to break down the physical space into a different sequence. I returned to the thought that had accompanied me while creating the cells, right at the very beginning: Naturally, I wanted the cells to be different from one another, but I struggled to come up with new shapes. So I made a sort of rule for myself: I would create the cells inspired by people in my life, who would give the cells distinct shapes based on their characteristics, and in this way, they would differ from one another. Aside from my friends who were familiar with the creative process, this detail was not apparent to visitors to the exhibition. In the exhibition, the cells were numbered, whereas in the book, the cells transformed from numbers into people, from individual units into a community—or, more precisely, an imagined community.

I think there was a sense of community in the exhibition as well; during the three weeks it was on view, people were invited to stay, sleep, eat…

It’s true, there were guests, but they were ultimately viewers who enjoyed the opportunity the exhibition offered. When I say “community” in relation to the book, I’m thinking of the characters who appear in it and the imagined relationships between them. This is, in fact, the difference between the exhibition and the book. In the exhibition, I offered hospitality. The viewers weren’t necessarily connected to one another—like guests at a hotel. The book, on the other hand, seeks to bring to life subjects who have relationships with one another; who have thoughts about their neighbors, who share a common ideology alongside neighborly disputes, where there is the exceptional and there is the conventional. Where everyone has a “role” in relation to others.

Do you think your focus on community is related to the fact that you grew up on Kibbutz Hanita?

I think that as a teenager, I was always seeking my own autonomy within the kibbutz. In other words, there was always a conflict between my personal, subjective search for self and the “shared goals”—the collective and the group. My relationship with the kibbutz today is very different, and the kibbutz itself is very different today, especially in these respects. But yes, this relationship between community and the individual drives me even when I’m not part of kibbutz society. Society and the collective are very important to me, and at the same time, I’m driven by the idea of individual, autonomous subjects who, together, form something greater than their private selves. But this is a different conception from that of the kibbutz, where the “big” whole demanded the erasure of the “small” individual.

At what point did the transition from space to the imagined community begin to take the form of a book?

The realization came not long after the exhibition itself closed, but the book was published nearly four years later. Those were very specific years, to say the least. In relation to the exhibition, I can say that the painful confusion between place and people—between the land and the subjects inhabiting it—influenced the book. In many ways—for better or worse—it was a time of withdrawal. And that was another reason to shift the focus from “place” to “person.” This is an approach that moves away from inclusive, national, and spatial identities. At the beginning of the book, in the table of contents, all the headings are grouped together, and their order can be read from top to bottom as well as from right to left. Avi Bohbot, the wonderful designer, is responsible for this. Among the headings are people’s names, actions, and descriptions of time.

How did the dialogue between you and Shani Poker work—between the images you chose and the texts she wrote?

For a very long time, I said this book had no place in the world, but sometime in 2024, I began compiling groups of images from the exhibition and sending them to Shani Poker with titles. Each group was given a name, a title, an action or role, and a description of time. We had a preliminary discussion—very in-depth and clear—about the book’s concept: the desire to turn the cells into characters, and how to actually make them accessible; and how the text is not just a voice speaking through the characters, but also functions as another image within the collection of images that represent the character.

There were moments when the text surprised me—for example, when criticism of the kibbutz settlement system was introduced, ideas that didn’t necessarily come from me. There were also opposite moments, when I asked for a sense of closeness or a different kind of interaction to be included in the text, and Shani agreed and made slight changes. There were places where the text was so beautiful but didn’t fit the images, so I created an additional set of images for it. Although it was clear that I was responsible for the book and that it would be published under my name, I wasn’t the only one setting the rules. This raised an interesting question for me: To what extent can I interfere with the text’s autonomy, refine it, or influence its content—what happens when I entrust something “of mine” to someone else’s hands?

One of the most powerful things for me, both in the exhibition and in the book, is the sense of intimacy. In this exhibition, there was a truly physical and social intimacy: people were lounging around, sleeping, eating, and you yourself lived there for three weeks—with a shower, soap, and a towel—truly living day-to-day in nature. I even remember walking into one of the booths and feeling protected, as if I had everything I needed.

In the book, you’ve managed to create a different kind of intimacy—through glimpses inside, through your choice of images, and through very specific camera angles, almost at eye level with whoever is sitting or lying inside the cubicle. Even when I’m flipping through it, I feel like I’m stepping inside, even if I’m not physically within the space itself. How do you think such a spatial, domestic, and ephemeral experience translates into an object like a book?

I’m glad you describe the book that way. In the space, I saw viewers taking their time, resting alone in the stalls, showering, jumping into the pool. The relationship between the object and the viewer was clearer. In the book, I wasn’t sure it would work. Especially since the experience of viewing a book usually doesn’t take place in front of other viewers, but alone.

So, as mentioned, the pool was built during the British Mandate and is located between Jewish kibbutzim and moshavim and Arab-Palestinian villages. Given the contemporary context of this geographical landscape and the recurring themes of history and colonialism, do you also feel, in some way, that the exhibition is a political act on your part?

Broadly speaking, I think we interpret art differently today than we did four years ago. Personally, my relationship with Zionism is complex at this time and in general. I don’t make political art in the direct sense, but I do engage with space and territory, and of course, this can also be interpreted through that lens. Ultimately, I tried to present a “reality” that isn’t dichotomous: a person’s need for a place, and the acknowledgement that this place isn’t "their" place.

However, I hope that the political framework crumbles in the face of the installation’s transience. In this sense, it may be the antithesis of settlement, and to some extent of the kibbutz as well, and perhaps of any ideological stance in general: there is no motivation here to actually establish a settlement. On the contrary, there is a desire to experience a moment that is not anchored in the aspiration to establish something permanent. To quote from the book, “And if you, too, are simply a human - you don’t just sit, you also stand up and go”. I think that captures it. And of course, at the exhibition site itself, I was dependent on the people who live there. I was afraid of disturbing them, of being intrusive, or of destabilizing the situation. I felt like a guest myself.

Now that we’ve talked about the temporary nature of the exhibition, it’s interesting to think of the book as an object that remains. Do you think this reflects your desire for the project to continue?

I suppose so. Generally speaking, I see continuity between one work and the next. To myself, I think of them all as a single entity that evolves over time. But what interests me most in the context of development, change, and continuity is that they stand in inverse relation to the fixed and the eternal. I want art to resist eternity. I don’t want it to be a monument. I want it to be transient, to change, to disappear and reappear—I want it to be able to die, too. It deserves that, doesn’t it? Eternal life is boring.

The book contains allusions to the body—the elongated shadow of legs, feet peeking out—but there are no direct depictions of the body. I think the texts and images together spark the imagination and bring the bodies into it. You can really feel the aura of a human being. That’s a beautiful point of similarity between the book and the exhibition.

That’s a beautiful analysis. When you think about the objects in the exhibition, they were created for the body. And the book, of course, is also an object activated by the body; through this proximity, the book can function as another cell. At first, we thought of the book’s cover as a direct translation of cardboard, but we chose sheets and blankets because of the reference to interior and exterior, to texture, and to the possibility of imprinting on the paper. These, too, are elements that engage the sense of touch and the body. Moreover, since the blankets served as a graphic element in the exhibition, it made sense to use them as a sort of transitional object leading to the book.

What do you think the book’s home environment will be?

First of all, my initial instinct is to think about the people I’d like to have it—not necessarily a specific place. I’d like it to be in a bag, say… but it’s pretty big. I don’t know… in someone’s hands, under a coat in the rain. It could be a mouse pad or a tray—I’ve always loved bathroom books. Let it go wherever it goes, whatever happens.

Would you like to recommend an artist’s book that’s close to your heart to our readers?

The first one that comes to mind is Oz Malul’s *Selected Works*. It’s an amazing interactive book.