Welcome to the Online Re_Public

This website is the digital version of a project dedicated to public space, part of the Liebling Haus’ ongoing program in 2021. These days, when public areas are randomly off-limits, the ideas we engage in through the project take a life of their own and transcend the physical space. Having access to the limitless web enables us to simultaneously introduce the project’s main ideas online and offline - in a physical exhibition at the Liebling Haus.

As a new cultural center operating in a historical residential building, the Liebling Haus explores public space, an elusive, shifting concept, especially in recent months. Public space begins when we step out of the apartment door, but also once we turn on a camera during a zoom session. The distinction between public and private - addressed tirelessly in municipal guidelines and regulations - has been blurring for years, long before Covid-19 restrictions, but the pandemic makes it even vaguer. Aware of the attempts to define public space, we invite you to join us in the coming months to observe and study this fundamental aspect of our daily lives.

About the works

The online works explore the public domain, shifting between two points of view: internal - the website as a space illustrating its intrinsic public essence; and external - wrapping an action happening in the physical world of the city and the Center Taking shape before the pandemic, the project eventually expanded and evolved into new dimensions, extending indefinitely. It compiles new spaces from across the web, the city, and the building, redefines them, and offers additional perspectives on the meaning public space holds for us as individuals and citizens. 

In his work The Hill – Neighbors’ Tribute, Roy Fabian examines the spaces between buildings. Often seen as forsaken remainders, these zones possess unique qualities, resulting from their volumetric dimension and communal and social potential.

In their work Body Without Organs, Lila Chitayat and Gabi Schillig engage with the building’s facade as a public space perceived as private, especially the balcony, providing a simultaneous feeling of inside and outside.

In The Behavioral City: Exposure, architects Rebecca Sternberg and Keren Avni present a project developed with the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality planning and strategy departments, facilitating urban behavior patterns as a foundation for measurable trends and connections between municipal resources and services.

In HaDira Residency Program, Anat Litwin and Sally Krysztal-Kramberg examine the fine line separating private and public space – a former residential apartment transformed into a residency studio and between the home and the city. With the Urban Artistic Hosting Platform (UAHP), they study the intrinsic potential of staying in this space when reality evolves and homes become cultural anchors, a new public arena.

In the Amphi set up in the living room of one of the Liebling Haus’ apartments, public space becomes a place to pick a side and act in. Artists from the School of the City will use it as a public space for screenings, lectures, and interviews via AmphiTV.

In Caring Infrastructure, the Viennese group feld72 examines the abundant potential of public space – during epidemics, and Covid-19 in particular – to shape a new relational reality from urban planners and designers’ perspective.

In The Fifth Space, Jakub Szczęsny and Hadas Tuval redefine the rooftop as a collaborative space designed to facilitate personal interaction in the charged atmosphere of residential buildings, a modernist living concept whose social values ​​have long been privatized.

Islands in the net invites us to visit the web as an infinite generous public space, exposing it as an intricate web of rules and policies that navigates and controls our movements.

Like public space in those challenging times, Welcome to the Re:Public is a project that will also change its nature according to health regulations. Sometimes it will be an exhibition, sometimes a festival or event. Like the physical space outside, the works are also featured in the Liebling Haus itself, waiting for you to complete the whole experience.

Director of Curatorial: Shira Levy-Benyemini

Participants: Keren Avni, Ben Benhorin, Ben Grosser, The Pirate Party,

Anna Wild, Filipe Vilas-Boas, Lior Zalmanson, Mushon Zer Aviv,

Tsila Hassine, Aya Zeiger, Gabi Schillig, Hadas Tuval,

Anat Litwin, Olia Lialina, Maayan Mozes, Joana Moll,

Helen Nissenbaum, Roy Fabian, Daniel C. Howe, Sally Krysztal-Kramberg,

Lila Chitayat, Jakub Szczęsny, Rebecca Sternberg, feld72, Reddit

Curators: Eran Eizenhamer, Sharon Golan-Yaron,

Shira Levy-Benyemini, Sabrina Cegla

Scenography, design, and production: Anat Levy

Graphic design: Efrat Goldman

Translation: Ronny Shani

Setup and multimedia: Gamliel Sasportas, Adi Hadar

Logo and web design: Maya Cohen

Web development: Gal Cohen

Observation exercises: Rotem Volk, Anat Levy

Islands In the Net Illustrations : Geffen Refaeli

Director of Curatorial: Shira Levy-Benyemini

Participants: Keren Avni, Ben Benhorin,

Ben Grosser, The Pirate Party,

Anna Wild, Filipe Vilas-Boas,

Lior Zalmanson, Mushon Zer Aviv,

Tsila Hassine, Aya Zeiger,

Gabi Schillig, Hadas Tuval,

Anat Litwin, Olia Lialina,

Maayan Mozes, Joana Moll,

Helen Nissenbaum, Roy Fabian,

Daniel C. Howe, Sally Krysztal-Kramberg,

Lila Chitayat, Jakub Szczęsny,

Rebecca Sternberg, feld72, Reddit

Curators: Eran Eizenhamer,

Sharon Golan-Yaron,

Shira Levy-Benyemini, Sabrina Cegla

Scenography, design, and production:

Anat Levy

Graphic design: Efrat Goldman

Translation: Ronny Shani

Setup and multimedia: Gamliel Sasportas,

Adi Hadar

Artistic director: Shira Levy-Benyemini

Logo and web design: Maya Cohen

Web development: Gal Cohen

Observation exercises: Rotem Volk,

Anat Levy