Locked to the Chair's Table: A Holocaust Survivor's Son Protest Against the Establishment That Became a Musical

Artist Ariel Bronze's father asked the Holocaust survivor's foundation for assistance in installing a shower, but for six months he ran into a bureaucracy and eventually paid for his money. As a last resort, the son locked himself in the chairman's office and documented the event. Now, the experience has been translated into a show that illustrates the hardships of civilians facing welfare

Locked to the Chair's Table: A Holocaust Survivor's Son Protest Against the Establishment That Became a Musical

For six months, the foundation for the welfare of Holocaust survivors in bureaucratic proceedings attracted the father of the Holocaust survivor of the artist Ariel Bronz. On the way to receiving his application as part of the Foundation's "Life in Dignity" project to install it in a shower room he encountered unanswered phones, laconic answers and endless smells. No definitive answer was given, and the desperate and unanswered father decided to buy the shower himself. But then Bronze came into the picture.

The artist began recording the long conversations with the service representatives who assured him each time that another week would be resolved. He even came to the offices to find that there was nothing there until, at the moment of disgust, he decided to carry out a protest and tied his neck with a bicycle lock to the chair of the foundation, Limor Livnat, and documented the incident that illustrated, like in a surreal situation comedy, the wheels of Israeli bureaucracy that are exhausting The difficult populations in the country are on their way to getting the help they deserve.

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Purchase the shower with their money after they have not encountered it. Bronze and his parents Katya and Boris (Photo: Courtesy of the photographers)

Artist Ariel Bronz with his parents, Boris and Katya Bronz (Photo: Courtesy of the photographers)

Two-and-a-half years have passed since Bronze contacted the foundation's office, during which he was able to produce some provocations against the establishment such as blowing a flag in our seats during a speech by culture minister Miri Regev and tying his neck every year to another memorial commemorating Holocaust Day. "Holocaust cheapness" and waste of public money that could have gone to those survivors.

Beyond provocations, Bronze decided to write a play based on the documented event at the foundation's offices, which required an hour and a half of the hardships every Israeli citizen in general and Holocaust survivors in particular faced bureaucratic officials who recited repeated messages to the little citizen and exhausted him on the way to the coveted aid. The musical, "The Lock" directed and written, came up last weekend at Nissan Nativ's acting studio just days before International Holocaust Day (Monday).

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"I lock my neck just as they locked my father's neck into this foundation, and for half a year prevented him from the aid he deserved. It seems pretty shocking to me, a piece of system that the ability to deal with is beyond the human capability of any individual or individual. Let's say a nightmare trip is completely Kafkai, you can't go through this system without falling into space, "Bronze told Walla in an interview! NEWS. The artist explained that the musical is not only focused on the treatment of Holocaust survivors, but in general on the establishment's failures to help disadvantaged populations and to censor the word "Holocaust" throughout the musical as it was spoken.

"My goal was not to portray this particular fund badly, I just wanted to show both sides - on the one hand the officials, these people who work within these crazy systems, on the wrist, for having no ability to help other people, neither And on the other hand, to also introduce those people who need assistance, who mostly can't get help from people who have no ability to help, it's a kind of circle of victims of the weak on the weak, basically at a loss, "said Bronze. He said, "This bureaucracy is not only the property of Holocaust survivors, but of anyone facing the Israeli welfare services, any bureaucratic system that we have to go through to get aid or our rights."

"As in a surrealistic comedy." Bronze locked to Livnat's desk (Photo: Leia Bar)

Artist Ariel Bronze Tied to Table Limor Livnat's Holocaust Survivor Chair, June 1, 2017 (Photo: Photo: Lia Barr, Untitled)

Who among us did not hear the following statements when contacting a government office, establishment or customer service on the way for assistance: "In a week we will have an answer", "We have budget constraints", "Do not know why they are not coming back", "We received the offer The price, we will look at it and give you an answer "," We do the best we can "," We have to reach it every day, do not know when. "

The same is true of the musical, while the actor who embodies Bronze is locked to the table and simply asks his father to take a shower and solve the problem, entering and leaving gray-clad officials with hoodies, as if they were "inactive" zombies and throwing in the air the same phrases that sound like a broken record solution. Between scenes and scenes, Bronze plays the recordings he has made with service representatives who demonstrate how realistic the scene, which until a few minutes ago, was shown and looked delusional. By the end of the musical, the artist is projecting some videos of the real event and the audience who never ceases to laugh at just how much the theatrical musical he was watching at the moment was simply part of the reality.

"I'm terribly afraid to say 'corrupt' because on the one hand I don't want to receive a million shekel silence claim that I have no way to deal with because they have an advocate to do it, on the other hand from what I have experienced there, it felt like there was no Nobody who is there to help, neither my father nor the last 200,000 survivors who are still alive and in ten years will not be remembered, which is the most painful, "said Bronze." This is something that will not be solved in a few years, it is a hardship. Which in my view is contemporary because their time is over and most of our time is over, it shows as a society our moral standards and priorities. "

The assigned musical turns out to be part of reality. From "The Lock" (Photo: Uri Rubinstein)

"Locked" directed by Ariel Bronze (Photo: Uri Rubinstein, official website)

About the process that prompted Bronze to carry out the protest, he said: "My father sent them all the permits exactly according to the definitions of the project" Living with Dignity ", which you can see on the website. Pulled them for five months and at the end my parents decided to buy the floors from their money and then I went in. I decided to go to the foundation itself to find out what was going on there. When I arrived I realized that people were not coming there, it looked like some straw company, no place for crowds, everything about crates, they were surprised to receive me and put me in some side room they were evacuating there. "

"Already on my first visit, when I was there, I met some of the people working there and actually met them later in the play," Bronz continued. "They promised me it would be dealt with next week and nothing to worry about, and that they did. I gave them a week, and then I saw no one coming back to me. I called again, and told me 'yes next week it happens.' I called the fund again and told me the same thing again. I went to the Treasury, told them that I had no one to talk to, and the office was surprised at all that this project was still active, they were sure it was closing for a long time, and I finally realized that this was going to go away and my parents were going to buy their money from a shower. I didn't know if it would help, but it burned me to do it. "

"My parents decided to buy the shower from their money and then I entered the picture." Bronze (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Ariel Bronze, January 22, 2020 (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Bronze arrived at the foundation's offices, entered the chair's office and tied himself to the desk that was fixed to the floor with a bicycle lock. For hours, the foundation's employees came in and tried to persuade him to let go and give them the lock. They asked to sit with him and have a logical conversation. Their wish is only to help the survivors, because they make a donation they promised to return to his father, claiming that they had accepted the bid and that his documented act would only harm the Holocaust survivors. Again and again, sentences sounded pointless to solve the saga. The house tried to think of a creative solution to free the table, to no avail Terra and a man who sawed the lock to free the bronzes.

"The atmosphere between comedy and tragedy"

"The event was challenging, interestingly, I was locked in for far more hours than I thought I would be," which the artist recalled moments when he was connected to the table. "I was an audience of the whole situation and also the main actor at that moment. It terribly interested me on the artistic and theatrical level. On the one hand I saw everything from the other side and the other I was in the situation. It was a stone that couldn't be turned at that moment so I could just sit and watch what was happening around me, And all it was was absurd theater. Repeating texts for three hours, officials coming out and coming in and repeating the same messages as if they had been pre-written, creating an atmosphere of comedy and tragedy. "

Bronze fell in love with the locking motif and over the years locked himself into several establishment icons: in 2017 for a lamp in front of the Knesset, in 2018 from the Holocaust memorial and the erection of Yigal Tomarkin in Rabin Square and in 2019 for the statue of Menashe Kadishman in Habima Square. "Wherever commemorative culture robs those survivors of the same money they could reach and help them get through the last years of their lives. Commemoration culture takes these funds to hold empty rituals for themselves and they do not heat any Holocaust survivor's home," Bronze explained His protest.

Police release Bronze from Rabin Square monument, 2018 (Photo: Noah Beninga)

Artist Ariel Bronze in Rabin Square (Photo: Photo: Noah Benninga, Untitled)

For a year, the artist's head boiled down to the idea of ​​pushing the locking act out of the fund. He even offered it to the Culture Ministry for funding but his application was rejected, and then a proposal came from a theater in Boston to perform the play as a staged call. Bronze transcribed and translated the play, but it did not come to fruition, until two and a half months ago Nissan Nativ approached him and offered him a stage show with third-year students and he agreed. "It just happened to be waiting for me," he said. "It burned me to do it especially after I got a refusal from the culture ministry to get a budget and do it. The reactions are amazing, really fun, people fly in the air, people come out excited, uplift, kiss me, laugh, cry, people realize this is no longer a show for survivors "A holocaust, but a show that floods the bureaucratic system with the little person. Everyone can identify with it from their own world out of their bureaucratic world."

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The Holocaust Victims Welfare Fund said in response that "The Holocaust Victims Welfare Fund provides assistance to tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors a year. Survivors depend on the volume of donations we are able to raise. We are working tirelessly to increase donation funds to improve the quality of life of as many Holocaust survivors as possible. "

"We are sorry for Ariel Bronze's choice to act in a provocation way for the provocation, and for the first time it is important to mention, for no material reason," they added. "It is worth noting that Ariel Bronz's father, Mr. Boris Bronz, received assistance from the foundation even before the artist's provocations, such as reimbursements and a distress button, and even after his son's provocation received assistance with dental care funding. The Holocaust Victims Welfare Fund assists Mr. Boris Bronze as regularly as possible, and every other claim is ruled out. "