The monument

A beach made of concrete

When I was a child in Be'er Sheva, the Negev Brigade Monument was the highest place in town: raw, grey concrete standing between the city and the desert. In a city with no sea, it was our beach. On Saturdays we crossed the railway, climbed the hills, shouted into the echo dome, raced along the broken snake and played tag in the maze.

Years later I wrote a song about Masada Road, the street I grew up on. Its refrain became the seed of everything that followed.

In a city with no reason
life is the monument
to what will never be
to what will never happen

בעיר ללא סיבה / החיים הם האנדרטה / למה שלא יהיה / למה שלא יקרה

Listen to Masada Road →

2014 · The ceremony

Every element an instrument

In 2014 Be'er Sheva marked fifty years since work began on the monument, so that Dani Karavan could celebrate with the city. The organisers asked me to perform the song at the ceremony, and then to compose all of its music.

I wanted to turn the whole monument into music: a musician in each part of it, each playing one voice of the piece in the acoustics of that particular space. Visitors would make the work themselves, hearing different parts wherever they walked, and only at the centre would all the voices gather into one.

While preparing, I went to the monument several times a week and recorded sketches of its spaces: the desert wave, the maze, the dry aqueduct. They became the mini-album October Concrete.

In the end, electricity and weather made it impossible to spread the piece across the site. On 30 October 2014 we played live at the monument with the improvising collective We Are Ghosts, and the recording became the album A N D A R T A. The idea of a sculpture made of sound had to wait three more years, for Arad.

We Are Ghosts at the monument: Shany Kedar, Orri Dror, David Peretz, Morphlexis, Amir Nir, Guy Bibi, Asaf Koren, Aviad Hendel, Guy Hajaj. Recording: Roei Luster.

Dani Karavan

The monument that sings

The day after the ceremony I met Karavan for the first time. He wanted to hear everything about the monument's life: my daughters playing between its parts, the love stories on its edges, the way it had become part of the city.

High above the Be'er Sheva valley, with the wind blowing through the bullet holes in its walls, the monument never stops singing. Karavan invited me to work with him on recording and documenting the sounds it makes through the day.

“Of all the prizes I have won, the greatest is knowing that my work did something good in the world.”
Dani Karavan

2019 · The Louvre

Andarta, the film

Dancer Yoko Imazaka heard the music and decided to dance to it inside the monument. With video artist Shimon Bokshtein she made Andarta, a video-dance film. In 2019 it was one of five finalists, out of 100 films, in NOW YOU SEE ME at the Louvre Museum, with a jury chaired by Sir Anish Kapoor, and the audience favourite.

Standing on that stage I thought of my grandmother, Mary Gabbay from Neighbourhood D, who always dreamed of Paris but lived in Be'er Sheva. For her, the grey monument stood for the whole distance between the two cities.

Andarta, a work by Shimon Bokshtein. Dance: Yoko Imazaka. Music: David Peretz. Sculpture: Dani Karavan. Curator: Noa Karavan. Aerial photography: Damien Dufresne. Editing: Ezri Keidar. Effects: Robin Grönöl.