The sculpture

A lookout at the edge of Arad

Arad was founded in 1962, a desert town planned by people who were made to live on the site before they drew it. In its first year its founders asked for a sculpture that would speak to the place. The municipality paid half and the residents raised the rest, in what may have been Israel's first crowdfunding campaign. Yigal Tumarkin worked on it for six years. Mitzpor, “the lookout”, was completed in 1968: a whirl of concrete planes on the edge of a cliff, facing Moab and the Dead Sea.

Tumarkin left it as bare concrete, with three parts painted red, blue and yellow. At some point it was painted white; later, after graffiti, a resident repainted it white and blue. In 2017 Arad celebrated fifty years of the sculpture, rounding the date so that Tumarkin, then 84, could attend. I was invited to compose the music.

The piece

Ten speakers, no two walks alike

The work is spread along the 200-metre ridge path that leads to the sculpture. Ten battery speakers were hidden along the path and inside the sculpture. Each one plays a single line of the piece, like one musician in an ensemble.

Every speaker loops its line at a different length, out of sync with the others, so the voices keep meeting in new harmonies and rhythms and the piece never repeats itself. Your walk decides what you hear: hurry, stop, slow down or stare, and you make a moment of music that exists only for you. Only inside the sculpture, where Daniela Turgeman's voice rises from the concrete, does the whole work come together.

There was no time to test it in the open. The first time the piece was spread across the site was the morning of the event, and on my first walk up the path I knew that the music and the place had merged.

10 speakers
200 m of ridge path
No walk sounds the same

Watch & listen

The album Mitzpor is a stereo mix for listening at home. It only hints at the experience of walking inside the music, with voices rising from every side.

Commissioned for a single evening, Mitzpor was restaged at the sculpture several times at the request of Arad's residents.

Yigal Tumarkin

A lion in winter

Tumarkin arrived in a wheelchair, a brown shawl over his shoulders. When the speeches were over he stayed alone, looking at his work, and I photographed him from behind. A moment later our eyes met, and I saw the old blue eyes burning again. The lion may have been dozing, but he had not gone.

Music: David Peretz. Voice: Daniela Turgeman. Event curator: Hadas Keder. Sculpture: Yigal Tumarkin, 1962–1968.