A PROJECT BY MICAELA TERK

In a place historically marked by perpetual political instability and manifold identity crises, how can a political dramaturgy be used as a methodology to collectively form a new, fluctuating identity?

 

Neualtland is an attempted reconstruction of Herzl’s 1902 utopian novel, Altneuland. The political dramaturgy is a manifestation of three months of research by Micaela Terk, which looks to give voice to conversations held with activists and creatives from around the region. Israel’s current reality is a striking image of what happens when utopian semi-fiction serves at the forefront of a newly formed country’s political narrative. Rather than imposing a utopian future on a dystopian present, Neualtland repurposes the story’s framework as its very methodology for unraveling an impossible present and uncovering possible futures. The work approaches the Tel-Avivian subculture bubble as a fertile laboratory for dismantling old habits from within. Neualtland can be regarded as a family feud, in which an intellectual of Austrian descent contemplates the dreams of her deceased counterpart. But, above all, it is the work of an Israeli artist who, one century later, longs for a socio-political return to reality.