Ha’asif is Zumu’s socio-museum collection designed to disseminate, collect, curate and combine the cultural riches and personal stories of all the residents of the towns/cities that host Zumu, which turns into an alternating artwork.

In every city that we visit, Sharon Glazberg, who is the director of Zumu’s community department and also one of Israel’s leading artists, gathers the personal, public cultural assets from all of the different communities and turns them into the raw material for an artwork, and thus adds another dimension to the museum’s portable and dynamic collection.

A Zumu Hallmark

Ha’asif is exhibited in a container, which moves from place to place with Zumu, and has become a familiar feature of the portable museum. It offers visitors a glimpse of the cultural baggage and heritage of Zumu’s host venue.

In each city, Ha’asif pivots around the main subject of the exhibition and presents an artwork, which turns the cultural material that has been specially collected for this purpose into a piece that combines in-the-field discoveries with an artistic articulation of the spirit of the location.

In Yeruham, Zumu’s first stop, Glazberg collected stories about objects with deep personal meaning. The stories were recorded and played to visitors against the backdrop of video screenings in which the storytellers were holding the objects. The films were screened inside packing cartons and explored the issue of personal and collective identity in Yeruham.

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In Arad, Glazberg recorded lullabies shared by its residents and played them to visitors as they laid on ten field beds inside the container. The songs, which were written in different languages and derived from various cultures, were sung by the city’s residents and could be activated by smart sensors placed above each bed. Thus allowing each visitor to choose a specific lullaby or a mix of melodies that created a new, nostalgic soundtrack for the city.

Creativity That Gets You Moving

In Hatzor HaGlilit, Galzberg took over two Zumu containers. In one, she hung huge photographs of the hands of local residents holding an object related to a ceremony. Stories about the objects ran in a loop inside the container allowing every visitor to guess which story was connected to what object. Waiting for the guests in the second container, was a large copying machine, and guests were invited to photograph their hands, turning the visit into a ceremony and the ceremony into part of a story that was larger than the sum of its parts.

In Kiryat Yam, Glazberg asked the local residents to bury an object connected to a meaningful transition in their life in a sandbox. She filmed their burial and retrieval, and screened it in the cold room of the supermarket, which had been filled with sand from a local beach, and turned it into an exhibition space. The burying and unearthing of the objects, the stories, which were relayed in different languages, and the children who turned the container into their own personal sandbox, turned the transition from art to reality into a work of art, in and of itself.

Ha’asif—Zumu’s socio-museum collection is dedicated to the memory of Shir Bachar, may she rest in peace, who volunteered and worked to achieve a more egalitarian society in Israel. A teacher, mentor and lover of humanity and nature.

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