Performances and Phenomena of Light
(Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays)
credit points: 2
Yair Vardi
Yair Vardi is a theater creator, curator and artistic director, lecturer, dramaturg, and lighting designer. He holds a bachelor's degree in Performance from Dartington College, England, and a master's degree in Choreography from the Berlin University of the Arts.
He served as the artistic director of the "South of Multidisciplinary Arts Festival" in Ofakim from 2020 to 2024. He is the head of the creators track and a lecturer in the Department of Culture, Creation, and Production at Sapir Academic College. He also lectures at the Faculty of Arts at the Kibbutzim College and at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance from 2022 to 2024.
He curated the "March Hare" Festival at the Kelim Choreography Center in Bat Yam together with Anat Danieli during 2019-2020. He curated and served as the artistic director of the Tmuna Theater between 2012 and 2017. He was the artistic director of the dance festival "Intimadance" from 2013 to 2017.
In 2005, he initiated and founded the interdisciplinary performance festival "A-Genre" at Tmuna Theater and served as its curator from 2005 to 2017. As a dramaturg and artistic consultant, he has accompanied many artists and projects including Ruth Kanner, Yoram Carmi, Noa Dar, Natalie Zuckerman, Niv Shinfield, Oren Laor, Marina Baltov, Talia Hoffman, and others.
His works have been presented at Tmuna Theater, the Akko Festival, the Suspended in Place Festival, The Home Theater, Mandel Cultural Center, Kelim Center Bat Yam, Oper Studio (Berlin), Nilo Center (Iceland), and various festivals in Berlin and England.
As a lighting designer, Vardi has designed lighting for many festivals and artists across a broad spectrum of art forms in galleries, theaters, public spaces, and stages around the world.
Light is a unique phenomenon; it is the sustainer, the existent, and the non-existent simultaneously — it is a substance that is anti-substance.
We cannot grasp it as an object, yet it is a necessary phenomenon for us to see and perceive objects in existence. At the same time that it allows us to see, it also shapes our perception of reality, thereby becoming a foundational object in itself. All we have to do is “catch” it, not take it for granted, and then perhaps we can see it as a treasure and a creator of reality.
In this workshop, we will learn to see light, explore it, and then understand how we can control it and produce different meanings from and with it, shaping our living environments. The workshop will include intellectual and creative tools for creating and designing with light.
We will unfold light compositions from everyday life, get acquainted with light artists, and discuss lighting designs from a broad range of fields: stage, architecture, art, and public space. We will learn design tools, different types of bulbs, lamps, flashlights, and how other light sources can illuminate and how their operation can create a material image.
During the workshop, we will also work through the creations and exercises you have made during the year: exploring them as spaces for light action, working with them, shaping the light within them, and examining together the visible and hidden layers that light can create.
Ultimately, during an intensive two-and-a-half-week period, we will investigate our working and living spaces through light and how it can illuminate the dramaturgy of the reality we live and create.
