For the opening event, we have brought together twenty artists from different generations — from the founding generation to a younger generation of experimental art in Israel — to engage with experience.

The Hebrew word nisayon encompasses both the skill and knowledge accumulated over the lifetime of a person or an institution, and the act of trying and testing without certainty as to the outcome. On the opening night of the conference, we wish to ask these artists, who carry in their bodies, in their memories, and in their current work both experimentation and experience, the question: What is Experience?

In This Progress, created for the Guggenheim Museum in New York, artist Tino Sehgal placed performers of different ages along the visitor’s path through the museum: a child, an adolescent, a middle-aged man, an elderly woman. As they progressed upward through the spiral building, they asked the visitor: What is progress?

As an open homage to this work, we invite the audience to take part and ascend the stairs of the School building one by one, accompanied by different generations of experimental art in Israel. On each floor, an artist from another generation will join the ascent and share something of their experimental experience with the visitor: stories, reflections, and questions about the meaning, mechanisms, and qualities of experience.

The work will take place on the opening day of the conference (Monday, October 12), between 17:00 and 21:00, in half-hour rounds. When purchasing a ticket, please select a time slot and arrive a few minutes before it begins. During each round, visitors will enter the work one at a time.