Between 2015-2016, 21 Israeli artists and writers stayed at the Curfew Tower, Cushendall, Northern ‎Ireland, a Catholic village with Republican roots.‎

The unusual small red sandstone Curfew Tower at the central crossroads was built in 1817, based on a ‎building the landowner had seen in China in his travels as a tea and opium trader. It was originally a ‎prison ‘for the confinement of idlers and rioters’.‎

In 1994, artist/musician Bill Drummond bought the Curfew Tower, and in 1999 he reinvented the tower as ‎an artists’ residency program. He invited artists to reside and produce work that responds to their ‎experience living in the tower and the village of Cushendall.‎
Each year the residencies at the Curfew Tower are curated by a different organization or individual. In ‎‎2014 Israeli artist Sagit Mezamer curated the tower residency for a period of 18 months.‎

Each artist stayed at the tower for several weeks, working on their own projects, researching, and getting ‎to know the area. The residency offers a somewhat unique experience of isolation from the outer world on ‎one hand, yet a sense of belonging to the local community on the other. Each artist resided alone, with ‎hardly any cellular or internet reception, while at the same time the artists received a warm welcome by ‎the people of Cushendall. The Curfew Tower offers artists the opportunity to become, for a limited period ‎of time, part of a new place, and to imagine the opportunities this once bleeding part of the world has to ‎offer.‎

In January 2017, a comprehensive exhibition of works produced by the residency artists titled Nothing ‎But Longing #1 was opened at Void Derry Gallery in Northern Ireland.‎

Curfew Tower Artists: Rafram Chaddad / Jonathan Ofek / Shahar Yahalom / Ron Dudai / Shai Ratner / ‎Yonatan Levy / Talia Keinan & Guy Sherf / Guy Goldstein / Tchelet Ram / Effi & Amir / Keren Cytter / Ido ‎Hartogsohn / Eli Petel / Wanja Schaub / Zohar Shafir / Asaf Ben Zvi / Zamir Shatz / Ilit Azoulay & Mika ‎Hazan Bloom & Jonathan Touitou / Netally Schlosser

Program:

Thurs, March 23

7:30pm – Greetings

8:00pm – Performances by Bill Drummond and the Curfew Tower Residency artists

Tracey Moberly (London), will prepare the traditional curry dish served every summer at the Heart of the Glens Festival in Cushendall.

Fri, March 24

12:00pm – Greetings and introduction

12:15pm – ״The long road to peace in Northern Ireland״, Limor Yehuda (Hebrew)

12:50pm – “Towers, Walls, Mirrors and Bridges – Between Northern Ireland and Israel”, Dr. Ron Dudai (English)

1:20pm – ״Psychedelic Altneualnd: Writing of a psychedelic Zionist utopia from a tower Northern Ireland”, Ido Hartogsohn (Hebrew)

2:00pm – Break

2:15pm – “18 months with Israeli artists at The Curfew Tower / Introducing the artists through the politics and mythology of the north of Ireland”, Raymond Watson (English)

3:00pm – Chen Tamir – a conversation with Sagit Mezamer and the Curfew Tower artists (Hebrew)

About the Speakers:

Attorney Limor Yehuda is a legal scholar focusing on human rights and social justice. Limor spent six years at Israel’s Supreme Court as legal assistant to Chief Justice Aharon Barak, followed by eight years at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) where she directed the department for human rights in the Occupied Territories. She is currently a research fellow and PhD candidate at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, studying peace processes in ethno-national conflicts. Limor is also a founding member of a joint Palestinian / Israeli moment “Two States, One Homeland” which aims to offer a new paradigm for the solution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict based on equality between the two peoples and the implementation of a conferetaive model.

Ron Dudai works in the fields of human rights, social movements, transitional justice, and punishment and social control. He is especially interested in non-state actors (armed groups, social movements, and human rights organizations), as well as in questions of social control and punishment in the context of political violence. He is co-editor of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, where he previously edited two special issues, on Armed Groups and Human Rights Praxis, and on Dilemmas of Human Rights Activism. His work was published in, among others, Human Rights Quarterly, British Journal of Criminology, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Human Rights, British Journal of Sociology, as well as several edited volumes. He was awarded the Brian Williams Prize by the British Society of Criminology, which is given to “the best article by a ‘new scholar’, which shows evidence of particular distinction, and makes a valuable contribution to the further development of criminology.”

Ido Hartogsohn, PhD, (b. 1978) Is an Israeli psychedelic writer and activist. Hartogsohn has worked as a journalist for many years, publishing in various Israeli Newspapers, websites and magazines such as Haaretz, Maariv, Ynet, Walla and Nana. In 2009 Hartogsohn published the book “Technomystica”, a philosophical tractate on the relationship between technology (also psychedelics) and consciousness. His PhD thesis, which was written in the Science, Technology and Society Program in the Bar Ilan University examines the role of setting and setting in shaping mid-twentieth century psychedelic research and culture. Hartogsohn is the editor of La Psychonaut, the Israeli psychedelic magazine. He is also the founder of Dailypsychedelicvideo.com, the leading website for psychedelic videos on the web, and psychedelictraveler.com, a community based psychedelic travel site.

Chen Tamir ​ is a Curator at the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv and Curatorial Associate at Artis. She was listed by artnet as one of 25 women curators on the rise and by Artslant as one of 15 curators to watch in 2015. Until recently she was based in New York working as an independent curator and also as Executive Director of Flux Factory where she founded an acclaimed residency program and set up a thriving institution. Chen holds an M.A. from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, a B.A. in Anthropology, and a B.F.A. in Visual Art from York University.

Raymond Watson is a visual artist and writer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He lives and works in Cushendall. Watson ​has a substantial body of work influenced heavily by the recent political conflict in the north of Ireland, much of his work revolved around topics of peace building. He has worked on a large variety of art in the community projects. He has exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally. During the 18 months of the Israeli artists’ residency in the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Watson spent a lot of time with each of the artists. Watson interviewed each artist and later edited those interviews into the book Ireland-vs-Israel.