New cultural doings at Beit Hansen

Beit Hansen’s final summer weekend screening and concert will take place August 27-28 and will feature the 2013 film Ender’s Game on Thursday, with a performance Friday afternoon by Habrera Hativit.

By JOSH LOGUE
Listening to singer Aharon Razel at Beit Hansen. (photo credit: SHAY HALEVI)
Listening to singer Aharon Razel at Beit Hansen.
(photo credit: SHAY HALEVI)
It wasn’t so long ago that children crossed to the other side of the street when walking past Beit Hansen in the Talbiyeh neighborhood.
“It was a very infamous place,” said Ayelet Dror. A functioning leper colony as recently as 15 years ago, Beit Hansen has since been transformed into a public recreational space, artist incubator and a Center for Design, Media and Technology.
If you had walked into the Hansen campus on a Friday afternoon in early August, you would have found young children romping around a multi-level playground while their parents relaxed over cold beer at a domed outdoor bar.
Music played in the background while waves of people trickled in before the concert.
You would also have found Dror, other Hansen staff and a gaggle of artists sitting around a table laughing, chatting about a man who brings an Israeli flag to all their events, insisting they raise it over the building.
The new idea at Hansen, Dror explained over the music, is “to give a platform and opportunity for artists to work and create daily culture events,” and make art and culture routine in Jerusalem.
This will ultimately “give you a good cultural option every day of the week.”
As part of that mission, Hansen has been hosting similar events every weekend throughout the summer.
By the time 4 p.m. rolled around last Friday, most of the families and other visitors had migrated to a raised courtyard beside the bar where singer Aharon Razel stood behind a keyboard. People lounged on blankets and cushions or sat quietly all along the low stone walls as Razel played songs from his album The Man at the End of the Tunnel.
“This place, I think, is the most important and interesting place for art in Jerusalem,” said Noam Bar, the artist who, with the help of friends and Hansen staff, built the bar they were sitting in using only materials they found around the Hansen property. “Works in other institutions can be very exclusive, but here we try to do the opposite thing with art, make it inclusive.”
“The city needs it,” he maintains.
“There is necessity, and necessity is the mother of all invention.”
Beit Hansen’s final summer weekend screening and concert will take place August 27-28. It will feature the 2013 film Ender’s Game at 8 p.m. Thursday, with a performance Friday afternoon by Shlomo Bar’s band Habrera Hativit.