Mali De-Kalo stands out as one of Israel’s finest video artists. Her work springs from an ongoing study of architectural spaces and their embedded socio-human contexts. To her, the buildings she studies are not inanimate objects but living organisms that have a history, and embody power relations and movements of life. In this site-specific exhibition, De-Kalo turns her inquisitive gaze toward the Open University, forging connections between the building, its people, and their personal stories, weaving them together into a visual and emotional experience. The exhibition engages with its location by exploring the campus experience through a perspective that binds past and future. It is comprised of two parts: The first part explores the campus’s architectural and functional dimensions through singular Open University activities, including exams held nationwide. The second features a series of interviews that reveal the human fabric of the campus, creating a metaphorical encounter between the interviewees and the viewers.
Part 1: “Underground City”
At the core of the project are the hidden underground spaces: giant storehouses, a printing house,
and a sophisticated logistics system. This system distributes textbooks and exam forms to around
50,000 students nationwide at the same time, on the same day, collects the completed forms, scans
them, and sends them to lecturers for grading the following day.
The video works reveal a competent
and vital mechanism that evokes the sense of contemporary archaeological findings. The viewers
are invited to perceive the building not only as a functional machine, but also as a metaphor for
power relations and architectural design. The camera moves through the spaces, linking them with
the surrounding sights and sounds.
These video works are presented in two visual sets:
Underground City A: Four horizontal screens slowly and continuously scan the spaces in repeated,
kaleidoscopic movements, linking different areas, and generating alternating flowing and suspended
rhythms.
Underground City B: Three screens, facing different directions, display rapid close-ups of the
production line, creating an almost futuristic effect, and inviting the viewer’s eye to focus on the
action, the materials, and the colors.
Part 2: Interviews
In the column gallery, interviews with ten campus figures are screened. Among the interviewees
are Ada Carmi, the building’s architect, Prof. Leo Corry, the Open University President, and several
members of the Open University staff, and a student. The interviews convey diverse perceptions and
experiences of the campus — ranging from appreciation and inspiration to criticism and discomfort
— particularly regarding its architectural spaces, which some view as empowering while others
regard with ambivalence. In De-Kalo’s eyes, the building embodies a clear hierarchy between those
working above ground, and those below.
De-Kalo’s video works keep viewers alert while also inviting them to surrender to the experience.
Her camera is not a neutral tool, but a living, breathing, organ of vision moving continuously through
the space. Her photographic language typically revisits the same themes from different angles, like
a flowing river that is constantly changing. When disruptions occur, they become part of the rhythm
— additional pages in a story that unfolds before our eyes.
The exhibition Weaving Sky and Earth, moves between the personal and the collective, as well as
between the surface and the “underground city.” De-Kalo uncovers hidden mechanisms, reveals the
tension between human existence and architecture, and offers viewers an ongoing observational
experience. The building emerges not only as a physical space, but also as a human, emotional, and
social arena. The artist links heaven and earth, the overt and the hidden, the surface and what lies
beneath, inviting viewers to join the journey with an attentive and receptive spirit of exploration.