I have designed a workshop, Personal Documentathon, based on the experience and insights gained from my 10 year journey creating the trilogy My Terrorist (2002), My Land Zion (2004), My Brother (2007) and a film revisiting the trilogy, My Israel (2008).

Personal Documentathon, is a condensed version of a course I have been teaching, and perfecting, for six years at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel’s top school of art.  Thanks to this course I was given an outstanding teacher award in 2020.

Due to the pandemic, the semester of 2020- 2021 was taught successfully online. Following this good experience, I now offer this workshop and course online.

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Personal documentation helps participants find their personal truth and refine their individual self -definition. The objective of the five-day workshop/course/seminar is to enable students to create a distinctly personal statement, a work of art in any medium they choose, in a structured and process-oriented manner. 

I facilitate, attending carefully to the unique individual needs of each participant. The nuclear family, the home, ethnicity, gender, religion and so on, lay the foundation on which the self is built to begin with.  The years shape us with memories and upheaval, which put on and remove masks, change our faces and teach us to speak in different voices. All this is built up in us, layer upon layer.

The purpose of the five-day workshop is to expose episodes from the personal life story that permeate and influence the subject-matter and language of the creator.  Although the resulting work of art, more often than not a kind of self-portrait, can be simplified and only hint at its meanings, based on fragments of memory and feelings that have left a mark, it is always an opportunity to see ourselves more clearly and speak our truth in a way that is best for our internal conversation and creates an opportunity to communicate with others.  

In practical terms, the workshop/course/seminar sets in motion a process that begins with looking for the personal/autobiographical motivation, and moves on to uncovering the personal story best suited to the specific moment in which we are working together, crystallizing an idea, researching, producing raw materials, editing, and ending up with a completed work of art. 

The workshop helps the student create in any chosen medium: photography, graphics, fashion, digital media, video art, exhibition, product design, film, blog, website, publication, lecture performance or performance.

As Lucian Freud said: “Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait, even if it is a chair”.

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