Public Movement presented a new public gathering at a central location in Stockholm. Together with five performers, the public was invited to experience choreographies of care, fictional scenarios of danger and orchestrated states of evacuation.
Emergency Routine departed from what was claimed to be the world’s largest evacuation exercise to occur in peacetime – Operation Stockholm 1961. In this ambitious, unprecedented event, 225 000 residents were asked to leave their city as part of a massive emergency drill. Planned in response to the cold war and tensions around nuclear threat the exercise was part of the Swedish defense program between 1958–1961.
Emergency Routine activated civil alliances as they are performed between bodies in moments of threat. Echoing the state’s elusive hand that reaches and touches the citizen under the auspices of protection, the exercise invited passers-by to be carried away, allowing physical touch and bodily manipulation, to experience imaginary and documented acts of violence, and choreographies of compassion.
Today, when governments frequently debate the need for “Civilian Resilience”, and when biopolitical agreements between state and citizens are being reexamined – Public Movement proposes that in order to be ‘prepared’, a collective physical and mental practice is necessary.
Emergency Routine activated civil alliances as they are performed between bodies in moments of threat. Echoing the state’s elusive hand that reaches and touches the citizen under the auspices of protection, the exercise invited passers-by to be carried away, allowing physical touch and bodily manipulation, to experience imaginary and documented acts of violence, and choreographies of compassion.
Director of Public Movement: Dana Yahalomi
Public Movement Members: Maayan Choresh, Avshalom Latucha, Gali Libraider, Meshi Olinky, Yaniv Segal
Public Movement Production Manager: Adi Nachman
Public Movement Studio Manager: Lihi Levy
Public Movement Consultants: Tal Yahas, Nir Shauloff, Gali Libraider
Emergency Routine (2019) is a commission by Public Art Agency Sweden. It was developed during Public Movement’s residency at Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv and Iaspis, Stockholm (May, 2019).
On public Movement
Public Movement was founded in December 2006 by Dana Yahalomi and Omer Krieger. Yahalomi became the sole director of the group in 2011.
For the last 13 years, Public Movement has explored the regulations, policies, and formations of identity which govern the dynamics of public life and public space. In 2018 Public Movement presented its first solo exhibition in Italy, Temporary Orders, at the Vistamarestudio gallery, Milan. In the same year the group performed The Interview in several art institutions around Israel. In 2017 they performed Rescue in the European Capital of Culture, Aarhus. In 2016 Public Movement presented Debriefing Session II and Choreographies of Power in the Guggenheim Museum, New York.
In 2015 the group’s solo exhibition, National Collection, took place at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and in the same year the book Solution 263: Double Agent, written by Alhena Katsof and Dana Yahalomi, was published by Sternberg Press.