Marketing Israel to Itself
At this moment in time, Israel sits between that casual non affected place we all fell in love with in the seventies and a slick stylised future of the new century - hovering somewhere between the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Kylie Mons 'locomotive'. Last weeks Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration was a case in point. Podiums designed to look like large blue underpants , a pompous staged military presence, endless formations of predictable Israeli symbols visible only to the camera's eye, and masses of dancers all doing the same thing over and over again to the backdrop of (I concede) some relatively impressive entertainment technology. I imagine some big Israeli names were called in to produce the event but still it felt staged and flat. Of course in the Tel-Aviv world of design Israel is well and truly up there with the best, as it is in the world of the arts, music and dance, but the rest of the country, is still very much stuck in flared jeans and gaudy fonts. D