Leave Your Psychopathic Behaviour Outside the Playground

Abstract

‘Leave your psychopathic behaviour outside this playground, there are small children here’, screamed a furious father at Malki Tesler, an Israeli artist staging a public intervention in the center of Tel Aviv’s Meir Park, where she peacefully sat, physically blocking the playground’s slide and preventing children from using the amenity. Tesler’s site-specific work is an antagonistic act that evolved into a participatory event, thereby blurring the lines between public art, performance, and activism. Predicated on a determined refusal to play and a public presentation of a vulnerable body, this act instigated an incredibly violent reaction by children and chaperones alike, and therefore exposed the fragility of the so-called Israeli social bond and the exclusionary practices that sustain it.