Bringing the Dead Sea to Life

Art and Nature at the Lowest Place on Earth

https://www.artistsfornature.com/projects/bringing-the-dead-sea-to-life/

The second Artists for Nature Foundation project that I helped organize focused on raising global awareness to the plight of the Dead Sea (together with The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), the Hoopoe Foundation and Tel Aviv University together with the Amman Center for Peace and Development (ACPD, Jordan), Universite' de Lausanne (UNIL, Switzerland) and the international Artists For Nature Foundation (ANF).  The Dead Sea is one of the most unique geographic formations in the world, supporting unique ecosystems and harboring historic and cultural treasures. The long-term decline of the water level is creating an ecological imbalance on both land and sea that will eventually destroy this unique and precious resource. The culture of environmental artists and nature lovers provides a unique, non-political platform for people of this war-torn region to connect to their natural environment and to one another.

For eleven days in March 2017 we travelled around the Dead Sea with 23 International and local artists. The Emmy awarded musician Paul Winter joined us for the trip and gave several concerts in each country. We also taught several art workshops with local children in Jordan, Palestine and Israel. A beautiful book cataloguing the artwork and experiences of the trip was published in 2018 (Hadas Marcus and Yossi Leshem, The Society or the Protection of Nature in Israel). The ANF also organized an exhibition of the works in Holland later that year.