The Straus Collective on Pushing Boundaries
Artwork by Yoel Peled
The Straus Collective, based in Jerusalem, started in 2013 when a small group of friends and artists looked for a spot to share creative space and studio to combine extreme music and visual art. Since then, the collective has been performing live audiovisual concerts across Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and around the world. In addition to their shows, the group also operates a tattoo parlor on the side.
Straus sat down with gggaaallleeerrryyy to discuss how the group came to be, and their mission behind coming together.
gggaaallleeerrryyy: Tell us a bit more about yourselves. Who is part of the group?
Straus Collective: The collective currently consists of people who share the studio and the close circle around it, which is about 10 people (non-human, liquid and otherwise ungraspable entities are impossible to count, so the number will forever be flexible). Among us are emotional acrobats, tattoo visionaries, empty skin areas, dismembered bands, ambivalent non-professionals and separated twins.
ggg: What is the role of each person in the group?
SC: To the outside world it appears that we work in a non-hierarchical open system, where the internal chaos takes over the administration. When you look inside, a strange and curious sight is revealed: someone is sitting in the middle of the studio, trying to sell vacations in Ibiza to an audience with no cash while airplane shaped snails are circling him. So basically we are controlled by the ants walking all over our limbs, drawing a combination of extreme 3d graphics and hand sketches. The most important figure though is the one that fixes the toilet under extreme conditions.
ggg: What subculture of Judaism do you relate to?
SC: Neturei Karta. (This is a religious group of Haredi Jews, formally created in Jerusalem in 1938)
ggg: Can you take us through what you do as a collective?
SC: The activity divides into what happens within the studio and what happens outside of it. In the studio, we share two flexible workspaces: one mainly for rehearsals but sometimes for textile design or other crazes; the other for: tattoo art, drawing, and graphics. Our tattoo parlor has sprouted international talents like Gursski, Auto Christ, Yuva River, and Daria LS, and regularly hosts residencies of cutting-edge tattoo artists from around the world.
The rehearsal space is home for our developing musical and A/V projects, among them Wackelkontakt, Kashaiof, Tehomim, Karkait, Abortion Boys, SIDS, Vincent Uncool, Avizohar, and Rasis Shalem. The space sometimes hosts different sorts of events, live shows, installations, parties, screenings, meetings of artistic clashes only imagination can gather. We usually don’t remember anything afterward, besides one vivid detail which is used as a conversation topic for all the events that follow.
Outside the studio, we are a multi-talented group of content makers that can adjust and curate according to tempting invitations. Besides bat mitzvahs, we produce audiovisual and musical live concert evenings that emphasize the extreme taste and total performative energy that we enjoy.
Karkait live at LieBurnMan Festival, photo by Roy Siegel
The Body of reverbs live at Studio Straus, photo by Itzik Gil Avizohar
ggg: You produce underground raves in the Mea She’arim neighborhood of Jerusalem, which is populated by Haredi Jews and strictly abides to ultra-orthodox Judaism. How has this setting and culture shaped your approach to art and music?
SC: Imagine an orthodox wedding in which the bride and groom had never previously met. Under the sacred oath they came to know each other’s world and swore to never interrupt each other and never be oppressed by ways in which they don’t believe. They are the shadow which we hide behind to escape the stream of insanity. We are both true to our shit and we both take it seriously.
A Whole by Itzik Gil Avizohar
