Rafsoda Israeli Design Project at Paris Designer’s Days 2011

Rafsoda – an exciting cohort of young Israeli designers will be showing their work at the central design event in Paris – Designer’s Days, which will take place from June 16 – 20, 2011. The Rafsoda Project (which means raft in Hebrew), was initiated by FaZa Productions, Anat Safran and Tova Marom to promote emerging Israeli designers, and is supported by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Israel’s Embassy in Paris, the France-Israel Foundation, and the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

Taking design into a new form of interactive experience, Rafsoda is a design pop-up store that will infuse the space at Le canal St. Martin in Paris with Tel Aviv creative energies.  The display area will be constructed by Yakov Sasson, a sculptor/carpenter with a fantastic sense of play and a passion for wood, who creates installations from old doors and window frames he finds on the streets of Tel Aviv. Rafsoda’s previous hugely successful project at the Port of Tel Aviv (about 10,000 visitors in 3 weeks) was accompanied by large scale graphic art, and Curator Anat Safran said the plan is to have a similar graphic art mural on the outer wall of the building. A video program will accompany the exhibit, with video works by Israeli artists. To complete the sensory experience, the organizers have collaborated with Audio Montage (the music label of the Apples, Boom Pam, Ramirez Bros, TREE, click to see/hear more) who will create a soundtrack for the exhibit.

The participating designers are: Junktion, Groupa, Elemento, Noam Dover & Michal Cederbaum, Talia Wiener, Naama Hofman, d-VISION, Ran Seri, Mirit Weinstock, Medusa, Studio Ve, StudioOoga, Amiram Biton, Maya Shalev, and Kozo Lamp. The project was presented by Curator Anat Safran; Yoram Morad, of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and Dina Sorek, Vice President of the France-Israel Foundation in a press meeting that took place this morning at Beit Ha’ir – Tel Aviv’s historic Town Hall. Safran expressed the hope that following this launch, French designers will exhibit their work in Israel, with the Rafsoda Project opening an international dialogue of design.

Designer’s Days is a non-profit association that promotes contemporary design, organizing the five day large scale design event in Paris every June for the past 11 years. Designer’s Days takes place in 70 different venues throughout Paris – Rafsoda will exhibit at Le Canal St. Martin.