Tamar Berger​

Tamar Berger (b. 1957) is an Israeli writer and architect. She has published four books and dozens of essays, many of them focusing on topical aspects of Israeli society and culture. Berger is also a senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Berger’s essay writing is both narrative and documentary, phenomenological and conceptual, and has a loyal readership in Israel. Two of her books were adapted into plays and one served as the thematic backbone of a recent documentary. Berger’s first book, Dionysus at the Center (Hakibbuz Hameuchad, 1998) is a cultural, political and familial archeology of the site of a mall in the center of Tel Aviv, a history that encapsulates to a great extent the Zionist-Palestinian story. Dionysus at the Center was adapted into a play and staged by the Ruth Kanner Theatre Group (2004).  It also serves as the thematic backbone of the documentary The Centre (producers and directors: Kobi Faraj and Morris Benmayor, 2023). Berger's second book, In the Space between World and Play (Resling 2008), combines a series of essays illuminating, from varied angles and points of view, various manifistations of the model – actual and conceptual – in Israeli culture, also discussing them in their larger contexts. Autotopia, Suburban In-between Space in Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad 2015) describes the major spatial phenomenon of the past few decades in Israel: the process of suburbanization that is creating a new post-urban landscape. The book follows typical road-trips in the suburban space, that are heavily dependent on the car, describing and analyzing the localities it creates and also discussing its general social, cultural and political aspects. Berger’s most recent book, Aside: Residual Spaces in Isarel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad 2022) is a cross-section of Isarel’s phenomena of residuality, both social and physical. Using terms such as dis-order, marginality, ruin, periphery and others, the book leads its readers from landfills to unrecognized Bedouin villages, detention centers, industrial ruins, impoverished neighborhoods, drosscapes, archeological sites and Palestinian ruins, eventually leading to the gradual ruination of the aging (female) body.       

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Literary Nonfiction: Aside: Residual Scapes in Israel

Literary Nonfiction: Dionysus at the Center​​

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