All Inclusive

All Inclusive” focuses on the remnants of the pan-Israeli psychedelic and discordant experience that is the southern resort city of Eilat in the summer months, when tourists vacation there. Eilat is a kind of yearned-for illusion of recreation, heat, entertainment, and luxury, where everything goes and anything is possible. Michael Liani gazes at the town through a hermetically sealed and compressed filter, which surrounds us inescapably. He peels away the face of Israeli internal tourism and examines it, and takes apart and reassembles the Eilat holiday, in a bid to reveal the disparity between the ideal of freedom and liberation and the sense of detachment epitomized in this experience. The exhibition presents the false illusion of luxury of the city’s hotel culture, and reveals the side that is less spoken about: the working conditions of the service staff, the town’s permanent residents, including lifeguards, street cleaners, beachfront stall-operators, the staff at the entertainment arcades, and restaurant waiting staff. The exhibition gazes at these people, who are forced to turn themselves into consumer products and attractions in order to survive, who together make up a one-off “mashup” tableau of humanity.