0:00:07.332,0:00:10.135
My name is Hanoch and I play.

0:00:10.135,0:00:12.748
I play with objects.

0:00:12.748,0:00:17.331
I've been making portraits with objects[br]for a long, long time,

0:00:17.331,0:00:20.914
and the portraits are published[br]in different magazines

0:00:20.914,0:00:23.058
all over the world,

0:00:23.058,0:00:25.965
and of course, in Israel as well.

0:00:25.965,0:00:30.464
Here is Mrs. Netanyahu,[br]the wife of the Prime Minister

0:00:30.464,0:00:33.417
who happens to have a slight,

0:00:33.417,0:00:37.510
special way of dealing with cleaning.

0:00:37.510,0:00:39.881
(Laughter)

0:00:39.881,0:00:43.113
And here is President Peres.

0:00:44.545,0:00:49.286
So, I also play with my food.[br](Laughter)

0:00:50.210,0:00:54.664
So after having been doing this[br]for so many years,

0:00:54.664,0:00:57.163
I want to share with you,[br]what did I learn

0:00:57.163,0:01:00.302
of 20 years of playing with bananas.

0:01:00.302,0:01:02.296
(Laughter)

0:01:02.296,0:01:06.097
So, I learned that all artists play:

0:01:06.097,0:01:08.363
Picasso played with food,

0:01:08.363,0:01:10.982
(Laughter)[br]Picasso played with objects,

0:01:10.982,0:01:14.660
because artists know that playfulness

0:01:14.660,0:01:18.495
is a fertile ground for creativity.

0:01:19.833,0:01:23.299
When Picasso made this head of a bull,

0:01:23.299,0:01:27.291
he wasn't using his amazing talent[br]in drawing,

0:01:27.291,0:01:31.654
he was just using his ability[br]to look at the world

0:01:31.654,0:01:34.961
in a playful way, in a different way.

0:01:34.961,0:01:38.885
And perhaps we can not learn[br]to draw like Picasso,

0:01:38.885,0:01:41.944
but we can learn, perhaps,[br]to look at the world

0:01:41.944,0:01:44.176
in a little bit different way —

0:01:44.176,0:01:50.265
the way Picasso did[br]when he created this sculpture.

0:01:50.265,0:01:54.044
So let's look at the definition[br]of seeing:

0:01:54.044,0:01:56.175
I like what Paul Valery wrote,

0:01:56.175,0:02:02.172
"To see is to forget the name[br]of what we are looking at."

0:02:02.172,0:02:06.428
What Valery is talking about,[br]is forgetting a label.

0:02:06.428,0:02:09.543
To name something, is a direct path.

0:02:09.543,0:02:13.483
Once we understand it, we move on.

0:02:14.022,0:02:17.127
But what if we refrain from naming,[br]we stay with it,

0:02:17.127,0:02:21.390
we explore it, we take the winding road,[br]we wonder around?

0:02:21.390,0:02:24.015
We might then discover something new,

0:02:24.015,0:02:25.777
which we haven't seen before.

0:02:25.777,0:02:29.792
Maybe we will make some[br]playful new association.

0:02:29.792,0:02:33.879
A good way to practice this,[br]is to look for faces —

0:02:33.879,0:02:38.877
I don't mean faces like this,[br]I mean faces like that!

0:02:38.877,0:02:42.557
The world is filled with faces.

0:02:42.557,0:02:44.607
(Laughter)

0:02:44.607,0:02:47.472
This is the bathroom in my house.

0:02:47.472,0:02:51.678
And once we see faces,[br]we are forgetting for a millisecond,

0:02:51.678,0:02:56.758
the name of that[br]which we are looking at.

0:02:57.466,0:03:01.804
So, by now you can tell[br]that I am a sucker for playfulness.

0:03:01.804,0:03:04.578
And it's true, and it is because

0:03:04.578,0:03:09.265
playfulness made a big change[br]in my own life.

0:03:09.265,0:03:12.773
I was born and grew up[br]in Uruguay, South America,

0:03:12.773,0:03:15.072
and I always drew.

0:03:15.103,0:03:18.602
This is my 4th grade teacher[br]whom I drew.

0:03:18.658,0:03:22.126
It's probably the oldest caricature[br]I have.

0:03:22.126,0:03:26.233
In Uruguay there are many cows,[br]so I drew cows.

0:03:26.233,0:03:30.411
I even drew steaks,[br](Laughter)

0:03:30.540,0:03:33.831
and Gauchos on horses,

0:03:33.831,0:03:37.630
and when I was 11,[br]we came to live in Israel —

0:03:37.630,0:03:40.099
So the subject matter slightly changed.

0:03:40.099,0:03:42.099
(Laughter)

0:03:42.099,0:03:45.802
But not my passion —[br]I wanted to be a caricaturist.

0:03:45.802,0:03:50.578
I looked at the newspapers,[br]I copied what other people were doing.

0:03:50.578,0:03:52.725
But life has a way of happening to you,

0:03:52.725,0:03:55.881
so when I finally wanted[br]to go and study,

0:03:55.881,0:03:57.987
I was already in my mid-20s

0:03:57.987,0:04:02.055
and my talent was kind of iffy.

0:04:02.055,0:04:05.547
I missed many hours of practice

0:04:05.547,0:04:07.345
because I'd been doing other things.

0:04:07.345,0:04:11.737
As a matter a fact, I was rejected from[br]the Bezalel Art School, not far from here.

0:04:11.737,0:04:15.499
And I had to go and study in New York.

0:04:15.499,0:04:20.616
When I arrived in New York,[br](Laughter)

0:04:20.616,0:04:23.705
I realized that I did suck!

0:04:23.705,0:04:25.508
(Laughter)

0:04:25.508,0:04:29.883
Most of the people around me[br]drew much better than me.

0:04:29.883,0:04:34.683
I was doing this kind of lame cartoons,[br]while the real pros,

0:04:34.699,0:04:37.092
what I was seeing in the newspapers

0:04:37.092,0:04:39.413
were amazing pieces of art,

0:04:39.413,0:04:44.154
by wonderful artists like:[br]Steve Brodner, like Philip Berk.

0:04:44.185,0:04:46.960
And that made me feel like this:

0:04:46.960,0:04:49.654
This is me, depressed in New York.

0:04:49.654,0:04:52.948
So, I was frustrated, I was pesimistic,

0:04:52.948,0:04:55.099
I had hit a wall.

0:04:56.576,0:05:00.175
Now, if you remember the diagram[br]from before,

0:05:00.175,0:05:03.337
the direct path was not working[br]for me anymore.

0:05:03.337,0:05:07.369
I had to take a different path —[br]I had to start wandering around,

0:05:07.369,0:05:13.739
looking for other ways to find[br]my own way of making caricatures.

0:05:13.739,0:05:17.046
And as we all know,[br]when we get off the main road,

0:05:17.046,0:05:20.946
this is where some treasures might be.

0:05:20.946,0:05:23.664
And I did find some treasures.

0:05:23.664,0:05:25.626
The first treasure that I found —

0:05:25.626,0:05:30.293
I found it in the picture collection[br]of the Mid-Manhattan Library.

0:05:30.293,0:05:34.673
It was an old poster for the movie[br]"The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin.

0:05:34.673,0:05:37.935
And I don't know who the artist was —

0:05:37.935,0:05:39.897
"designer unknown" it said,

0:05:39.897,0:05:44.685
but it was amazing to me, how the designer[br]with so little said so much —

0:05:44.685,0:05:50.274
both a portrait of Adolf Hilter[br]and of Charlie Chaplin.

0:05:50.698,0:05:52.970
So, I needed to see this,

0:05:52.970,0:05:56.381
because that made me understand[br]that it wasn't about technique —

0:05:56.381,0:05:59.303
it was about communication,[br]and it was about

0:05:59.303,0:06:03.129
finding your own way of doing things.

0:06:03.129,0:06:04.964
The second treasure that I found,

0:06:04.964,0:06:07.357
as I was drawing Saddam Hussein,

0:06:07.357,0:06:10.740
it was the first Gulf War, 1990,

0:06:10.740,0:06:15.105
and I was living at the time with a girlfriend[br]who was a heavy smoker,

0:06:15.105,0:06:17.739
and there were matches[br]all around the house.

0:06:17.739,0:06:20.809
And suddenly, I picked up those matches

0:06:20.809,0:06:23.847
and I put it on the face[br]of Saddam Hussein,

0:06:23.847,0:06:26.181
and I made the mustache with it.

0:06:26.181,0:06:29.456
Now, I did it because I thought[br]the form was the correct one,

0:06:29.456,0:06:33.964
but only later I realized[br]that there was an idea —

0:06:33.968,0:06:38.385
the matches where basically explaining

0:06:38.385,0:06:42.825
that this man had just started a war.

0:06:42.825,0:06:51.043
I wouldn't have found[br]the poster or the matches

0:06:51.043,0:06:55.439
if everything would've been well[br]with my road,

0:06:55.439,0:06:58.179
If I would've stayed in the direct road.

0:06:58.179,0:07:01.414
So, looking back[br]twenty something years,

0:07:01.414,0:07:05.624
I know now that I was blessed[br]by hardships.

0:07:08.362,0:07:13.882
By the way, Edward de Bono[br]who coined the phrase "Lateral Thinking",

0:07:13.882,0:07:15.905
he calls the opposite of this,

0:07:15.905,0:07:18.586
to be "Blocked by Adequacy".

0:07:18.586,0:07:20.958
When everything is sort of adequate,

0:07:20.958,0:07:22.619
maybe not great, but not bad,

0:07:22.619,0:07:25.859
you don't have an urge[br]to look for other solutions.

0:07:25.859,0:07:30.830
So in my case, being blessed by hardships[br]made me look outside.

0:07:31.888,0:07:33.684
So I made a collage.

0:07:33.684,0:07:36.436
I started making collages,

0:07:36.436,0:07:40.451
and I realized that collage[br]is the ultimate playful technique.

0:07:40.451,0:07:44.260
You can not make a collage[br]on a direct path.

0:07:44.260,0:07:46.324
You need to wander around –

0:07:46.324,0:07:48.465
to find something here,[br]to find something there,

0:07:48.465,0:07:53.269
and when you put it all together,[br]you create something new.

0:07:54.110,0:07:59.615
And I realized that this way of working,[br]really, really suited me.

0:07:59.615,0:08:05.305
I felt very comfortable[br]in this way of working.

0:08:11.463,0:08:14.539
It was really about trial and error —

0:08:14.539,0:08:17.206
about trying things,

0:08:17.206,0:08:20.520
and about allowing myself[br]to make mistakes.

0:08:20.520,0:08:24.343
Most of the objects that I try[br]do not work,

0:08:24.343,0:08:27.686
but I need to go through[br]like twenty or thirty

0:08:27.686,0:08:30.459
in order to find the right one.

0:08:30.459,0:08:32.984
Just as in the eyes of Einstein,

0:08:32.984,0:08:37.902
I used twenty gears[br]until I found the really good ones.

0:08:37.902,0:08:42.140
So, it's really about forgiving yourself[br]when you make mistakes.

0:08:42.140,0:08:47.305
And playfulness lets you do that.[br](Laughter)

0:08:47.796,0:08:50.764
When I made the portrait[br]of Homer Simpson,

0:08:50.764,0:08:53.664
all the sketches that I made[br]weren't working very well.

0:08:53.664,0:08:55.855
So I threw them to the garbage can.

0:08:55.855,0:08:58.158
And then I look at the garbage can[br]in my studio,

0:08:58.158,0:09:01.132
and I realize that it was exactly[br]the mouth of Homer Simpson!

0:09:01.132,0:09:05.204
(Laughter) (Applause)

0:09:07.128,0:09:08.783
Thank you.

0:09:08.783,0:09:12.955
So sometimes those happy accidents[br]come to save you.

0:09:12.955,0:09:15.738
The happy accidents are always there,

0:09:15.738,0:09:19.666
and when we play,[br]and when I make collages,

0:09:19.666,0:09:21.467
I notice them.

0:09:21.467,0:09:25.574
And sometimes is about[br]helping them arrive.

0:09:25.574,0:09:28.967
So, sometimes it's about going out[br]to look for something,

0:09:28.967,0:09:30.974
which I even don't know what it is.

0:09:30.974,0:09:34.141
When I made the portrait[br]of Hafez al-Assad,

0:09:34.141,0:09:38.820
I went out in the flea market in Yaffo[br]to look for some metal stuff,

0:09:39.543,0:09:41.511
and I came upon this object –

0:09:41.511,0:09:45.855
And I said, "I don't know what this is,[br]but I am sure Assad had one of those at home!"

0:09:45.855,0:09:48.531
(Laughter)

0:09:48.531,0:09:52.018
It just felt right.

0:09:53.465,0:09:57.962
When I make a collage,[br]I only see what's in front of me.

0:09:57.962,0:10:00.882
It's very easy to forget[br]all the preconceptions

0:10:00.882,0:10:04.182
about how one thing should be.

0:10:04.182,0:10:06.629
It's easy to challenge[br]those preconceptions.

0:10:06.629,0:10:09.824
So for example, when I was making[br]the portrait of Fidel Castro,

0:10:09.824,0:10:12.881
I realized that[br]it just didn't need a face,

0:10:12.881,0:10:15.425
and it still looked like Fidel Castro.

0:10:15.425,0:10:18.876
Well, who said that a caricature[br]should have a face —

0:10:18.876,0:10:20.801
So once I realized that,

0:10:20.801,0:10:24.291
it was easier for me[br]to use other objects,

0:10:24.291,0:10:27.416
just about anything I wanted.

0:10:27.416,0:10:30.813
Like a stretched rubber ballon[br]for Michel Jackson,

0:10:30.813,0:10:33.947
because it's obvious[br]that's what his skin was made of,

0:10:34.141,0:10:37.664
(Laughter)

0:10:37.664,0:10:42.365
or sausage for Yeltzin,[br](Laughter)

0:10:43.621,0:10:47.229
or bread for Karl Marx,[br](Laughter)

0:10:49.045,0:10:52.648
a drum stick for Golda Meir,[br](Laughter)

0:10:52.648,0:10:54.375
or Gefilte Fish.

0:10:54.375,0:10:59.077
But perhaps the most important thing[br]I learned from making collages,

0:10:59.093,0:11:02.959
is about adaptation,[br]about being flexible.

0:11:02.963,0:11:06.476
And, because really,[br]any new object that arrives,

0:11:06.476,0:11:10.129
can change totally what I am making

0:11:10.129,0:11:12.228
because things are not glued.

0:11:12.228,0:11:16.414
And slowly, I realized that I was starting[br]to live my life in that way,

0:11:16.414,0:11:19.301
not just to make my work in that way.

0:11:19.301,0:11:24.534
College really taught me how to live[br]my life in a more flexible way.

0:11:25.265,0:11:30.984
And I started to notice treasures[br]which appeared in my life.

0:11:31.523,0:11:35.717
The first one happened after[br]I made my first book for children:

0:11:35.717,0:11:37.854
"Notza Segula" in Hebrew,

0:11:37.854,0:11:42.298
or "The Perfect Purple Feather"[br]in English.

0:11:42.298,0:11:45.128
And what happened was,[br]after I made that book,

0:11:45.128,0:11:50.877
kids, started sending me[br]all these innocent drawings,

0:11:50.877,0:11:53.908
with objects, or with food[br]which they made,

0:11:53.908,0:11:56.968
(Laughter)

0:11:56.968,0:12:01.324
some were less innocent,[br]like this portrait of Monica Lewinsky.

0:12:01.324,0:12:03.543
(Laughter)

0:12:03.543,0:12:05.932
Liol Zamil, who was twelve at the time,

0:12:05.932,0:12:09.745
sent it to me with a letter saying,[br]"And I also put the stain".

0:12:09.745,0:12:12.385
(Laughter)

0:12:12.385,0:12:16.378
(Applause)

0:12:17.447,0:12:22.294
People develop fast here.[br](Laughter)

0:12:22.294,0:12:26.268
But that lead for me[br]to start visiting schools,

0:12:26.268,0:12:29.138
and doing workshops with children,

0:12:29.138,0:12:31.968
first in Israel, and then I started to travel

0:12:31.968,0:12:36.173
to other places: like Brazil, like China.

0:12:36.173,0:12:40.620
And slowly, the kids participating[br]in my workshops grew older,

0:12:40.620,0:12:47.106
and I realized that even adults could make[br]the most amazing work with objects.

0:12:47.396,0:12:49.957
Look at this self-portrait[br]that this guy made —

0:12:49.957,0:12:52.537
and he's no artist,[br]he's an x-ray technician.

0:12:52.537,0:12:54.803
(Laughter)

0:12:54.803,0:12:58.495
So, I realized that if I were to give[br]those people a pencil,

0:12:58.495,0:13:03.606
and white paper, they probably all[br]would've made something like this.

0:13:04.880,0:13:06.710
But because they were playing,

0:13:06.710,0:13:10.794
they could really go around[br]those hardships,

0:13:10.794,0:13:14.295
and they really even didn't know[br]they were creating art,

0:13:14.295,0:13:16.228
they were just playing —

0:13:16.228,0:13:20.796
and then they were happy[br]with what was coming out.

0:13:20.796,0:13:22.932
It was actually sort of the same process

0:13:22.932,0:13:28.218
that happened to me[br]twenty something years earlier.

0:13:28.218,0:13:31.566
But then another treasure[br]came my way —

0:13:32.258,0:13:35.691
I was contacted by a group[br]of art therapists

0:13:35.691,0:13:38.040
in a hospital in Israel[br]to come and work

0:13:38.040,0:13:41.383
with the children[br]in the oncology department.

0:13:41.383,0:13:44.335
And we spent three days together

0:13:44.335,0:13:48.659
making the most amazing workshops[br]with those kids.

0:13:48.659,0:13:51.747
And the kids really did amazing work.

0:13:51.747,0:13:55.503
This kid, for example,[br]made a portrait of the doctor

0:13:55.503,0:14:00.454
who conducted the procedure[br]of bone marrow transplant on him.

0:14:00.454,0:14:05.070
And the syringe that he used for the nose[br]is the actual one that the doctor used.

0:14:07.573,0:14:11.494
And then we went on to work with adults,

0:14:11.494,0:14:13.690
cancer patients as well,

0:14:13.690,0:14:17.566
which again made[br]amazing pieces of art.

0:14:18.459,0:14:22.668
And then we moved on,[br]and we worked with army veterans,

0:14:23.048,0:14:27.773
and army veterans[br]suffering from PTSD.

0:14:27.773,0:14:31.056
And you should've seen these men[br]in their fifties

0:14:31.056,0:14:35.112
creating the most amazing artworks —

0:14:35.251,0:14:38.458
just by playing with objects.

0:14:38.458,0:14:40.453
Look at this one.

0:14:40.453,0:14:44.385
Is it a self portrait?[br]Is the small fish a self portrait,

0:14:44.385,0:14:46.533
or perhaps the large fish.

0:14:46.533,0:14:51.326
So. then I understood that it wasn't[br]really about creating art —

0:14:51.326,0:14:53.780
It was about telling stories.

0:14:53.780,0:14:56.130
It was about communicating.

0:14:56.130,0:14:59.487
Playfulness through the use of collage

0:14:59.487,0:15:03.562
was allowing people[br]to tell a story through art,

0:15:03.577,0:15:09.403
which perhaps would've been too difficult[br]to say in words.

0:15:10.215,0:15:14.408
So, I want to end with this guy,[br]this picture of this kid.

0:15:14.485,0:15:19.998
He participated in one of my workshops[br]in Tel Aviv, in the Bialik Rugozin School.

0:15:20.049,0:15:21.956
And supposedly he didn't get it —

0:15:21.956,0:15:25.945
You're supposed to glue the stuff[br]on the board, not on yourself.

0:15:25.945,0:15:27.273
(Laughter)

0:15:27.273,0:15:29.633
But because he didn't listen to me,

0:15:29.633,0:15:32.642
he didn't listen to the preconceptions,[br]he was playing.

0:15:32.642,0:15:36.041
He only listened to his inner voice

0:15:36.041,0:15:38.105
and to what was in front of him,

0:15:38.105,0:15:42.211
he created a really special image,

0:15:42.211,0:15:44.526
which we are showing here today.

0:15:44.526,0:15:47.311
When we play, we are free!

0:15:48.618,0:15:50.427
Thank you very much.

0:15:50.443,0:15:52.597
(Applause)

0:15:52.819,0:15:54.248
Thank you.