In a first visit by a British culture minister, Ed Vaizey discovers the artistic side of hi-tech and a bit of his own past.
By NIV ELISEd Vaizey 521(photo credit: Courtesy: British Embassy)
It was the soundwaves sculpture, with its dense oscillations and vibrant, glossy sheen, that caught the British minister’s eye at the Israel Museum.The sculpture is the work of technological artist Eyal Gever, who designs cutting-edge computer graphics technology to recreate events like nuclear explosions or capture the sound of a volcanic eruption, and translates their “sublime” moments into sculptures using a 3-D printer. It only seems natural that Gever’s work would appeal to Ed Vaizey.As the British culture, communications and creative industry minister, Vaizey’s purview includes not only the arts, but technological communications and creative industries such as film, television, video games and fashion. Gever’s art exemplifies Israel’s excellence in those areas, both separately and in combination.Given Israel’s aptitude for arts and technology, Vaizey assumed a plethora of British culture ministers had visited the Jewish state before him, and is shocked to discover he is mistaken. “If that’s the case, I’m proud to be the first one,” he tells The Jerusalem Post at an interview on a sunny day at the British ambassador’s residence in Ramat Gan. “I’m delighted!”Vaizey’s three-day visit, sponsored by a slew of bilateral ties institutions, is aimed at deepening cultural and communications ties between the UK and Israel. The delegation, he explains, “acts like a dating agency,” facilitating relationships between Israeli and British companies in those fields.“There’s a great deal of synergy,” Vaizey says of the two countries. “There’s a strong Jewish community in the UK, which takes very prominent part in our public life, from Jacob Rothschild downwards. We have a shared history, obviously, and a connection that goes back many years,” he says.“Israel is a natural partner for us to work with because of Israel’s strong track record in technology.”It’s not just talk – Israel is among the handful of countries the UK is focusing on to expand its technological and creative ties. On the priorities list, Israel sits alongside economic powerhouses China and India, which represent a third of the world’s population between them, South American development miracle Brazil, and resource-rich Gulf states. And Vaizey seems smitten with it.“Israel is a country in an ancient landscape, so you think about this part of the world as being rooted in the beginnings of human civilization, and yet Israel is also one of the most advanced economies in the world. Despite its small size, it punches well above its weight in patents, Nobel prizes and technological advances,” he says.But even Vaizey, who met with Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon and Culture Minister Limor Livnat during his trip, didn’t expect to find such fertile ground for cooperation.
Although he was aware of Israel’s reputation for technological prowess, he was surprised by the extent of its innovation. During the visit, Vaizey learned of Israeli success stories such as The Gifts Project, a platform acquired by eBay that allows friends to all pitch in for one big online purchase, and the Google-acquired LabPixies, which was among the first companies to produce widgets for the search giant’s personalized homepages.“It surprised me how profound that success is,” says Vaizey. “The contribution of Israeli R&D to global companies like Intel is something I don’t think many people know about, something I certainly didn’t know about before.”Through all of the talk of business and technology, Vaizey also found a very personal connection to Israel on his trip.“My great-grandmother’s brother was killed in the Holocaust with his children,” he explains. That man’s son moved from Poland to Palestine in 1932, where he settled down and had children. After Vaizey’s official visit to Yad Vashem – “an extraordinary place” – he met his third cousins for the first time. “That was very moving.”ONE OF the charms of working with creative arts and technology is that they are singularly focused on advancing humanity, careening forward into the future despite the best attempts of present-day politics to mire them down in the muck.“I’m always struck by the fact that when you look at projects like the large hadron collider in Geneva, you will find, frankly, Iranians and Israelis working together to further the advancement of the human race, and that’s what the exchange of ideas is about.”But a little bit of political interference, like death and taxes, is inevitable. In the UK, especially in the academic realm, calls for boycotting Israel have been ubiquitous.The British Union of Colleges and Universities, representing 120,000 university academics, imposed a boycott against Israeli academic institutions in 2007, according to the Israel Project.The largest higher education union, the University and Colleges Union, voted in June 2010 to support a Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign against Israel. More recently, groups such as the Boycott Israel Network and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods sought to shut down a music conferences until they were satisfied no Israeli government funding was involved.Vaizey saw antipathy to Israel up close and personal when he attended a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in September. Pro- Palestinian protesters, who had urged a boycott of the event, disrupted the show no fewer than six times, resulting in the cancelation of its live radio broadcast.Attempts to isolate Israel academically or culturally are “offensive,” says Vaizey, and the British government opposes them. “The idea that you would punish Israeli academics for the policies of a government you may disagree with is completely wrong,” he says. “It’s complete anathema to what academic freedom should be – the exchange of ideas without politics interfering,” he continues.Vaizey likes to remind critics that Israel is a vibrant democracy.“The thing that defines Israel for me is that you can be as rude about Israel to me as you like, but what you should remember is that you could be as rude about Israel as you like in a café in Tel Aviv, and there’s no other country in the Middle East that you could do that [in].”The boycott movement, which in his view has failed to have a serious impact, is self-defeating.“I think it misses the point, which is that you can criticize a government for its policies, just as our government is criticized, but you shouldn’t criticize a people.”Applying the same logic to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, Vaizey believes there is much work Israel can do to improve life for the Palestinians. The delegation visited Ramallah, where it met representatives from the largest Palestinian private sector company, Paltel, which provides the territories with telephone, Internet and cellular services.“I think it’s really important that we include the Palestinians in our engagement in this region. I think that the people of Israel know that more needs to be done to support the Palestinians in terms of economic growth, so the more that we can bring both Israelis and Palestinians together in terms of working together in business, and if Britain can play a role in that and be part of the equation, that’s something I would strongly support as well,” says Vaizey.One of the problems is that Palestinians have an image problem. People “read the news and hear the reports of the troubles, so they don’t think about the West Bank as a place where they can do business,” he says. That is a perception Britain would like to challenge, in part by further engaging with businesses in the territories, and in part by asking Israel to help facilitate business.“It’s not my job to tell the Israeli government how to behave,” says Vaizey, but he points out that Palestinian businesses could run better if goods had an easier time getting through customs. There’s one story of a server being held up in a warehouse for eight months. Ramallah is keen to deploy 3G services, he says, and Israel should support that.BACK AT the ambassador’s residence, Vaizey considers the overlap between technology and arts.“The arts tend to be defensive, they always think they’re an afterthought, they’re not takes seriously,” he says. But what is often missed, he says, is that technology depends on the arts. “You can have all the technology advances that you want, but unless you make it human, unless people can interact with it, it’s not going to work.”Artists and creative people are the ones that make that happen. “The entire success of Apple is, I think, down to design,” he says.And that is the kind of synergy that Israel and the UK can create by working together. Britain is often associated with its long history and culture rather than its own technological innovation.“People like to visit to see castles and museums – but more and more people recognize that we’re also a very advanced country in terms of science.”His message to Israeli companies, which often look to America for management, marketing and creativity, is that there is an alternative on this side of the Atlantic.“All of those skills are on the doorstep in London and they should look there first.”
