I like to think of the group activity that takes place once a week in the music room on the second floor of the Israeli Center for Digital Art as a miracle of sorts (usually the association meanders and completes itself to Miracle in Milan, Vittorio de Sica’s Italian neorealist film, or Miracle in Jessy Cohen, if you will). There is no doubt in my mind that what is known as the Scratch Orchestra is a project with miraculous properties. But it is not the religious sense of the word “miracle” coming into being, but rather an act that does not necessarily transgress reality or transcend it; it is an occurrence that underscores and refines the sense of reality. I have often asked myself, how is this possible? What is it that makes this group special? What is the source of its dedication? And why is it that these are the conditions in which miracles sometimes happen?
Setting up the gray and somewhat heavy plastic chairs at the beginning of each session is a weekly ritual that delineates the potential for listening across the room’s floor. We usually arrange the chairs in a circle, and in turn, the chairs, the walls, and the windows that are tricky to open because of the crooked metal rail, absorb the reverberations, residues, and remnants of the group sound. Between the starting point of each session and its end, in which we stack the chairs back in two piles, the Scratch Orchestra unfolds in all of its manifestations. Sometimes the orchestra stops and listens intently for about a minute to the soundscape that enters the room. Sometimes the orchestra talks incessantly, the voices of its members swirling and merging with one another. All this is only to inform the outside listener that this is, as in any interesting phenomenon in life, a body that holds built-in contradictions and paradoxes. Despite these, and perhaps precisely because of these, the orchestra can switch between different states seamlessly and naturally, without effort or pretension to be something that adheres to any particular criteria.
At the core of the group activities of the Scratch Orchestra stands the democratic idea in its successful iteration. We engage in concrete actions of listening to oneself and to others, and playing, which does not necessarily depend on virtuosity and is accessible to every woman and man. Kitchenware, discarded toys, percussion and small wind instruments, and even leftovers of consumption in various states: Styrofoam food packaging, dry peels of a fruit of some sort, and even a watermelon (which is the star of a mythological story in the orchestra's annals along with other stories). However, the power and uniqueness of the orchestra, in my opinion, stems first and foremost from its human composition. This unique group of women that was formed in the early days of the orchestra became a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts. And even if there have been occasional disagreements within the group, the common commitment to the idea seems to have outweighed any distractions. Furthermore, the humanity and solidarity within the group often attracted guests who were invited to work with the Scratch Orchestra. These encounters were often special and exciting landmarks along the timeline of the ongoing activity in the music room. The shared and ongoing work is the orchestra’s bread and butter – to borrow a useful expression from sports commentators – together with its many people, sounds, and the intersections between them.