Debriefing Session was a series private, one-on-one sessions that revealed key conflicts from the series SALONS: Birthright Palestine?, co-commissioned by the New Museum and Artis as part of “The Ungovernables,” the 2012 New Museum Triennial. SALONS: Birthright Palestine? was a series of performative public debates designed to discuss Birthright Israel, the ideological youth journeys to Israel.

While developing the project in New York, Public Movement negotiated power structures and various publics, navigating competing agendas, institutional alliances, backroom politics, and creating fractures across a spectrum of individual and organizational positions. Debriefing Session foregrounds the transitional moment between research and action by turning members of the public into carriers of this information. Originally conducted in New York as the concluding action of the salon series, Debriefing Session was activated in Los Angeles as a new method of sharing the complex relations between cultural production, public and private funding bodies, political agendas, and activism.