Magazine

Claire Fontaine / Foreigners Everywhere (Arabic), 2005, Suspended, wall or window mounted neon, framework, electronic transformer and cables.

Video Tract for Palestine is a loose collective dedicated to guerilla cinema for liberation. It takes its name from the collection of short films titled Cinétracts - a series of 41 documentary shorts anonymously made by famous French film directors in the 1960s as an expression of solidarity with striking workers and the events unfolding in Paris in May ‘68. Each “tract” contained leftist ideals and circulated exclusively outside the commercial film market.

From the artist: Using Pink Floyd’s song “Us and Them” as inspiration, I wanted to create a dark room where individuals could absorb the absurdity of a dream perspective that uses classicism as a departure point… maybe they’ll come out of the experience with an absurd absorbed real possibility.

For a few years during the early 1990s, I lived in Jerusalem for several months at a time, doing research in the private libraries of some of the city’s oldest families, including my own. With my wife and children, I stayed in an apartment belonging to a Khalidi family waqf, or religious endowment, in the heart of the cramped, noisy Old City. From the roof of this building, there was a view of two of the greatest masterpieces of early Islamic architecture: The shining golden Dome of the Rock was just over three hundred feet away on the Haram al-Sharif. Beyond it lay the smaller silver-gray cupola of the al-Aqsa Mosque, with the Mount of Olives in the background.’ In other directions one could see the Old City’s churches and synagogues.

Sondos Azzam’s multi-sensory dining experience, Nāranga, explores the collective memory of the Jaffa orange through a five-course meal. With each dish, the dinner considers one of the fruit’s sensorial layers and recontextualizes it. It all begins with peeling an orange wrapped in wax paper, onto which excerpts from Ghassan Kanafani’s “The Land of the Sad Oranges” are imprinted.

With Spain and Portugal long in decline, the main imperial powers of Europe rested in France and England. In these centres of colonial-racial regimes, contemporary scientific theories developed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) gave rise to the idea of ethnicity as a claim to state and territory.

Contributions by: Noor Abed, Sondos Azzam, Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Claire Fontaine, Lamia Joreige, Rashid Khalidi, Nástio Mosquito, and Video Tract for Palestine

In the opening minutes of Noor Abed’s our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021), we witness a group of women shrouded in black, lying on their bellies and peering into cavities in the earth. We never get to see what’s inside. The siren-like soundscape echoing overhead was composed by musician and sound artist Dirar Kalash. Shot on Super 8, the imagery dances across the surface of the film itself, situating the work somewhere between a historical document from an unknown archive, a fictional story, and a collective dream. Its anachronistic format and the temporal ambiguity of the figures and events creates the feeling of reaching back into a memory, though its strange and almost magical appearance also connects us decisively to an imaginary that has yet to unfold.

Palestine has always been the home of olive trees. Their roots dig deep into the land and provide a harvest that is the base of Palestinian identity and cuisine. The slim outlines of the olive leaf adorn the traditional Keffiyeh - which has been worn with pride by Palestinians and allies since the 1930’s as a national symbol for the self-determination of the people.

​​The ongoing project Uncertain Times involves the research, writing, and production of a body of work covering the period between the last days of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the French and English mandate in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine (1913 1920).

The Book of Disappearance is a 2014 novel written by Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem, which was translated from Arabic to English by Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi poet and novelist. Artist and writer Nourhan Maayouf returns to this book in early 2024, in a context which demands a new reading due to the continuing genocidal campaign in Gaza.

How Andrei Molodkin is holding $40 million worth of art hostage in support of Julian Assange.