Shifting Ground: The Underground Is Not the Past
Symposium, Performances and Artist Publications
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre and Al Masrah Al Baladi,
Ramallah and Khashabi Theatre, Haifa
THURSDAY, 10 AUGUST
7:00 pm–8:00 pm
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Bird Watching
An audio essay on the acoustic investigation of Saydnaya prison in Syria.
The artist will present the performance live by phone from Berlin.
Simultaneous translation is provided
*seats are limited
8:00 pm
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center Garden
Book Launch Reception
Artist publications produced and commissioned for the SB13 Ramallah project will be disseminated. The publications are the work of Noor Abuarafeh, Benji Boyadgian, Inas Halabi, Ma’touq, Nicola Perugini, Samir Harb and Mimi Cabell, Yara Saqfalhait, Subversive Film (Reem Shilleh & Mohanad Yaqubi) and The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind.
FRIDAY, 11 AUGUST
10:30 am–4:00 pm
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
Subterranean Sites
Large portions of the landscape in Palestine have been claimed by burial spaces and the matter that circulates through them or remains buried indefinitely within them. The sessions on this day explore places and acts of burial, the variety of actual and symbolic meanings constructed around them and their political, historical and folkloric agency.
See attached programme for more details…
SATURDAY, 12 AUGUST
6:00 pm–8:45 pm
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
On the Underground: Earth as Medium
While land has been a highly charged theme in anti-colonial struggles, this session focuses on earth as a substance that can function as a medium for opposition. Exploring earth as a means and a material for folk tales compels the question of whether the earth preserves the lore, or the story preserves the earth. The scientific study of soil itself becomes an epistemology that can shape an anti-colonial political consciousness.
See attached programme for more details…
SUNDAY, 13 AUGUST
10:00 am–6:45 pm
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
Before the Museum
The museum has been commonly compared to a cemetery: a place where objects meet their death and where this death is exhibited. However, the graveyard and the museum are different. While one remains a mystical site of potential ghostly return, the other institutionalises radical, revolutionary violence as the irredeemably dead past by displaying its material corpse as evidence of the impossibility of resurgence. In this light, how can one read museums in Palestine? Palestinian material culture is either confiscated, destroyed or lies in colonial museums or secret military archives. Under current circumstances – an unrealised state, a people under military occupation – what is the function of the museum and how has the institution of the museum been affected by the specificity of the Palestinian context? Looking at historical case studies, archival documents and slightly unusual museums, the sessions on this day will address these questions and also examine why certain art objects are resurfacing now.
See attached programme for more details…
MONDAY, 14 AUGUST
8:00 pm Al Baladi Theatre, Ramallah Municipality
Ramallah Closing
Pixelated Revolution (2012)
A non-academic lecture by Rabih Mroué, presented by Asmaa’ Azaizeh (With English subtitles)
See attached programme for more details…