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Intimate terrains
إقتراب الآفاق

Learning
Making

Teamwork during create-shop with Aya Kirresh, Lama Aloul, Ignace Cami, Jürgen Buchingner and Samar Kirresh, Birzeit

Intimate terrains, create-shop 2019

Birzeit, 21–29 august 2019

Disarming Design from Palestine and the Palestinian Museum, organised a summer school for Palestinian and international students and designers. On the basis of the narratives of the exhibition, Intimate Terrains, at the Palestinian Museum, new useful designs were developed in collaboration with local artisans. What does it mean to be Palestinian today, and how to express that through locally made products? International students from Sint Lucas School of Arts, Antwerp (BE), Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam (NL) and Lucerne School of art & design (CH) collaborated with designers and students from Birzeit and beyond to reflect on this question, during a two week create-shop in Birzeit.

The workshop was meant for students and emerging designers who are interested in developing their artistic practice from a social and political perspective. During this workshop, design was presented as an instrument for dialogue and emancipation with a focus on getting a better understanding of the political and humanitarian situation in Palestine through the perspective of crafts, design and art – and to apply this knowledge to the development of the individual practice.

Participants Intimate Terrains create-shop, summer 2019

15 Palestinian and 15 international students and designers collaborated and learned from the different ways of dealing with design through the conversations that arised. They investigated the production process of the artisans and the exhibition at the Palestinian Museum, Intimate Terrains, offered the starting point for collective discussions and collaborative workshop sessions. In mixed groups of 5 participants, prototypes for thought provoking and useful products were developed together with local producers. How can a product embody a story? How to co-create products with local artisans?

The workshop included tours through different landscapes, crafts industries, and ended with a public presentation of the developed prototypes at the Museum. The aim was that a selection of the items will be taken in production and sold via Disarming Design from Palestine and the giftshop of the Palestinian Museum.

Palestime, it’s about time.
A video diary by: Andreas Drosdz, Kareem Khalid, Shireen Salman, Silke Groffy, Zaide Kutay

“Israeli occupation marks the Palestinian landscape not only in space, it distorts and makes time unpredictable. A trip from one city to another can easily double or triple, you may get stuck depending on your papers, the traffic or just the mood of the border guard.

Palestime is a dysfunctional hourglass. One time is set and fast, the other is random and slow. It stands for the stolen time lost in the daily routine of traveling between cities, hampered by checkpoints, settlements and administrative chaos.”

Fold Back Home, we believe in the coming together of stories, sharing a moment in the present to reflect on the past and take hope for the future.

A video diary by: Lisette Keyser, Mahran Ismail, Mariam Haj Ibrahim, Sara Greet Gilis, Salem Shoubaki

“Home is the place where one lives permanently as a member of a family or household. With the war of 1948, many Palestinians left their homes with the idea of being away for only a few days. “Just take some food and the key,” they told each other. No one anticipated they would never be allowed to come back. Fold Back Home is a blanket based on the word tawi, which means “folding up the life you built away from your home and returning to it.” It is also a backpack that allows for a shat’ha or “going into the landscape for a

spontaneous picnic,” an activity at the heart of Palestinian tradition. Fold Back Home is a reminder of both the loss of a home and the joy of sharing food and stories. Embroidered lines guide you in the folding of the blanket. The buckle is engraved with a key. They symbolize the way back home.”

Birzeit through terrain, how would you thread these landscapes?

A video diary by: Elisabeth Nold Schwartz, Dana Idris, Gilani Raja, Jermaine Faustin Adoptie, Lara Salous

“Dear friend, Looking at the landscape of Birzeit it makes me wonder how we experience landscapes. In what way do movements affect landscapes? For me, landscapes can be natural and manmade, material and psychological, political and cultural, where movements can be free and restrained, spontaneous and forced. How do you t(h) read these landscapes, these pathways from present and past? My dear, thread your thoughts and send them to a friend. I long for an enduring sharing of thoughts.

From Birzeit, with love”

Final presentation of the Disarming Design Summer School “Intimate Terrains” at the Palestinian Museum

The create-shop ended with an exhibition at the Palestinian Museum with more than 12 meaningful proposals for new useful products that reflect on what it means to currently live in Palestine and that are locally made; from picnic-bagpacks to wooden shoes, from a special Palestime-hour-glass to a yo-yo of 8 meters and many more. Participants shared their sketches and prototypes they made together with artisans.

Narrative report Create-shop

Follow the full programme, read the briefing, follow the process, see all developed designs and read the reflections by the participants in this rich narrative report.

The Palestinian Museum
The Palestinian Museum is an independent institution dedicated to supporting an open and dynamic Palestinian culture nationally and internationally. The Museum presents and engages with new perspectives on Palestinian history, society and culture. It also offers spaces for creative ventures, educational programmes and innovative research. The Museum is a flagship project of Taawon-Welfare Association and one of the most exciting new cultural projects in Palestine.

Intimate Terrains: Representations of a Disappearing Landscape, Exhibition
Guest-curator Dr. Tina Sherwell

The exhibition explores the changing representation of landscape by Palestinian artists, and our relationship to place and location through the themes of erasure, fragmentation, distance and belonging in a spectrum of artworks drawn from the 1930s to the present day. The depiction of landscape over the decades provides us with a prism onto the experience of loss and longing, a prominent subject matter for artists, as its topography holds a central place in Palestinian identity formation. Landscape is at once both a vast site of projection and a deeply layered terrain of remains, memories and histories.

How do artists negotiate and articulate collective and personal memory in relation to representations of landscape? What keeps us in a place? What are the limits of nostalgia? How does exile and different experiences of alienation shape views of the landscape? With our diminishing access to the land, the segregation of communities and the fragmentation and isolation of the terrains, and as the violent confiscation and destruction of the land unfolds, how do our intimate relationships to places manifest around landscape? Yet undeterred by this, what have been and what are our dreams and visions of landscapes of the past and future?

Intimate Terrains on the website of the Palestinian Museum

5 Institutes: Disarming Design from Palestine (PS/B), Palestinian Museum, Birzeit (PS), Sint Lucas School of Arts, Antwerp (BE), Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam (NL), Lucerne School of art & design (CH)

Organising Team: Annelys de Vet (NL/B, artistic director DDFP), Ghadeer Dajani (PS, design & production manager DDFP), Raed Hamouri (PS, executive director, DDFP), Hana Irshaid (PS, Education Programme Coordinator Palestinian Museum)

Guiding Tutors: Lama Altakruri (PS, Assistant Curator of Intimate Terrains), Areej Ashhab (PS, designer), May Marei (PS, designer), Petra van Brabandt (B, tutor Sint Lucas School of Arts), Catherine Somze (NL/B, tutor Willem de Kooning Academie), Ursula Bachman (CH, tutor Lucerne School of art and design), Francisca Khamis (CL/PS, design resident DDFP)

Artisans: Riad Kabaji (Hebron), Mohammad Ibrahim Al-Qiddissi/ Tailor Shop (Ramallah), Gazman Printing agency (Ramallah), Jaba Glass, Print Screen Altco, Abu Ahmeed (Rahallah Shoes), Abu Bashar (Carpenter), Samar Abdallah, Samar Style Tailor, Salam Alassi Assi Advertising Makers (lasercutter), Um Al-Qassam, Al-Dibwani (Textile Shop), Abu Ameed, Al-Rahala (Leather Workshop), Stars Fashion, Rumuz Advirtisement, Muthanna (Abu George), Wafa Ashi, Al-Nujoom Fashion, Suhail Saloos, Al-Rahhalah, Emad (Abu Ameed), Micheal F. K. Laser, Zeina Tech’n Design, Ahmed Nassar, Jack Giacaman, Nidal Shaheen, Haya Mohammed Kaabneh

Palestinian participants: Ayham hassan musleh (BZU), Haya Mohammed Kaabneh (Ind.), Kareem khalid khalid (BZU), Khalid Ladadwah (BZU), Lama Aloul (Ind.), Mahran Ismail (Ind.), Mariam yousef ibrahim (Ind.), Michael Jabareen (Ind.), Natalie Najjar (Ind.), Nizar fayez Tellawi (Ind.), Salem Tareq Shoubaki (Ind.), Samar & Aya Kirresh (Ind.), Shireen Salman (Ind.), Tala Zuhair Abdalhadi (BZU), Dana Idris (BZU)

International participants: Andreas Drosdz (WDK), Annie Jana Kahri (HSLU), Elisabeth Nold Schwartz (HSLU), Felix Stöckle (HSLU), Gilani Raja (SLA), Ignace Cami (SLA), Iman Benyecif K. (SLA), Jermaine Faustin (WDK), Jürgen Buchingner (HSLU), Lisette Keyser (WDK), Robin Cuppens (WDK), Sara Greet Gilis (SLA), Silke Groffy (SLA), Zaide Kutay (HSLU)

Acknowlegdments:
Kurt Vanbelleghem (for initiating the international collaboration)

Heirloom seeds
بذور بلديّة

Seeds from the Palestine Heirloom seed library

Available seeds at Disarming Design from Palestine:
— Abu Samara (wheat)
— Bamyeh / Okra (ladies’ fingers)
— Molokhia (Jute Mallow)
— Sabanikh (spinach)
— Yakteen (gourd)
— Zinnia Sabella (flower, edible petals)
— Bitinjan (Eggplant)
— Kusa

On top of the political violence, Palestinian farmers also face the dangers of agribusiness with its corporate seed production and land dominance. But many of these farmers are the heroes who have been safeguarding the precious seeds, and the knowledge that these carry. Palestinian Heirloom seed varieties are under threat; many have gone extinct. These seeds have been passed down to us over the centuries, and carry in their genes the stories and the spirits of Palestinian indigenous ancestors. Aside from their cultural significance, these seeds carry options for our future survival as we face climate change and the erosion of agro-biodiversity worldwide. As such, it is urgent that we save heirloom seeds, and propagate them.

Founded by Vivien Sansour, the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library project seeks to preserve and promote heritage and threatened seed varieties, traditional Palestinian farming practices, and the cultural stories and identities associated with them. Based in the Village of Battir, a UNESCO World Heritage Site outside Bethlehem, the library also serves as space for collaborations with artists, poets, writers, journalists, and other members to showcase and promote their talents and work. Working closely with farmers, the Library has identified key seed varieties and crops threatened with extinction, and provides opportunities to inspire local farmers and community members to actively preserve their bio-culture and recuperate their local landscape.

The library has also launched a global platform for conversations about bio-cultural heritage. Its Traveling Kitchen is a mobile venue for social engagement in different communities, promoting cultural preservation through food choices.

Established 2014, Bethlehem, Palestine

Learn more about the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library and the work of Vivien Sansour on this website.

For more on Abu Samara, listen to this song dedicated to the wheat by Zaid Hilal: Abu Samra أبو سمرة حبة القمح .

Design

Vivien Sansour (PS)
Vivien Sansour (Palestine) is a believer in the magic of the simple things in life. This magic represented in her work where seeds and soil are brought to life through her practice as a conservationist and writer. Vivien feels at home in the fields where farmers plant their seeds and share their stories. In her practice, Vivien combines the work of conservation with the sensory world of image and sound. She works with farmers around the world to find and reintroduce threatened crop varieties, and collects stories to assert the ownership of seeds by communities and not companies.
Vivien was born in Palestine and grew up in Bethlehem. She does not live in one particular place as her work takes her to different communities around the world – from Palestine, California, Central America and the Caribbean. She is the founder of The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library and the Traveling Kitchen project, both initiatives aim to bring seed heritage back to the dinner table so we can, “eat our history rather than store it away as a relic of the past”.
Daleen Saah (PS)

Production

100% Palestinian heritage seeds
harvest 2020, packed in 2021
10 x 15cm (size of package, including seeding information inside)

€7,50

Anti Colonializm

Bird plate

Gaza earrings ‘Love for life’

Distance to Gaza

Keffiyeh bandage

Beyond first impressions

Watermelon flag

‘I am an Arab’ t-shirt

Reworlding Ramallah

State of Palestine

Tears

Leaf behind earrings

Palestime

Basta

Poetic nights

Memory belt

Subjective atlas of Palestine

Leaf behind ring

theblacksac

Maisa

Classic keffiyeh

White on white keffiyeh

Measuring inequality

Coloured keffiyeh

Lullaby

Nabulsi soap

Unveiled souls

Black on black keffiyeh

Christmas baubles from Bethlehem

Qastina apron

Yellow cab toy

Freedom shoes

Gaza scarf

Heirloom seeds

Awakening goggles

Hasakah

‘Everywhere’ fisherman’s box

Everywhere Palestine

Gaza birdhouse

Cactus fruit candle

Identity = health

Watermelon wallet

Proudly Made in Palestine

Watchtowers and water tanks game

Barcelona or Madrid? No, Palestine!

Checkpoint brush

Gaza box

Vicious circles

Under the olive tree

Under construction

Stress ball

Straway

Spiced landscape

Soccer keffiyeh

Old news from Palestine

Relax (hardly) pillow

Blanco

Made in Palestine

In-between

Jerusalem spell

Hide and see travel pouch

Gaza hero medal

Disengaged observer outfit

Daftar

Intimate terrains إقتراب الآفاق

Final presentation of the Disarming Design Summer School “Intimate Terrains” at the Palestinian Museum

Intimate terrains
إقتراب الآفاق