Instructions for Placemaking: Reading Vigil for Palestine

About Reading Letters from Political Prisoners in Palestine by Reading Vigil for Palestine:
We gather to reflect on the daily acts of resistance that have taken place at Dam Square in Amsterdam over the past months, led by a group of cultural workers, artists, curators, activists, and others. This gathering will include a reading of Political Prisoners’ Letters, shared by Palestinian poet and playwright Dalia Taha, which you can reach and listen to in this exhibition. Dalia provides instructions on how to approach the letters, offering a poetic cue to the process of writing, receiving, and reading them after their menacing journey. Through the collective act of sharing and engaging with these letters — and by forming an impromptu library with the books read aloud in Amsterdam’s centre — an essential question emerges: What is the purpose of reading, and how do we become readers in this world?

Before the gathering, join us at Dam Square for the reading vigil, between 12.30 and 1.30pm. Reading Vigil for Palestine is a daily action at Dam Square to read aloud books on Palestinian history and struggle until a permanent ceasefire is achieved. Since November 2023, it has claimed public space for political education while building a self-organized audio archive of the readings and a dispersed collective library. The readings continue in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, resisting genocide, settler colonialism, and occupation. Join the vigil at the square or connect by messaging @readingvigilpalestine on Instagram.

About Our People are Our Mountains: Instructions for Placemaking
In Our People are Our Mountains (quoting from Amílcar Cabral’s words on the Guinea-Bissau's liberation movement), artists and collectives in Palestine and elsewhere who work on questions around land from different perspectives, collaborate with majelis (assembly) Jakarta by sending instructions remotely. Utilizing instructions, rather than physically transferring works or facilitating travel, stems from ethical, political, and environmental considerations. The act of sending instructions is also a way to point to the physical and symbolic distances, particularly emphasizing the profound difficulties associated with moving in and out of Palestine, especially during the ongoing genocide. This initiative, therefore, is an act of transmission and trust—artists will transmit their creative directives to counterparts in Jakarta, who will, in turn, realize, contribute to, perform, or enact the instructions in place.

In the Amsterdam iteration, the instructions will be presented, whereas some of them will be activated throughout the coming weeks. Every week of the presentation span, a new video by the participating artists and others will be screened on loop for one full exhibition week. In addition a programme of performances, workshops and gatherings will take place throughout the project span. The workshop Reading Letters from Political Prisoners in Palestine by Reading Vigil for Palestine is part of this program.

Read here: Letters from Political Prisoners in Palestine, including an introduction by Dalia Taha. Read the Arabic version here.