Instructions for Placemaking: An orange tree, an olive tree and a paintings that knows no borders

About An orange tree, an olive tree and a paintings that knows no borders by Noor Abuarafeh
This lecture-performance invites the audience on a personal and political journey through the West Bank's fragmented landscape. The narrator recounts their return home after a prolonged absence, facing the stark reality of a land under occupation. Guided by intimate hikes through the West Bank, they weave together encounters with fellow hikers, such as Mohamed, who documents each village through his sketches, preserving a disappearing landscape. These sketches echo the work of the narrator’s father, a painter whose art also serves as a testament to the Palestinian villages before their destruction. Slowly the audience is invited by the narrator to collectively reclaim a lost landscape in the face of settler colonial violence.

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 lecture-performance An orange tree, an olive tree and a paintings that knows no borders by Noor Abuarafeh is part of this program.