Instructions for Placemaking: Palestinian Cities

About Palestinian Cities:
We will host three workshops for children and their parents around three poems from the recently published children’s poetry book titled Palestinian Cities by Dalia Taha. Through vivid and lyrical verses and children’s imaginative illustrations, Taha brings to life Palestinian cities. Selected poems are translated into English and Dutch on the occasion of the exhibition and will be available as audio stories in the presentation space to engage children and their parents. Listeners are invited to interpret the poems by creating drawings of the cities as narrated in the verses. The children’s book inspiring this program is available in Arabic. The workshop wil be in Dutch and/or English.

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. This series of workshops is part of the program.

Dates:
Wednesday 23 October, 2-4pm
Wednesday 30 October, 2-4pm
Wednesday 6 November, 2-4pm