The Palestinian artist Noor Abed and the curator Lara Khaldi focus their education platform, School of Intrusions, on the body as the primary medium for “intruding” into public and private, and rural and urban spaces. Founded in 2019 in Ramallah, School of Intrusions uses the body as a site for collective, participatory experiences. This idea resonates with the second season of If Body, a visual arts and performance festival curated by LOCALES (Sara Alberani, Marta Federici, Chiara Siravo), held across various Rome locations this summer, which our contributor attended. This letter reflects on the workshop given by Abed and Khaldi on School of Intrusions, which was held on September 14, 2024, at Mattatoio (La Pelanda), and the artist talk at the ex-institute Angelo Mai, both hosted within the Short Theatre’s program and co-produced alongside If Body.
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Utrecht, October 1, 2024
Dear Lara and Noor,
During your talk at Angelo Mai last September, it wasn’t the first time I heard you reading correspondences to introduce School of Intrusions (SOI) to an audience. Letters, emails, and texts seem to be methodologically relevant to your practices.
In an email exchange, we can address each other, hope for an answer, and momentarily forget the loneliness and powerlessness we may feel in these turbulent times. The correspondence you shared with us, dated August 2022, imagined a new iteration of the School after liberation – a liberation that eradicates the slow yet constant violence imposed by settler colonialism.
I wonder, did you foresee the escalation of violence after October 7th that came over the following year? Or the pro-Palestinian encampments that grew up, first in the U.S. and later across European countries, including in Italy? Could you have predicted the surge of police brutality against protestors? During your conversation, you anticipated liberation as coming twenty years from today.
“How do we initiate a protest that lasts until a permanent ceasefire is effective?”
I paraphrased one of your questions from the School of Intrusion workshop organized by LOCALES, the Rome-based curatorial platform. I regret not realizing earlier that the location of your workshop, La Pelanda in Mattatoio, was the same space where performing arts workers had begun a mobilization under the slogan “Vogliamo tutt'altro” (“We want otherwise!”) on March 27th. This assembly evolved by interlinking the general atmosphere of cultural stagnation in Italy to the expression of solidarity between the Italian cultural sector and the Palestinian people (1). On May 21st, the same activist group opted for direct action and occupied MAXXI, the National Museum of Contemporary Arts and Architecture to signal Italian art institutions' complicity with Zionist politics. They invited the art community to break the silence by taking a stand on the ongoing genocide. From one year to the next, every time I’ve held a piece of watermelon, I think of Gaza, the West Bank – Gaza City, Khan Yunis, Rafah – and now Beirut.
Reflecting on these events, I wonder if we’re finally moving toward a permanent state of protest. What will art's role be then, whether in Rome, Venice, or the Netherlands, where we now live? Some audiovisual projects you presented during the SOI workshop offer valuable speculation on this. In Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction (1985), by the Palestinian director Michel Khleifi, a painting revives the memory of the Galilean village destroyed during the 1948 war. The artwork becomes the focal point of an affective geography whose memories travel across generations, twisting the sense of loss that permeates displaced Palestinian families’ histories. The return to the old village becomes a celebration, even if it’s restricted to one day per year, as the commemoration coincides with Israel’s Independence Day.
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One conclusion from the workshop is that art can condense multiple temporalities, linking past and present resistance across a trans-secular and multipolar decolonial trajectory. In The Bridge (Al-Jisser) (2012) by the Subversive Film collective, the team reconstructed the lost images of refugees crossing the Allenby Bridge. The bridge itself was destroyed in 1967. By assembling fragments from radical non-Palestinian filmmakers and propaganda films, the film enters a timeless memory, repeating the crossing over and over. These images recall the Nakba of 1948, the Naksa, and the uncensored footage shared on social media today. The repetitive nature of these scenes speaks to both horror and resilience, reminding me of the voice of Bisan Owda, who I listen to daily on Instagram. I have visited her profile for updates since she started to chronicle the events of last October. Her updates from the Gaza Strip begin with “Hey, this is Bisan, I’m still alive…” She documents the forms of violence endured daily by the people in Gaza. I’m sure you follow her too.
Toward the end of your workshop, we watched footage from AAMOD (Audiovisual Archive of the Workers and Democratic Movement), showing the workers’ pro-Palestine demonstration on September 21st, 1982 in Rome. While some of us were writing letters, others waited for their turn to write. I penned a letter to my 23-year-old cousin, who recently told me he had “no time for Palestine” and that he felt distant from the student encampments organized by his peers. Any collective effort seemed futile to him. I wrote to explore his understanding of “Palestine”. I shared my answer, inspired by Francoise Vergès, who said: “Palestine is the measure of what we are capable of doing to change the world”. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these words. Can we work with them?
I heard the protest will begin at 2:00 PM at De Dam Square in Amsterdam this Saturday. Write me back before then, so we can organize a plan to go together.
Stay safe,
Giulia
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- FOOTNOTES
(1) It is important to note that an increasing number of statements in support of the Palestinian people have been realized in the context of the Italian arts sector during 2023. Among them, the open letter titled “Italian Arts United for Palestine” disseminated by AWI - Art Workers Italia, Il Campo Innocente, together with Italian Arts Watch, a newly formed platform monitoring Italian art institutions’ actions on this issue. The letter was made public on December 8th, 2023. Also, it is important to mention the collective statement entitled “NO MOVES TO INNOCENCE” signed by the networks of members, associates, and former collaborators of Lateral Roma, an independent art and project space in Rome of which members of LOCALES are part. The latter constitutes one of the rare examples in Italy of art institutions taking a clear and direct stand in support of the Palestinian struggle.
IMAGE CREDITS
Cover, fig. 1, fig. 2: Lara Khaldi e Noor Abed, School of Intrusions, If Body 2024, commissioned and curated by LOCALES, co-realized with Short Theatre 2024, Angelo mai, Rome, 2024. Photo Claudia Borgia, courtesy the artist and LOCALES.
