The Fondazione Merz, which in solidarity with the Palestinian people is still hosting the work About the Museum (2011-) by Khalil Rabah (already part of The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind project), presents In the shade of an olive tree a series of events – talks, concerts, screenings, readings, workshops – dedicated to Palestine and its culture.
The tree is also the place under which stories are traditionally told and passed on. ‘In the shade of an olive tree’, in fact, wants to be a space for sharing ideas, with the aim of overcoming indifference and encouraging moments of participatory reflection.
IL PROGRAMMA
Tuesday 22 October
h 18:30 | Mo’min Swaitat, Palestinian Sound Archive
Talk+ listening session
L’incontro si svolgerà in lingua inglese.
Palestinian Sound Archive fa parte di Majazz Project, un’etichetta discografica e una piattaforma di ricerca palestinese fondata dall’attore, regista e cineasta Mo’min Swaitat nel 2020. Palestinian Sound Archive è una celebrazione della musica, della parola parlata e delle opere d’arte degli album della Palestina storica, principalmente degli anni ’60-’90. Nel corso di diversi anni, Swaitat ha accumulato un vasto archivio di cassette e dischi in vinile provenienti dalla Palestina e non solo, che spazia dalle registrazioni sul campo dei matrimoni beduini agli album rivoluzionari della Prima e della Seconda Intifada, ai brani strumentali, alla poesia, al soul, alle canzoni popolari e al jazz. Molti di questi sono stati acquistati da una vecchia etichetta discografica di Jenin, città natale di Swaitat, nel nord della Cisgiordania.
Palestinian Sound Archive è nato dall’archivio e si occupa di campionare, remixare e ripubblicare album palestinesi e arabi d’epoca, gettando nuova luce sulla ricchezza e la diversità del patrimonio culturale e musicale palestinese e arabo.
L’evento esplora la pratica archivistica come metodologia decoloniale e atto di resistenza, attraverso la condivisione di suoni e immagini d’archivio che conservano e documentano il patrimonio, la cultura e la resistenza palestinese.
Wednesday 23 October
11 am | meeting organised for schools with NGO Vento di Terra
Vento di Terra NGO carries out cooperation projects aimed at fully exploiting local resources, activating capacity building and leadership development paths in local communities. It operates mainly in territories where conflicts leave their deepest marks, particularly in the experience of children: refugee camps, conflict areas, marginalised communities. It acts from a development perspective to protect the human rights of populations and promotes interventions in education, bio-architecture, social enterprise, and the promotion of the fundamental rights of the weakest. Vento di Terra has been working in the Palestinian Occupied Territories since 2006, when it was founded. The working group was formed in the field, with the aspiration of experimenting innovative methods in cooperation activities.
8.30 pm | Film screening Naila and the Uprising by Julia Bacha (75′)
The screening will be in original language with English subtitles.
The appointment is intended as a preview of the film festival CHE LA MIA VOCE SIA UN SEME. Images as memory of the future. Voices as seeds of consciousness.
A film review dedicated to Palestine, curated by Alessandro Maccarrone, which in the coming months will be hosted in various cultural spaces in Turin.
Thursday 24 October
6 pm | Screening of Rasha by Adrian Paci (20’56’’)
The video “Rasha” grew out of Adrian Paci’s encounter with a Palestinian woman who had recently arrived in Rome from Syria thanks to humanitarian corridors. “Rasha“ is filmed as she tells her story but the images we see in the video, however, are the moments in between sentences when the woman falls silent, waiting for her words to be translated. And so we see her listening to her own story, reinterpreted. In these intervals of silence, her posture, her gestures, and the alternating expressions of her face convey not only the strain of the story, but the power of the experience she has lived through, an experience that despite all efforts to express the core of it, cannot be entirely summed up in words. As the artist points out, between the verbal narrative and the bodily one, “between the silent face and the voice speaking Arabic, a gap emerges”: Rasha becomes “the protagonist not only of her story and of its telling, but also of its hearing.” This work is “a reflection on the traces that an experience leaves on our bodies and how the body conveys them, beyond words. The thousand facets of Rasha’s expression speak louder than her words. Words are not useless, but they are not enough. Rasha is a work about the complexity of storytelling; about how an experience becomes a story and becomes language, not just through words, but through the body.”
6.30 pm | live kite painting + traditional music concert with Duo Terrasanta
During the concert by the Italo-Palestinian duo TERRA SANTA there will be a live-painting of artist’s kites.
The kite as a symbol of the quest for freedom refers to Refaat Alareer’s latest poem If I must die. The kites made will be auctioned off during the evening, with the funds raised going to support MSF activities in Palestine.
If you wish to participate as an artist, write to edu@fondazionemerz.org
The musical duo TERRA SANTA was born from the encounter between the Italian violinist Annalisa Ponzo and the Palestinian percussionist Hassan Ibrahim, giving life to a characteristic Middle Eastern sound, arising from the fusion of the sound of the violin with the traditional Arab percussion instrument, the darbuka. The duo performs traditional Middle Eastern music with a focus on popular songs from Palestinian folklore and melodies from Lebanese classical singers. It proposes music as a means of emotional resilience and expression of the resistance and memory of the Palestinian people.
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
et it bring hope
t it be a tale
(“If I must die”, Refaat Alareer)
Friday 25 October
5 pm Writes back | Open Mic / poetic reading
A moment of free and horizontal reading in which to bring published, known, own texts, unknown and unpublished texts, to create a moment of listening and sharing that can lead to a collective, participatory reflection that is at the same time personal and shared.
6.30 pm Meeting with Doctors Without Borders
Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, an international organisation founded in 1971 in Paris, whose mission is to offer medical assistance where it is most needed, will bring tales of its current work in Palestine and the testimonies of its operators currently working in the area.
9.30 pm Dj set Turbolenta Leila
Turbolenta stems from the need to unite and question different cultural identities within a single musical repertoire. The musical selection of the Algerian-Moroccan-Italian DJ and music producer combines traditional Arab and North African melodies. By enhancing the uniqueness of the genres she interprets, her musical selection also aims to create points of encounter with the rest of the world.
Saturady 26 October
10 am – 2 pm | Al Maqluba | Palestinian cuisine workshop
Workshop with La Terrasanta Cucina Palestinese for the preparation of a traditional dish that will be shared among the participants.
6.30 pm presentation of 6|Palestina, Arabpop with Silvia Moresi and Jasmine Barri
Arabpop is a six-monthly cultural magazine entirely dedicated to the contemporary arts and literature of Arab countries. The sixth issue of Arabpop is dedicated to Palestine, following a deliberate choice of the editors in the wake of the events that have unfolded in the Gaza Strip and the rest of Palestine since October 2023. This issue of the magazine makes space for little-known stories that have been forgotten or silenced in the dominant narrative, and which are instead crucial in reconstructing a broader picture of a culturally vibrant, rich and stratified Palestine.
7.30 pm The songs belong to those who sing them with Dutch Nazari
An Italian rapper and singer-songwriter, this year he released the single Aqaba with which he sets his political, social and human commitment to music. Aqaba, as the artist explains, comes twelve years after a trip he made to Palestine, where he actively began to address the Palestinian issue. The result, at the time, was Jenin – published in 2014 – to which Aqaba is linked by an invisible thread.
Sunday 27 October
10 am – 5 pm Yalla Dabke | Workshop di dabke دبكة con Rakan Alkhalil
Dabke è la danza tradizionale palestinese. Si consigliano abiti comodi, non è richiesta alcuna preparazione fisica specifica.
È prevista una performance collettiva della danza, a partecipazione libera, il giorno successivo, lunedì 28 ottobre, nel corso dell’inaugurazione serale della nuova mostra in Fondazione Merz.
Partecipazione libera fino ad esaurimento posti, previa prenotazione via mail a edu@fondazionemerz.org
Online meetings
During the days of In the shade of an olive tree there will be remote connections with Khalil Rabah, Hazem Harb, Paola Caridi, Radio Alhara.
Thanks to Braccia Rese Societá Agricola e Birrificio Agricolo Kauss
