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
Palestinian Sound Archive is a celebration of music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine, mainly from the 1960s – 1990s. It is part of Majazz Project, a Palestinian-led record label and research platform founded by actor, director and filmmaker Mo’min Swaitat in 2020.
Over several years, Swaitat amassed an extensive archive of cassettes and vinyl records from Palestine and beyond, spanning everything from field recordings of Bedouin weddings to revolutionary albums from the First and Second Intifadas, instrumental tracks, poetry, soul, folk songs and jazz. Many of these were acquired from a former record label in Swaitat’s hometown Jenin, in the north of the West Bank.
Palestinian Sound Archive was born out of the archive and is focused on sampling, remixing and reissuing vintage Palestinian and Arab albums, shedding new light on the richness and diversity of Palestinian and Arab cultural and musical heritage.
Swaitat comes from a long line of Bedouin musicians and storytellers, and the archive references his rootedness in music as a means of celebrating one’s culture and sense of belonging. He plays everything from jazz to funk, soul to dabke, field recordings to spoken word, and folk to electronic music from Palestine, the broader region and across the Global South.
This event explores archival practice as a decolonial methodology and act of resistance, through sharing archival sounds and images that preserve and document Palestinian heritage, culture and resistance.
This listening session features sounds from the Majazz Project, Palestinian Sound Archive and friends, with merchandise on sale to support the project.
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
12 noon | instagram live with artist Hazem Harb
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.
2.30 pm | instagram live with artist Khalil Rabah in dialogue with Chiara De Cesari, Professor of Heritage and Memory and Chair of Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
3.30 pm | instagram live with Paola Caridi, essayist and journalist
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
A special collaboration with Dar Jacir for Art and Research will be part of “In the shade of an olive tree” programme with a selection of five films that will be on view during Artissima from Wednesday, October 30 to Sunday, November 3.
NOTHING IMPOSSIBLE, 2018
Duncan Campbell & Samer Barbari
4 min
VER EL MAR, 2022
Stéphanie Janaina
7 min.
IMPro PITXANTU, 2023
Eli Wewentxu & Nicolás Jaar
13 min.
PAESAGGIO UMANO, 2022
Andrea De Siena, Laura Esposito & Luca Rossi
7 min.
ADDO PASTINE ‘O GGRANO, ‘O GGRANO CRESCE, 2022
Andrea De Siena & Emily Jacir
6 min.
Thanks to Braccia Rese Societá Agricola e Birrificio Agricolo Kauss
