Ayreen Anastas - 2004

In 2004 Ayreen Anastas proposed a project that would reflect upon the Italian director Pasolini's visit to Palestine in 1962 for his film "Seeking Locations in Palestine for the Gospel According to St. Matthew". The video project she produced titled, Pasolini Pa* Palestine turned Pasolini's script into a road map superimposed on Palestine's landscape. 

At the time Anastas stated the following about the work:

The video explores questions of repetition and establishes a dialogue with Pasolini. For Heidegger repetition/retrieval are terms for an appropriate attitude toward the past while the term discutere (to smash to pieces) is the Latin source for dialogue / discussion. The video does not criticise Pasolini but rather reveals the possibilities in his thought processes and works back to the 'experiences' which inspired them.' (Ayreen Anastas 2004)

Phil Collins - They Shoot Horses

It all started I suppose with my writing to Jack Persekian. Jack is the director of the Al-Ma’mal Foundation in Jerusalem. But still, I didn’t know whether he’d be interested in my idea to organize, execute and film a disco dance marathon in Ramallah, which would afterwards be exhibited as a real-time video artwork. In fact, I thought he’d hate it. Something so dumb and frivolous which spoke precisely about exhaustion, collapse and heroism but in a palette of Pop Idol colours.

When we think about Palestine it never seems to be in reference to modernity, or culture; in fact, it’s relentlessly positioned as uncivilised. The disco dance marathon would instead be a way of looking at beauty under duress, entertainment in place of routine indignities. Ten days later and I’m standing in a community centre over the road from the local mosque with Iman Hammouri, the director of the Popular Art Centre, holding auditions where I play Beyonce and Joy Division over and over. And the dancers are heart- stoppingly beautiful. They take your breath away - shy and awkward but when they rock, they really flip out.

I choose nine and I filmed two groups over successive days dancing to the same soundtrack, from northern soul to acid house, from Love Hangover to Xanadu, from 10am to 6pm without breaks. Or so I thought. I take the role of cheerleader, DJ, cameraman, bouncer. I’m like a one-man band but with more to do. Have you ever tried to dance for eight hours? It’s a killer. There’s a kind of madness or cabin fever which slowly descends upon a group. It’s insane. In the finished film they do aerobics, they do folk dancing to Gina X. Someone starts dry-retching at Aretha Franklin. They do belly dancing to The Smiths. Later on, they fall asleep to Fame. They’ve almost had it, stumbling about like drunks, bags under their eyes as Irene Cara rattles on in the background. It’s halfway through a Bananarama song in the second hour when we hear the first call to prayer which punctuates the video as we turn the music off and wait until it’s appropriate to put Primal Scream back on.

I’d also not counted on the power cuts. On the second day, the whole of Ramallah goes down. We’re left sitting in a shuttered room with everybody telling me how this is completely normal, and would I like a piece of fruit? Except that I’m getting back on the plane the next day and I know that half the dancers have to get through checkpoints which close at nine. Of course I did have the piece of fruit, and also a silent nervous breakdown. The end of each day had me in tears. The dancers showed such fortitude, resilience, grace and, most importantly, had better, sharper moves than any I’d ever seen. I wanted everyone who saw it to fall in love with them, to admire their perseverance, and to wonder why it should seem odd to us if they knew the words to Althea & Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking. The last track they dance to is quite rightly Olivia Newton John’s Xanadu. For me there really is a heroism to live in a place it’s impossible to leave, to be split from families, imprisoned by a Berlin wall and, maybe worst of all, to be forgotten by a world which refuses to understand you.

Phil Collins (2004)
Text from Artist-in-Residence Archives

Artists-in-Residence-2003

The Tamkeen Workshop grant had run from 2002 - 2004 and covered a total of nine workshops. Owing to changes in USAID itself the grant was no longer available after that period so could not be extended. However. Al-Ma’mal continued to get valuable support from long-time partner, the Ford Foundation and ongoing funding also from the European Commission. A new supporter, the Open Society Institute, also came on board in 2004 enabling the Al-Ma’mal team to continue all of its core activities.

The Artist-in-Residence programme had being running parallel to the workshops and remained very successful throughout this whole period with only one project failing to get off the ground. This was the project of Ayse Erkemen who had proposed to work with Qalqilya Zoo, and particularly with their taxidermied animals. The two things that interested her, were firstly how the ‘freezing’ of life in the zoo had transformed it into a natural history museum and secondly the stories behind each of these animals that were often deeply sad but surreal and funny at the same time.

Brownie the giraffe dying while fleeing from the sounds of a gunfire, falling down and breaking his neck. Ten days later his pregnant partner Rudi having a miscarriage because of sorrow and then Brownie and his unborn giraffe son being stuffed to stand together in a special exhibition space inside the zoo.

Due to incursions and curfews imposed on Qalqilya by the Israeli army at the time of her residency in 2003/04, it was impossible to enter the city so Erkeman could not realize this project. However, the tale of the giraffe emerged along with several other strange news stories relating to Qalqilya Zoo during this period. The Zoo was celebrated in a 2008 book by Amelie Thomas entitled: Zoo on the Road to Nablus: A Story of Survival from the West Bank.

Other artists-in-residence in 2003 included Jananne Al-Ani, Rosalind Nashashibi and Zeyad Dajani whose images of King Hussein's half built and abandoned palace are below.

Artist-in-Residence - Emily Jacir 2002

Emily Jacir’s residency project explored the very personal idea of displacement that so many Palestinians have to live with. Where We Come From/(Im)mobility was a based on the artist’s ‘freedom of movement’ as a Palestinian with an American passport. Jacir utilized her passport to access Palestine for Palestinians who are denied the freedom to go to their own homeland and/or to move freely within it. The starting point of the project was a question addressed to Palestinians living in exile: "If I could do anything for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?"

Jacir asked people to send their requests of what they wanted her to do and with her ‘golden ticket’ (her U.S. passport), she was able to move freely, circumventing barriers and connecting people to their homeland, their wishes, their dreams. In the very act of connecting people to their homeland by fulfilling their requests, the work ascertained and documented their disconnection as well.

The final form her project took was an installation consisting of photos, a DVD projection and text of requests she had been sent, including the following:

"Go to Haifa and play soccer with the first Palestinian boy you see on the street."

"Drink the water in my parents' village."

"Go to Bayt Lahia and bring me a photo of my family, specially of my brother's kids."

"Go to the Israeli post office in Jerusalem and pay my phone bill."

"Go to my mother's grave in Jerusalem on her birthday and place flowers and pray."

"Do something on a normal day in Haifa, something I might do if I was living there now."

Workbook - The Tamkeen Workshops 2002-2004

In 2004 Al-Ma’mal published Workbook as a document of the Tamkeen workshop phase. As with all of Al-Ma'mal's publications, this important record is a work of art in its own right. It incorporates text from Jumana Abboud’s workshop diaries, detailed descriptions of Faten Nastas’s Bethlehem story projects and numerous images from their workshops and those of Luc Chery, Jawad Al-Malhi and Tina Sherwell. Often superimposing text onto the images it also references key movements in contemporary art illustrating clearly how these were incorporated into the workshops and then translated back into clear and unique individual projects.

In Jack Persekian's introduction to Workbook, he not only highlights the practical reasons for the shift of emphasis that occurred with the Tamkeen workshops, but also elaborates on one of the  fundamental premises upon which they were based:

We are constantly bombarded with images and visuals – TV, internet, advertisement, packaging, magazines, presentations etc. Yet we see that our society is not part of that, is not part of the production of these visuals, this information exchange, this means of communication. We are lagging behind with the means, the tools, the know-how and the capabilities to be part of it. We ought to be frightened by the fact that, at this rate, we will always be left behind, never able to catch up with the rest of the developed world: dragging our feet. (Jack Persekian, Workbook, 2004)

What is striking about this statement is the complete absence of any specific situational conditionals especially notable because the Tamkeen workshops coincided with some of the bloodiest events of the second intifada period. The approach taken is one of normality, one that can perceive the future needs of a potential national entity in a global context and as such, can identify skills it will need as a matter of course. The essence of the Tamkeen workshops was to take participants through the whole process of creativity by examining how other artists had worked and how to read and understand the things they had created. This meant formulating and discussing ideas, contextualising them and only then learning the skills that enabled a realisation of their own ideas in the most effective or appropriate way.

This made the workshops comprehensive vehicles for introducing and promoting an awareness of visual literacy as well as providing exposure to practical creative skills. In the process they became an early deposit against Jack Persekian’s fears of a future visual deficit.

Workbook Images

Tamkeen in Bethlehem - Faten Nastas

Most of the Tamkeen workshops were conducted in the Old City of Jerusalem. Although several were held at the premises of Al-Ma’mal itself, partner institutions also hosted the workshops. Jumana Abboud taught at the Burj Al Laqlaq Centre, Raeda Saadeh at the Old City Youth Association, St. Dimitri’s Orthodox School and St. Mark’s Syrian Orthodox Youth Club and Jawad Al-Malhi and Tina Sherwell taught at the Spafford Children’s Centre. However, Al-Ma’mal’s good relationship with institutions in Bethlehem meant that there were also workshops conducted there. One of these, an introduction to contemporary art, was facilitated by Faten Nastas at the International Centre of Bethlehem.

1.What were you doing in 2003 and how did you first get involved with Al-Ma'mal's Bethlehem workshop?
Since August 1998, I had been working as the Art Co-ordinator at the International Centre in Bethlehem (ICB). I was responsible for all the activities related to Contemporary Fine Art and to Craft as well. As part of my work, I helped in establishing the "The Cave" Arts & Crafts centre (in Arabic it is called al-Kahf), especially the "Cave Gallery", and the Cave workshop complex. Al-Kahf Centre belongs to the ICB.

The staff of al-Ma'mal, especially Jack Persekian & Jumana Abboud, had known me since I was a student at Bezalel Academy. I graduated from Bezalel in 1998 so kept a good relationship with them and they were aware of my work in Bethlehem.

2. Can you tell me about your approach to the workshop and how you got such varied results?
I had different and various ideas for the workshop. However, my main goal was to introduce the youth to the ‘wide world of the Contemporary Art’, and encourage them to explore new languages for expressing themselves and ideas. So, my approach was more theoretical and philosophical at the beginning. I showed them different works of famous contemporary artists, different techniques, concepts and topics. We had lots of discussions. Then, the second half of the course was practical: after discussing with the youth various ideas, and after choosing their topic and their desired language, I worked as a facilitator helping them or directing them to the know-how and the technicalities of making their work.

3. What were the main challenges during your workshop?
After such a long time, and after celebrating a very successful activity, it is difficult to remember the challenges. I think that my enthusiasm about it was much more than the challenges. However, I remember that in some discussions, it was difficult to reach a few of the young participants. I mean that they were not so open-minded, and heir way of thinking, as well as their work, was not able to embrace something more deep and profound.

Besides, I remember that in the last few sessions, it was hard for me to follow and help each participant individually. It took more time and effort than I expected. But, this is of course due to the technical variety. I remember that 2 students did video works, others did photography, others installation, and there was also sound installation. So, each participant had different demands and I was their only guide.

4. What are your strongest memories of this period?
My strongest memory is how we used to discuss "Art issues", also personal stories and critiques of society. The group of students were great and the majority were very open-minded and spoke about personal stories very openly. This encouraged everyone to take the course seriously and profoundly. It was also like a "soul healing workshop". I was also very happy to see how determined the participants were, they were very proud of themselves and they really worked hard to complete their work and to do the final installation. I will never forget how proud they were during the opening, when they shared the outcome with their families and friends.

5.Did the experience have any impact on your subsequent work?
The experience was enjoyable and I think it empowered me to work more with youth. The following year we had a very successful project at the ICB, where we worked with more than 150 students from different 10 local schools, using "Installation Art as an Advocacy tool for Youth Concerns". Also as part of my work at the ICB, I was a member of the team who worked on the establishment of the Dar al-Kalima College. Today, I am the chairperson of the Visual Arts Department, and I enjoy very much working more and more with Youth and adults. I am sure that this had also an impact on my individual work as an artist, but, I am not sure if I can define it now.

I also have become an observer of Art in Jerusalem and in Palestine. I give lectures about the "Art in Palestine" in our College and abroad. I have actually just come back from an international conference in Sweden where I gave 3 lectures about Contemporary Palestinian Art.

Interview - Jumana Abboud

All of the Tamkeen workshops were specifically directed at young people and were held in partnership with a number of schools, youth clubs and organisations in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. One of the first artists to be engaged for the Tamkeen workshops was Jumana Abboud who taught on site at the Burj Al Laqlaq centre in the Old City, as well as conducting numerous workshops at Al-Ma’mal itself. Her involvement with Al-Ma’mal was to become permanent. After the workshops were completed she remained at the foundation and is today the longest serving member of permanent staff.

1. How did you first get involved with Al-Ma’mal?

I came back to Jerusalem from Canada in 1991. I am originally from the Galilee but wanted to continue art studies at that time and the only possibility for me was to study at the Bezalel Institute in West Jerusalem so I applied for a scholarship. I didn't get it but I stayed and studied there anyway. In 1994 I was walking on Salahuddin Street and it was the afternoon of the opening of Jean Luc Vilmouth's exhibition. I’ll never forget how excited I was to see it. I felt so relieved. After four years of studying at Bezalel, where there was no contact with Palestinian art, here was a very contemporary exhibition related to Palestine happening right on Salahuddin Street. After that I was a regular visitor to Anadiel so that’s how I made the connection.


In 2002 Al-Ma'mal received the Tamkeen workshop grant and it was through this project that I became involved with Al-Ma'mal. Jack invited me and Raeda Sadeh to conduct different workshops at youth centres in the Old City. I taught contemporary art at the Burj al Laqlaq community centre to groups of children aged from 11 – 16. It was mostly painting and drawing. I kept a diary of the workshops and I gave it to Al-Ma'mal as a report of how the workshop was. Sections of it are used in ‘Workbook’ published in 2004 which is an account of Al-Ma’mal activities from 2000 onwards.

2. What were the main challenges in the workshops?

My challenge was to find a way of accessing the students’ imaginations. It was like they had lost the ability to imagine even though some of them were very young. The first thing they would draw would be Al-Aqsa Mosque or a Palestinian flag or a soldier: always something that related not only to reality but specifically to political reality. All their reference points were political and what they drew reflected all the symbols of the conflict and the political context. There were no visions of imagined things. I think this inability to imagine may also partly relate to the local school system as well which is very much focused on rote and passive rather than creative learning.

Also every time you have new group the ice breaking can be the most difficult part and it is also more difficult if they are older. Teenagers especially are resistant to opening up. From teaching workshops I went on to help organise them and one of the things we noticed with all instructors was that the initial workshops were always tough. There was a process through which we had to overcome their defensiveness before they broke down enough to let their imaginations through.

3. How did you deal with these challenges?

It became about practice and making that practice available to the participants. I tried not to be judgemental because then you risk pushing your own visions and not extracting theirs. However, in the end it worked. After a lot of practice I was getting wonderful results and beautiful paintings. I think the most successful were the animal drawings and the paintings influenced by Gustav Klimt. I used images as reference points. I thought of Klimt because he was so colourful so I took the approach of introducing the students to contemporary art through colour.

4. What are your strongest memories of the workshops?
The feedback - what they were all really happy about was the exhibition and the book [Workbook, 2004]. We gave them a group exhibition of their work as did Raeda and others. These always made them feel good. They would bring their family and their friends and they would be so proud. We try up to the present to show a balance of all the participants’ work and it encourages them and makes then want more.

5. How did the staff profile change after the Tamkeen project?

Khadijeh Kanambo had been full time since 1998 and maybe even a little before that. She left in November/December 2009 (hopefully on temporary leave only!). Raeda Sadeh worked in the gallery part-time with Jack before she came to Al-Ma’mal but both Raeda and I started part-time with the workshops in 2002. I then returned as a full-time member of staff in autumn 2003 and Raeda signed up as full time in 2004. She was assistant coordinator of projects but she left in the spring of 2009.

6. How has your work with Al-Ma’mal affected your own art practice/work?

It’s positive that I work in a place that respects me as an artist. It’s a place that encourages my creative development. It’s advantageous to work in an environment that has the same spirit as what I, as an artist, love to do: make art. And it’s a privilege also because at Al-Ma’mal, we focus on making other artist’s projects a success, so I learn to look at the creative process differently and through an administrator’s eye and this help me invent for myself and for my own work a sort of disciplinary formula.

The Tamkeen Workshops

As noted earlier, the generous Ford Foundation grant in 1998 enabled Al-Ma’mal to start up and had covered the first two years of its activities. Subsequent grants from Ford followed and the Foundation remains one of Al-Ma’mal’s strongest sponsors to this day.

Another longstanding relationship is with the Consulate General of France in Jerusalem, a supporter from the very early days when Anadiel and the French Cultural Centre were neighbours on Salahuddin. Such cooperation and practical support from foreign consulates and cultural centres in Jerusalem has been a consistent feature in the life of both Anadiel and Al-Ma’mal. In the early 2000s in particular, funding was mostly secured in the form of small development grants or from cultural cooperation budgets. These included grants from the Society for Austro-Arab Relations (SAAR), World Vision and the European Commission. Although these could not provide for the scope of activities that bodies such as Ford could enable, they covered almost all of the artist-in residence workshops and exhibitions between 2000 and 2002, and also contributed to essential running costs. A relationship established with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) at this time also continued for several years. In 2002, however, an opportunity arose to submit a proposal for another major injection of workshop funding:

After Bethlehem 2000 I quit the arts sector for a while and got my next job at USAID. Eventually in 2002 I went to London to do my masters but during this time I wrote a funding proposal which Jack submitted to Tamkeen, a development programme working under the USAID umbrella. This had no direct connection to my job but it was useful because I understood through working there exactly what Tamkeen and USAID wanted from this project and it fitted exactly with what Al Ma'mal could do. (Samar Martha, 2010)

This made a new series of workshops both feasible and timely and meant that they could be properly planned incorporating all the experience from the workshops undertaken in the first four years. It also meant that specific artist-tutors could be employed on a longer term basis than residency artists and thus develop in-house expertise and an evolving teaching programme.

All Change - Jawad Al-Malhi and Tina Sherwell 2001 - 2002

When assessing the results of the first three years of workshops, it was evident that there needed to be a greater range of learning activities, more focus on group interaction and wider participation. As a consequence Al-Ma’mal decided to diversify and expand the workshops to encompass various forms of visual art. The possibilities included experimentation in drawing, painting, collage, clay, installation, and video as well as photography. Artists employed to design and deliver the workshops were encouraged to utilize whatever approach, medium and technique they thought would best serve the purpose, while also following Al-Ma’mal’s overall objectives.

As a consequence four new workshops were launched in 2001 with two new partners: the Spafford Children’s Centre and the Burj Al-Laqlaq centre. All four workshops were conducted by Palestinian Artist Jawad Al-Malhi and his wife, British artist, writer and educator Dr. Tina Sherwell.

Jawad al Malhi had begun painting in the late 80s and exhibited at Anadiel in 1994. He was close to the developments that took place in those early days and his comments about that time echo observations made by others:

In those days there were few Palestinian artists and those there were tended to be ‘state ‘artists whose work was entirely about the political cause. Politics was the reason not the art. So when Jack first talked about opening Anadiel I thought it was a crazy idea. However, when artists from outside like Mona [Hatoum], Samir [Srouji] and Nasser [Soumi] came it was fantastic. As an artist on the ground I felt that politics was not our job anymore. I was starting to focus on concepts and at that time, and with that kind of input, you felt free.

Al-Malhi and Sherwell took a completely different approach to the workshops based on the assumption that an artist has very different skills to a teacher thus the interaction with the children should be more organic than formally instructional.

Rather than ‘teaching’ as such, we saw it as artists working with children in order to get them to explore their own creativity - more explaining and facilitating than teaching.

The workshops took place over a longer period so that skills could be built up gradually which was also intended to create deeper bonds within the groups themselves:

As well as the art the point was to bring the different communities in Jerusalem into one place, so we were trying to create a social atmosphere and actually build up commonalities and cohesion among the youth in the communities. They built a very strong relationship between each other and they spent a lot of time together afterwards. The workshops always spilled over into social time.

The purpose was also psychological. Throughout the West Bank the following year, the workshops became the only outlet for children to process some of the damage done by the full scale military attacks of 2002. They were art and sculpture workshops and Al-Malhi was very clear about the purpose of them all:

To me it was to help them build a dream and in some cases to help them overcome specific psychological problems connected to the conflict. For example we did a travelling workshop which went to Jenin and Nablus and places affected by aerial attacks called ‘The Dream of Flying’ and this was to make them look up and give them confidence in the sky again. We made kites and set them flying one every minute. Taysir Bataniji did this is Gaza too.

Luc Chery 2000 – 2003

In 2000 I took my son to the photography school in Arles where I met Luc Chery who was to become my husband in 2002. He came to Palestine and did projects with Al-Quds University, Bethlehem University and Al-Ma’mal (Huda Imam, Jerusalem April 2010)

Chery was involved with Al-Ma’mal for several years and conducted two workshops as well as presenting his own photography and exhibition projects:

The first workshop I did (in July 2001) was called "Jerusalem Ma Ville" and was conducted with Al-Quds University students in cooperation with the French Consulate and Al-Ma'mal. The aim was to lead students to a renewed appreciation of their city beyond the usual evidence on the surface.

Unfortunately no images of this project are currently available but in a statement written at the time Luc Chery wrote:

This photographic work was accomplished between September 2000 and May 2001, a date which marked the beginning of a new era of uncertainty and conflict: the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada. Although within the heart of a conflict, this collection does not show any picture of war or confrontation, however, the day to day life, attitudes and expressions unveil tension and darkness. The images of architecture we see tend to point to an unrelenting process of destruction/reconstruction or perhaps re-composition. So many buildings are themselves affected by questions of identity through patches, scars, emptiness and additions all strongly marking the uncertainty and fragility of any possible definition of the place (From exhibition statement, 2001).

Chery’s workshop at Bethlehem University in 2002 introduced young Palestinians to a wide variety of materials within the context of contemporary art, particularly the creative possibilities of working with recycled materials. This was consistent with Al-Ma’mal’s shift in focus for workshop content that had occurred in 2001 following an assessment of workshop results over the first few years.

Here, the aim was to introduce new relationships with scraps and material, alteration and destruction and then to rebuild autonomous artworks out of this process (Luc Chery, June 2010).

Objects and materials were collected from domestic and industrial waste according to their ‘expressive uniqueness’ and there were conceptual echoes of Chery’s previous workshop project:

Cracks and rips mark their status as objects that have been tossed about, split up and marginalized. Such scattered fragments can be staged in devices enabling interplay of shapes and allotting them a renewed credit. When rearranged, they become small autonomous worlds endowed with impermanence and flexibility. As they are assembled, the scraps and fragments interact in floating layers and suspensions, in crushed-down volumes, in shadows and transparencies where they find a new inscription, a new belonging (From workshop proposal, 2002).  

 

 

 

As Al-Ma’mal’s artist-in-residence in 2003 Chery presented a two-part exhibition called Les Habitats-Ode to the Refugee Camps. One series of photographs showed structures in Gaza’s refugee camps enclosed by cloth or plastic sheeting. A parallel series showed spaces in Bordeaux that had been specially constructed by Chery from discarded plastic, fabric and furniture. When the images were juxtaposed it was sometimes hard to differentiate between the two.

The project not only conveyed a sense of the confinement in the enclosed spaces of the refugee camps but also gave an empathetic picture of a people surviving by converting waste into a priceless commodity that provides shelter.
 

  

 

  

Luc Chery Website