‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN’
LIFTA x CPS Present: ‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN’, a semester-long program that explores contemporary Palestinian cultures and yearnings across generations in Palestine and its diaspora.
Through media including live panels, original videos, podcasts, essays, film screenings, and social media campaigns, ‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN,’ spotlights the untold and unfamiliar. It gives precedent to the under-celebrated; the agents of design who draft and re-draft blueprints for present-day liberation.
‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN’ is an ode to the powers of self-freedom and agency that breathe life into all beings, unbound from restrictions imposed by states and systems. Its content helps to lay the foundation for desired futures by rejecting the projections of a homogenous Palestinian experience and deconstructing the often flattened Palestinian identity.
This program is presented by:
CPS + LIFTA Volumes
with Lena Mansour and Cher Asad.
Learn more about the program below!
ONGOING
1) Love & Intimacy
Learn more and watch the videos here.
As part of 'Palestine, IN-BETWEEN', we present the LOVE & INTIMACY video series. Over the course of the next several weeks, we’ll be releasing short films that center intergenerational outlooks on love and intimacy in Palestine and the diaspora, with discussions highlighting—but not limited to— disconnects, desires, relationships, trauma, teaching, learning, and beyond. This series includes intimate interviews and conversations held between Palestinians who share a close relationship, including old friends, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, lovers, cousins, and more.
Conversations explore what has been inherited and what is being shed, as well as the ways in which taking care of ourselves and each other is to care for the collective—now and into the future. Dialogue moves beyond topics of love in the human-to-human sense, extending to the deep connections one shares with an object, time, smell, memory, land, and ritual.
We’d like to thank all who participated in this series for your time, energy, and openness. You can watch the videos and follow the series on palestineinbetween.com, a blog and accompanying website to this program where we will be sharing original content and reposting content by Palestinians all over the world. The videos are also made available on YouTube. Intro graphic by Ashay Bhave, @slum__prince.
Videos will be released weekly!
2) Visit the Palestine, IN-BETWEEN Blog for special features and further explorations.
UPCOMING EVENTS
-Special Live Panel (TBA)
-Blog submission: Solenne Tadros on fusing digital innovation with preservation of the individual and collective memory
PAST EVENTS
*January 22-26:
FILM SCREENING: MUSSOLINI'S SISTER BY JUNA SULEIMAN + TROUBLE IN PARADISE AND MOONSCAPE BY MONA BENYAMIN
*January 26:
LIVE PANEL WITH FILMMAKERS JUNA SULEIMAN AND MONA BENYAMIN, MODERATED BY DR. NADIA YAQUB
Please view the special live conversation at this link and the event page with more information at this link.
*February 11:
Live Panel / Palestinian feminist discourses: contemporary views and emerging movements with Riya Al'Sanah, Nour Swirki, Yara Hawari and Ghadir al Shafie, Moderated by Aamer Ibraheem
Learn more about the participants and the panel here and watch the conversation here.
*March:
Preservation, conservation, and adaptation: archiving practices inside Palestine + Intergenerational approaches to preservation, conservation, and adaptation in the Palestinian Diaspora
1) A podcast exploring land and food politics throughout Palestine. We'll discuss the criminalization of food and its production within Palestine and the autonomous practices that exist amidst legislation, occupation, and ongoing colonialism.
Episode 1: Sustainable Farming Practices Within Palestine
Learn more about the podcast here.
In conversation with Raya Manaa, the founder of Al-Ameen Archive, an archival photo project that pulls from her father Mahmoud Manaa's past home-run Studio Al-Ameen in Majd Al-Kurum. You can read the interview now at palestineinbetween.com or here.
Episode 2: Criminal Foods
In this episode, we explore the criminalization of three popular edible plants within Palestine with our guest Rabea Eghbariah. Zaatar, akkoub, and miramiya are staples in Palestinian cuisine, and yet there is currently a legal ban on their picking, possession, and trade. We discuss these plants' cultural and economic history within Palestine and the history and significance of their prohibition by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
Learn more about the podcast here.
*April:
1) 4/26 Live conversation ‘Nothing Old, Nothing New’ with Bilna'es
Watch this special conversation that took place 4/26/2021 by clicking here.
As an extension of Haitham Ennasr's project with Bilna'es, Nothing Old, Nothing New, he will be in conversation with Freya Dutta, Elias Wakeem, and moderator Ruanne Abou-Rahme, discussing how their practices correlate and intersect revolutionary cultural practices at large. The panelists will discuss the relationship between class, gender, race, capital, the colonial, and the use of art as a tool to illustrate systems of oppression and imagine a future where they aren't tolerated as a natural fact of life.
Nothing Old, Nothing New (Project of Bilna'es)
Nothing Old, Nothing New is a collection of experimental videogames, drawings, text, and objects developed over the course of six years. The project plays on the relationship between capitalism, colonialism, depictions of landscapes, real estate development, and folklore.
Participants: Haitham Ennasr, Elias Wakeem, Freya Dutta, Ruanne Abou-Rahme (Moderator)
2) ‘Palestinian Wild Food Plants’ with Omar Imseeh Tesdell
Learn about edible plants in Palestine during the month of May and more.
*June:
1) Palestine, IN-BETWEEN Podcast
Episode 3: The Black Goat Act
Within this bonus podcast episode, we explore the “Black Goat Act” with Rabea Eghbariah. The Black Goat Act, imposed by the Israeli government in 1950, criminalized the possession and herding of black goats, targeting the most abundant livestock animal in Palestine and centuries-old farming tradition. Enacted by colonial powers and without scientific rationale, we discuss the different ways Israel has used and enforced this legislation throughout history to further its agenda of Palestinian erasure and dispossession.
TEAM BIOS
LIFTA Volumes
LIFTA includes Amira Asad and Leila Peinado. Founded in 2018, LIFTA is a space led by the imagination. Prioritizing collaboration and human-centric processes, LIFTA develops projects across different mediums, including publications, exhibitions, and film. Crafted by people of the region, our inaugural project is a book centered upon the theme of Future Palestine. Volume I features work from award-winning artists, poets, curators, researchers, and writers from Palestine and its diaspora. The second volume will take the format of a long term archival initiative based in Mexico City, exploring diasporic communities from the Arab world.
Lena Mansour
Lena Mansour is a writer and co-founder of the Haifa Independent Film Festival. She has a decade of work experience in advocacy and resource development for Palestinian NGOs. She is a graduate of American University, where she studied international relations and communication. Mansour is interested in and works to create autonomous Palestinian projects in historical Palestine. Originally from Tireh, she resides in Haifa.
Cher Asad
Cher Asad is a Palestinian-American from Louisville, Kentucky, living in Dubai. She studied psychology and sociology at the University of Louisville. Asad has worked with US-based nonprofits to empower intimate partner and sexual violence survivors, both in shelters and transitional housing programs. Asad is interested in the use of technology to create affordable and borderless access to mental health care within the SWANA region.
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Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), Columbia University
Simone Rutkowitz
The Program Manager at the Center for Palestine Studies. She holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the Hagop Kevorkian Center at NYU.
Brian Boyd
Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Director of Museum Anthropology at Columbia University, Brian has been carrying out archaeological research in Palestine/Israel for thirty years, and is currently Co-Director (with Dr. Hamed Salem, Birzeit University) of the project Building Community Anthropology Across the Jordan Valley in the West Bank village of Shuqba.
Nasreen Abd Elal
Nasreen Abd Elal is a multidisciplinary researcher, graphic designer, and illustrator based in New York City. She received her BA from Columbia University in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS). She was the recipient of the 2020 alQaws fellowship “Palestine through the Lens of Queer Politics” and is also a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement.
Palestine, IN-BETWEEN is co-sponsored by The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, the Center for Archaeology at Columbia University and Columbia Global Center.