Palestine Think Tank

 (in the picture, Stateless Nation by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti)

On 5 June there will be a Symposium that accompanies the events, lasting until 30 September. In the Symposium, issues to be discussed will focus on art in the time of perpetual crisis, the role artists play in civil society as activist and as catalysts of democratic discourse, and the artists’ activation of public spaces as alternative venues in the absence of museums and state support. Symposium participants include the artists, art historian and art professionals representing several Palestinian art institutions.

 

Program:

10:00 am –until 12:30 (registration starts at 9:30am)

Ramallah Syndrome – A community based art project that explores the rise of Ramallah from a resort town into a de-facto capital of the future Palestinian State

 

Discussant: Salwa Mikdadi –Curator

Dr. Yazid Anani, Prof. of Architecture, Birzeit University, Birzeit, W. Bank

Dr. Alessandro Petti, Research Fellow at Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London and Architect based in London/Bethlehem  

Dr. Sandi Hilal, artist and architect. A visiting professor at the International Academy of Art Palestine, Bethlehem.

 

June 7 until September 30, 2009

Open daily from 10:00 am until 6:00 pm (closed Monday, except June 8)

 

Convento Ss. Cosma & Damiano,

Campo S.Cosmo, Giudecca Palanca, 30133 Venezia

Giudecca Vaporetto stop Palanca Lines # 1-2, 41- 42

Free Admission

 

Preview: June 3 – 6, from 11:00 am – 7:00 pm

 

Symposium: June 5th, 2009, 9:30 am – 5:00 pm

Early Registration required, contact info@palestinecoveniceb09.org  

 

Opening Reception

June 6,   5:00 – 8:00 pm 

Khalil Rabah Performance, June 6, 5:30pm

Ramallah Syndrome Sound-System Performance
June 6, 9pm at:

 

Symposium: Conversations

Date: June 5th, 2009 9:30 until 5:00 pm

Free Admission. Limited seating, early registration required

Contact: info@palestinecoveniceb09.org

Seating 80 capcity 99

Location:

Spazio Thetis    

Arsenale, Sestiere Di Castello,

Vaporetto/Waterbus N° 41 / 42
Fermata/Stop “Bacini”

For more information and registration contact: info@palestinecoveniceb09.org

Break 12:30 – 1: 30 pm lunch served by canteen 7 euros

1: 30 – 3:00 pm

Palestinian Art

Discussant: Dr. Vittorio Urbani, Venice

Speakers:

Kamal Boullata, artists and art historian, France, Jack Persekian, curator, artistic director of 7, 8 & 9th Sharjah Biennale and the Director of al Ma’mal Foundation for contemporary Art, Jerusalem, Dr. Tina Sherwell Director, International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah

 

3:15 – 5:00 pm 

A Geography: 50 Villages – Riwaq’s 3rd Biennale, Ramallah

Speakers:

Khalil Rabah artist and Director of Riwaq Biennale for Art and Architecture, Ramallah

Dr. Suad Al Ameri, Director, Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah

Farhat Yousef, Head of Planning Unit, Riwaq, Ramallah

  

Opening Reception

June 6,   5:00 – 8:00 pm 

Khalil Rabah Performance, June 6, 5:30pm

 

Khalil Rabah, 3rd Riwaq Biennale 2009. A Geography : 50 Villages

 

                           Act Three, 

                           Geography 102:  50 Local Pavilions, in four parts

 

                                   Part D:

                                   Geography 201: Press

                                   Geography 202: A Case

Ramallah Syndrome SOUND-SYSTEM PERFORMANCE*

June 6, 9.00 pm

S.A.L.E

Dorsoduro 265
Venezia boat stop: Zattere or Salute
www.sale-docks.org

 

The sound system performance is part of the Ramallah Syndrome project presented at Palestine c/o Venice by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti with Nasser Abourahme, Yazeed Anani, Laura Ribeiro, Reem Fadda, Omar Jabary-Salamanca, Yazan Khalili.

Sound Sytem by Aswatt (Basel Abbas) and Ruanne Abourahme

 

 

 

* Ramallah Syndrome Sound-System collects materials as its initial starting point and then it is reworked for the sound installation presented at Palestine c/o Venice. The performance while a result of this process, is not intended as a replication but rather a re-examination of the material, picking up threads from the original piece in a dynamic exploration and experimentation of ‘found’ footage, archive sample, audio-video location recordings, and heavy electronic music.

 info@palestinecoveniceb09.org

www.palestinecoveniceb09.org

 

Taysir Batniji was born in 1966 in Gaza, Palestine. His exhibition venues include the A.M Qattan Centre in London, Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, Le Quartier in Quimper, Galerie, La Bankin Paris, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Genève, French Cultural Center in Gaza and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, among others. He also participated in the following Biennales:  Sharjah, Riwaq, 50th Venice Biennale, Havana, Alexandria and Thessaloniki. He lives and works in Paris and Gaza.

 

Hannoun 1972-2009

For this exhibit, he uses performance, installation and photography to evoke notions of memory, erasure, non-being, and destruction/construction (deconstruction/restitution). The red shavings suggest the appearance of a field of poppies: an impalpable landscape that one observes as in a dream from an un-crossable vantage point. The piece follows several performative projects undertaken in the last few years. Each of these “acted shapes” is the result of obsessive, repetitive, and often useless or absurd gestures. 

 

Shadi HabibAllah was born in 1977 in Jerusalem. He is pursuing his M.F.A. at Columbia University. He has participated in exhibits at the Riwaq Biennale, Ramallah, the Tate Modern, London, and was awarded 2nd prize for the A.M. Qattan Hassan Hourani – The Young Artists Award. He lives and works in Ramallah and New York.

 

Ok, hit, hit but don't run, 2009   
HabibAllah builds an intricate play out of patterns of instantly legible behaviors, thereby questioning the primary experience of perception among a pre-determined set of forms.

The animation / installation, Ok, hit, hit but don't run, 2009 is distilled to its barest elements, suggesting a new language of classification. In this manner, the work disrupts commonly held notions of engagement with materiality and substance.

 

Sandi Hilal was born in 1973 in Beit Sahour, Palestine. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Trieste, Italy in 2006. Alessandro Petti was born in 1973 in Pescara, Italy, and received his Ph.D. in Urbanism at the IUAV University of Venice in 2006. They have exhibited in Venice Biennale, Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, Istanbul Biennial, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, among others. They live and work in Bethlehem.

 

Ramallah Syndrome, 2009

For this exhibit, they use a sound installation to activate an almost non-exiting community discourse on the colonialist socio-spatial reconfiguration of urban centers.  Their project examines the effects of the new spatial and social order that emerged after the collapse of the Oslo ‘peace process’, manifested in a kind of ‘hallucination of normality’, the delusion of a co-existence of occupation and freedom in Ramallah. 

 

Emily Jacir was born in 1970. Among her recent awards are the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize, the 2007 Golden Lion Award, 52nd Venice Biennale, and the 2007 Prince Claus Award.  Her most recent solo exhibitions include New York Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, and Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea in Torino.  She lives and works in Ramallah and New York.

 

stazione is an intervention that will be situated on each of the vaporetti stops along line #1. It will begin at the Lido stop, weave through the Grand Canal, and end at Piazzale Roma. Jacir will translate the names of each vaporetto station along this route into Arabic and place these translations onto the stops next to their Italian counterparts, thereby creating a bilingual transportation route through the city. 

 

Vaporetto # 1 stops at every station along the Grand Canal where centuries of cross-cultural exchange between Venice and the Arab world is clearly visible in the architecture along its banks. The Arabic names inscribed onto the vaporetti stops will put them in direct dialogue with the architecture and urban design of the surrounding buildings, thereby linking with various elements of Venice’s shared heritage with the Arab world. 

 

Emily Jacir's public project seeks to seeks to transform the cityscape of Venice into a contemporary dialogue with this rich history of cross-cultural fertilization. 

Jawad Al Malhi was born in 1969 in Jerusalem. He completed his MA at Winchester School of Art in 2007 and has had solo exhibitions at the al Hoash Gallery, Jerusalem, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, and participated in Turin Biennial, Sharjah Biennial and was shorted listed for the Frieze Foundation's Cartier Award (2009).  Al Malhi lives and works in Jerusalem.  

House No. 197 explores the site and experience of marginality via the architecture and geography of the refugee camps. Al Malhi’s project focuses on panoramic views of Shufhat Refugee Camp in Jerusalem, taken from hills surrounding the camp. Through photography and video, Al Malhi investigates the architectural structures of the camp and their continuous transformation as well as the experience of claustrophobia, containment and the monotony of time within such an environment, which is also explored in the video work The Gas Station.

 

Khalil Rabah was born in 1961 in Jerusalem. He has exhibited in the Liverpool Biennial, the Tate Modern, the British Museum, at the Istanbul Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, The São Paulo Biennial; and Kwangju Biennale. He is the co founder and director of the Riwaq Biennale, Palestine, and lives and works in Ramallah.

 

In 3rd Riwaq Biennale 2009, A Geography : Fifty Villages, Rabah creates a time specific work which uses large installation, performance, and video works to explore the epistemology of the concept of biennales. The Riwaq Biennale and the fifty ongoing series of interventions, transform Palestinian towns and villages into a vital hub of multiple activities and services. By using renovated historical buildings for a range of art and cultural projects, the aim is provide an alternative vision to challenge the perceptions and expectations of what a biennale can be as well offer the public a quieter register through which to engage with the contemporary cultural landscape of Palestine.