Seminar 4: 21 - 23 May 2025

Living Room: Storytelling against erasure

During this confluence, we will return to the question: What is a living room? What could potentially be(come) one? We’ll reflect on what makes a living room beyond its physical aspects — as a place for gathering, storytelling, encounter, intimacy, rest, and/or shared experience — in order to shape a proposition for the summit offering in late June.  Together, we’ll trace what we’ve experienced and studied in previous confluences and expand our Lumbung practice by identifying shared resources — both tangible and intangible — and how they can be collectively exercised. The question of funding remains central, and we ask: how can we think of monetary funding beyond just spending it?

We’ll revisit our harvests and the COOP axis on land and water, focusing in particular on the recent visit and score witnessed in Famagusta during our last confluence in Cyprus. As part of this, we will screen the short film Ma’loul Celebrates its Destruction (1984), which shows how the inhabitants’ lived experience and memory are their only weapon — and that holding onto them is vital. How do witnesses become carriers of such stories, and how is speculation a form of participation and imagination that allows for collective organizing in the now? We will conclude with a rehearsal of our harvest’s transcriptions — in sonic, written, or other forms — while working together on the radio offering to follow.

Wednesday - 21 May 
Morning 
10:30-13:00
(indoors)

Coffee gathering while assigning lumbung roles for the three-day confluence: Timekeepers, caretakers, harvesters, hosts, and ghosts.

Check-in: (hosted by Marina & Noor)
A conversation around the cue of the living room — not in the literal sense, but as a place that acts like one. That is, a place of gathering, storytelling, encounter, intimacy, rest, and/or shared experience, where the role of the living room is displaced into another material or immaterial form: 

Sonic Living Room
A Living Room through Letters
Radio as Living Room (listening)
A Ruin as Living Room
A Portable Living Room
Storytelling as a Living Room

Recap — Where we are, what we have done together:

In this session, we will revisit the harvests from previous confluences by reading through the questions proposed during our first gathering in Nida, recalling the themes brought forward by our guests, and mapping out the ideas and directions we now feel most drawn to pursue.

Afternoon
14:00-17:30
(indoors)

Jamming session & recording of our next radio show:

COOP participants play the sound they are bringing and record while physically together.   
During this session, we will record the upcoming radio show by selecting segments from the harvest of our last confluence in Cyprus.

Presentation & conversation around summit requirements: We will begin by outlining the requirements of the summit (title, location, blurb, presentation duration, visuals, technical needs, offerings etc), allocating the general teams (Production team, Editorial team, Budget team), the session will include a visit from Flip and Peter for more detailed explanation.  

What if? - Brainstorming summit: This segment will involve a writing exercise where the COOP students are divided into three groups. Each group will write a proposal for the shared presentation, considering how each individual practice merges into the collective one. Afterward, each group will present their text.

17:30 - 18:00 Break

18:00 - 19:30 Majelis: During this session, the COOP will make decisions regarding the structure of the summit's public offering, focusing on its form and themes. The process will ensure that each COOP member's individual practice and voice are included in the collective process.

19:30 - 20:30

Film screening: Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction (1984)

32 min, Color, 16 mm
Like countless Palestinian villages since 1948, Ma’loul has been erased from the map. Every year on Israel's ‘independence day’ (the only day that no permits are needed to move around that area freely) Ma'loul's expelled indigenous Palestinian inhabitants go back to their village, to show their children where they are from, to re-conjure the houses, the school, the bakery. They walk among their lemon trees. Apricots, almonds. As families share food, elders recount the history of the village. While Ma’loul is one of Nazareth-born filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s shortest films, he notes that it was the hardest to edit because he felt compelled to recount this colonial history in a succinct and undeniable way. In so doing, he nudges the difference between the idea of memory and memory itself; the knowledge of lived history in defiance of ideological history. While the film reflects on heritage and the inheritance of trauma, it also underlines that for the indigenous Palestinian population of Ma’loul the only "weapon" they have is what they have lived and experienced themselves – it is vital that they hold firmly to these. By placing a frame around these memories, the film itself becomes an act of remembrance. In underlining the role of storytelling against erasure, Khleifi reminds us of the power of framing, and narrating one's own history. 

Followed by a collective reflection.

Thursday - 22 May 

Morning 
10:30-13:00
(indoors)

Check-in by Carlos Azeredo Mesquita: (45 mins)

Harvest sharing from Day 1 (led by the COOP)
How to do it?

Based on the decisions made the day before, each participant will write a short text about their individual contribution to the summit. The focus should be on the artistic contribution, rather than the technical aspects. This can include activities such as cooking, leading a walk, jamming, producing video work, field recordings, engaging with the audience, performing, reading, creating visuals, etc. Afterward, the group will gather to identify common themes and explore how these different interests can form a collective body of work/collaborative project.

Afternoon
14:00-17:30
(indoors)

COOP-led session: What do we need?  Listing the things we need, if we need a guest that would help us formulate the project (sound artist, designer, composer, editor, etc), technical requirements, budget.  

Mega Majelis:  Collective reflection circle

How are we feeling? What are we excited/nervous about?

During this session, we will be making decisions on what we will be doing: A performance? Live event? Publication? Streaming a radio show? How can we do it, how do we use the budget? Would we like involve a collaborator?
Budget: What do we need the money for, and how can we use it beyond mere spending?

17:30 - 18:00 Break

18:00 - 19:30 Letter writing:  we will revisit the play “Seven Jewish Children” followed by writing letters to each other reflecting on the play. 

19:30 - 20:30 Listening session:  Dirar Kalash, Live praxes, Bilna’es, among others.

Friday - 23 May 
Morning 
10:30-13:00
(indoors)

Check-in: (hosted by a COOP participant)
Go through the DAI requirements to start drafting our summit proposal, allocating the roles, etc. 

Afternoon
14:00-17:30
(indoors)

Produce our next radio show for Radio Alhara.

17:30 - 18:00 Break 

18:00 - 19:30 Rehearse and conclude on our collective direction for the summit. 

Related study material:

Sonic Commons:

Broadcast: Towards Collective Study in Times of Emergency (for 24 hrs/Palestine)

Rana Issa, We Have Been Here Forever. Palestinian Poets Write Back, 2024

Bilna’es, Only Sounds That Tremble Through Us, 2025

Achille Mbembe, On Diminishment, I: Architecture and the Shelter-Rubble-Dust Continuum, 2025

Seminar 3: 27 - 29 March 2025

Reading the Ruins

At the 4th confluence, de Appel and Bulegoa z/b COOPs embark on a collective study through Varosha, Salamis, and Trikomo, exploring landscapes shaped by erasure, fragmentation, and contested histories. As we navigate thresholds between past and present, ruin and repair, we engage with scores that offer alternative ways of relating to land—through attunement, resilience, and reciprocity. Varosha, once vibrant and now a surreal theme park, echoes the frozen past of Palestinian villages in Children of the Dew, where forced displacement left life in ruins. Through a writing workshop with Haytham el-Wardany, we invite reflection on these histories through reading and writing, exploring how literature mobilizes memory and solidarity across struggles against colonialism.

On the confluence’s last day, we bring together gathered materials to shape a radio play, using sonic dramaturgies that blur voices and disrupt dominant narratives. Drawing from regional laments, Liwaa Yazji’s The Gate of Tears, Seven Jewish Children, and The Gaza Mono-Logues, we connect the politics of listening with sound’s subversive potential. As Mladen Ovadija notes, sound is not just a signifier but an act. Through found sound, field recordings, and collective vocal gestures, we will create a holding space for reflection—using voice to reach resonant shores, which will later be shared on Radio Alhara.

Suggested readings:

Children of the Dew, a novel by Mohamed Al-Assad, Chapters 1 & 8

We made a film in Cyprus, by Laurie Lee and Ralph Keene

Urban Laments, kyklàda.press

Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Avery F. Gordon

Seminar 2: 14 - 17 January 2025

Dormant Echoes: in medias resonance
Keywords:  listening - collecting - reenactment - housing 

Living Room: Rehearsals Towards Place-Making engages with sound as a core element in shaping and holding space, while recounting the COOP’s themes. These themes will be approached through a sonic workshop, film screenings, readings, and conversations that also relate to land, housing and financialization.  This four-day confluence in Nida will be dedicated to examining sound both conceptually and technically. How can a space be conveyed through sound? How do we gather and share experiences using sound? And what does it mean to speak and listen simultaneously?

During the confluence, guest artist Emiddio Vasquez will host a workshop, unfolding facets of his collaborative and individual projects, through which COOP participants will articulate different perspectives on sound in their own practice. The COOP tutorial team will also share projects where interiority and narrative deepen the thematic and the practice-oriented focus of this confluence.

Zooming into the confluence’s prompt, Dormant Echoes: in medias resonance departs from the literary technique of “in medias res” that signifies a beginning from “the middle of things” and extends it to include resonance as the starting point of such departure. In other words, resonance, conceived as a relational notion, is always located in the middle of things and in-between things. An object resonates according to its natural frequency, but that resonation can only take place when and if energetically enacted. We are, therefore, surrounded by dormant echoes waiting to be awakened.  

First framed as an acoustic phenomenon, resonance can quickly be found and transcribed to different spaces and somewhat unexpected domains. It is this seeming omnipresence that allows one to use resonance as a metaphor, “to resonate with”. But what does it mean to be resonant? How do resonances accumulate and disperse? How do we perceive or detect resonances, acoustic and beyond? 

Our four-day sessions will build towards exploring different types of resonances, acoustic but also conceptual, through practical sessions of recording, editing and arrangements, resonant ensembles/assemblages and critical reflections, leading up to possible abstractions and reconfigurations of what resonance might be, in the midst of it all.

Tuesday - 14 January
Morning
10:30-13:00 (indoors)

Check-in: (hosted by Marina & Noor)
Landing: Introduction to the confluence’s day-to-day and signing up for lumbung roles (harvesters, timekeepers, caretakers, hosts and ghosts).
Reflection: reflecting on the previous confluence, continuing ongoing conversations and building on collective streamlines.

Afternoon
14:00-17:00 (indoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Sonic sessions with Emiddio Vasquez (part 1):
Collectivity and self-organization in sonic practice and research
During the first part of the session series, we will move through different projects and research done by Lower Levant Company (LLC) and Moneda that center sound as its key element to interrogate larger themes and politics at stake, including releases and installations. Emiddio will present projects from both Moneda and LLC, as well as his own practice, that weave themes of resonance, radio, borders, field recordings, club culture and finance.

17:00 - 19:00 (indoors)
Film Screening: The Broken Pitcher, 2022 (69mins)
The Broken Pitcher centers on a family’s negotiations with their lending bank about the looming repossession of their home in Larnaka; Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Christodoulidou, and Peter Eramian along with a group of peers, present this real story that took place in 2019 using reconstructions from memory, followed by commentaries from various individuals answering the question: What do you think the bank officials should have done? In the most unjust of times, marked by forced -mass- displacements, apartheid, land confiscation, occupation, violation, and the daily evictions of families from their homes, The Broken Pitcher is a project which continues to question perpetuating structures of power and recounts mechanisms for solidarity.

Collective reflection & behind-the-scenes talk by Marina Christodoulidou

Evening
8:30 - 10:00 (indoors)
On the occasion of the screening, a numismatics performance by Emiddio Vasquez will follow, along with a mention of the release The Broken Pitcher: A Soundbank (MON010).

Suggested reading “The Broken Pitcher: Beyond the Architecture of Disposition” by Lina Protopapa

Wednesday - 15 January
Morning
10:30-13:00 (indoors)

Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Sonic sessions with Emiddio Vasquez (part 2):
Introduction to recording tools and techniques to resonate the field. Reflect on some of the assumptions of field recording practices. Can there ever be an objective listener? Could we speak of performing a field?

Afternoon
14:00-16:00 (outdoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Soundwalk to sites of interest. Taking the Curonian Spit where Nida is located as a temporary geological formation that will most likely turn into new land, we will focus on sand and the sea as resonating bodies. Neringa Myth

16:00 - 17:15 (indoors)
Golo Besmlah (Noura Al Khasawneh & Areej Huniti) discuss their work with the Arab Centre for the Protection of Nature (APN) on the "Revive Gaza’s Farmland" project in the context of plants and borders.

The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN) is an independent non-profit organization concerned with the protection of the environment and the natural resources of Arab countries against all hazards, including the destructive impacts of wars and foreign occupations. APN was established in April, 2003 by a group of motivated people who aim to protect the Arab environment alongside regional and international organizations.

Hosted by 2024-2025 COOP study group ~ Trespass, Loopholes, Action Design

Evening
20:00-22:00 (indoors)
Student-led harvest aftercare session and continuation of the collective reading: Enclosures from Below: The Mushaa’ in Contemporary Palestine by Noura Alkhalili.

Thursday - 16 January
Morning
10:30-13:00 (indoors)

Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Collective reading “The Earth Doesn’t Tell Its Secrets” His Father once said, by Noor Abuarafeh
"The Earth Doesn't Tell Its Secrets" His Father Once Said is a novel that revolves around the narrator's fascination with the long-running myth of Palestine's first museum. After each attempt to visit such a museum ends in failure, each proposal seems to float between fact and fiction. "The first Palestinian museum" has assumed different forms throughout the years - a collection with no space, a temporary room that would hold a single artwork, a museum conceived as an artwork and a museum building with no collection. After all the time spent obsessing over the museum. The narrator comes to see its future in the living rooms of family, friends and acquaintances. The novel assembles material based on collections found or inspired by people's houses.

Afternoon
14:00-19:00 (indoors & outdoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Sonic sessions with Emiddio Vasquez (part 3):
Ongoing workshop threads

Evening
20:30 - 21:30 (indoors)
Film Screening: “Am I The Ageless Object At The Museum” (15mins)
Abuarafeh’s video Am I the Ageless Object at the Museum? (2018) is part of a long-term project that draws parallels between museums, zoos, and cemeteries as repositories for preservation and display. Viewers are led through zoos in Palestine, Switzerland, and Egypt, which, much like museums, conform to a standard in which animals are collected, caged, and subjected to an uneven power dynamic. Spliced with images of stuffed animals and pinned bugs from natural history museums, live animals are similarly made to appear like objects. Recounting childhood memories about zodiac signs, the evolution of hippos, the mythical symbology of whales, the narrator imagines themselves as a large cetacean, exposed to sunlight and nature, as if that body is also their own.

Friday - 17 January
Morning
10:30-13:00 (indoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Student-led sonic session, which will subsequently air on Radio Al-Hara.

Afternoon
14:00-19:00 (indoors)
Concluding with Sonic sessions with Emiddio Vasquez (part 4)
Editing and export process.

Suggested readings:
The Broken Pitcher
Rural commons
Mortgaged Lives
The Funambulist
“The Earth Doesn’t tell its secrets” His father once said

Seminar 1: 10 - 12 December 2024

An event without its poem is an event that never happened.

This proverb, shared with us by Amussu’s community, resonates with the program’s cue. Bringing in last year’s learnings and this year’s offering, Living Room is both a place and a practice that interweaves bodies, histories, infrastructures, and feelings.

Over the course of the three-day COOP in Nida, we’ll delve into each other’s interests and practices. Each COOP participant will give short presentations related to their work. We’ll further collectivize around our group’s working protocols, setting the framework for our shared process during each encounter in the year ahead. Introduced to the lumbung practice and planting the seeds we wish to harvest during the year, the confluence will revolve around how we can activate the lumbung to better suit our group’s intentions and areas of focus: land rights, housing crises, and modes of co-ownership.

During this confluence, we’ll familiarize ourselves with Haytham el-Wardany’s text, Labor of Listening, which approaches listening in its social and political sense. In his practice, Haytham’s takes reading, listening, or sleeping as active passivities and reflects with us on quoting, how voices speak to each other from within, and what kind of poetics is at work. The interest in listening stems from the COOP’s focus on sound harvesting. During this confluence, we will work on planting the seeds for our first episode on Radio Al-Hara.

Additionally, we’ll host a collective reading, focusing on writing as a dangerous act, and reflect collectively on the responsibility we carry as readers, continuing the thread from the session with Haytham. How can we become better readers? Departing from Dalia Taha’s introduction to letters written in prison in Palestine, Prisoners' Letters: A Plea for a Better World, we’ll set up the space for hosting a Palestine Teach-Out.
Together, we will read aloud the letters gathered and passed on to us by Dalia.

Tuesday 10 December

Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors & outdoors)
Check-in: (hosted by Marina & Noor)
During this session, we’ll introduce ourselves, get to know each other, and share a general overview of the second confluence.

Landing: Walking in the forest
NAC is situated within the unique and distinct landscape of the Curonian Spit, a 98 km-long sand dune shared by Lithuania and Russia. The spit, overgrown with forests, separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea.

Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)
Introducing/Activating the lumbung
During this session, we’ll imagine and share the seeds of the COOP’s lumbung: what are we interested in—topics, conversations, workshops, etc.? How will we work together? Lumbung roles will be activated by the COOP participants, including hosting our assemblies, initiating check-ins, harvesting working groups, and forming podcast production and editorial teams.

Approaches to Harvesting (Presentation by Marina & Noor)
Manual drafting for making/publishing a podcast on Radio Alhara; forming our working groups.

Wednesday 11 December

Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)

Palestine Teach-Out: “Prisoners' Letters: A Plea for a Better World” by Dalia Taha (Open to all COOPs)

Collective reading of letters from political prisoners in Palestine. Dalia Taha dispatched part of her archive of political prisoners’ letters, offering poetic guidance on how to engage with such emancipatory literature. She explores the process of writing, receiving, and reading these letters after their dangerous journey. Through collective engagement, a crucial question arises: How do we become better readers in this world?

Followed by a conversation with Dalia Taha: The Danger of Writing and the Responsibility of the Reader

Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors)
Check-in: (hosted by COOP participants)

Collective Reading: Enclosures from Below: The Mushaa’ in Contemporary Palestine by Noura Alkhalili

This text traces the declining fortunes of the mushaa’, a once-prominent Levantine culture of common land. Under Israeli colonization, the remaining commons are now subject to a new form of appropriation: individual Palestinian contractors seizing mushaa’ land and building on it.
The text introduces the concept of “enclosures from below,” examining the dynamics of the seizure of commons by Palestinian refugees. These individuals, who were once peasants practicing mushaa’ on their lands and are now landless, include some who have become expert contractors. The writer highlights that these contractors perceive their actions as a form of resistance against the settler colonial project, countering the advancing Wall and settlement expansion.

This analysis is illustrated through a case study of the Shu'fat area in Jerusalem. The changing uses of mushaa’ land reflect broader shifts in the Palestinian national project, which has become increasingly individualized.

Evening 20:00-22:00 (indoors)

Film Screening: “Jaffa: The Orange’s Clockwork” by Eyal Sivan, 2010, 88’ (TBC)

The Jaffa brand has always been a symbol of Israel itself—juicy oranges from a land said to have flourished again after the Jews returned. But what is the real story behind the sunny images of orchards laden with fruit? Eyal Sivan traces the story of Jaffa back to the birth of photography in 1839 and explores how the image of the so-called Holy Land became a Western myth.

Thursday 12 December

Morning 10:30-13:00 (indoors)

Virtual session with Haytham el-Wardany: Labour of Listening
Followed by a writing exercise, round-table discussion, harvesting, and sharing.

Haytham's interest in listening stems from his fascination with various passive activities, such as sleeping, waiting, and forgetting. Listening here is not merely a sensomotoric operation but appears interwoven with the process of subjectivation. This is not to say that listening is subjective, but rather to suggest that listening is historical.
Active listening involves understanding who the listener is, lending them an ear, and then speaking. To know is, therefore, a dialectical process of listening and speaking. But how can one listen to the listeners? How can one learn to listen to the ‘no ones’ who speak through silence?

Afternoon 14:00-18:00 (indoors)
Production of the First Episode for Radio Alhara & Cross-Skilling
Session led by the COOP participants

We each bring a reading we would like to share and assemble them together in an envelope (readings could also be pitched collectively). Where would we like to distribute the readings?

Suggested readings:

Prisoners' Letters: A Plea for a Better World, Dalia Taha

Five Metaphors on Healing, Alaa Abdelfattah

Enclosure from Below, Noura Alkhalili

Amussu: participatory art and cinema as a means of resistance, Movement96

Labour of Listening, Haytham el-Wardany Extended Living Room, ruangruppa

Rural commons