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