2024 ~ Meditations# 13.1 ~ Harun Morrison

DAI invited guest writers Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa, Harun Morrison, and Giulia Crispiani to meditate on specific parts of COOP SUMMIT 2024 which took place in Essaouira in Morocco on September 5, 6, 7, 2025. Five COOP study groups forged their collaborative research into an assemblage of public happenings. 

Here Harun Morrison's rumination on Assembling Land by COOP study group  Assembling Land: Rehearsals towards Place-making.

Rehearsals towards place-making at Cafe Essaouira 

This COOP took public form as a publication-launch, which itself is a composite form. While there is a strong network of art book fairs, and numerous considerations of the publication in contemporary art practice there has been less attention to the book-launch itself. The book-launch is the moment that the work of writing, the graphic design, typically production out of sight is publicly shared. It is both shared as an object but also activated by reading of excerpts, and introduction from the editors and writers outlining their processes, or the elements that inspired its writing in the first place.

In the case of the launch at Cafe Essaouira, we were introduced to a constellation of self published pamphlets: Palestine—Now, here, there, Nabil, Writing our surmud, Youmein, Francesca Masoero, Gathering Together: Notes on spaces of solidarity and resistance, Meyrem Fekhari. The foreward introducing the publications authored by coop tutors Noor Abuarafeh and Marina Christodoulidou informs the reader that these pamphlets can also be downloaded and self-assembled. The invitation to “make-your-own” counters a typical limitation or control or the publication—whereas here the launch has no financial motivation, but is instead a means to make us first and foremost aware of its content as stimulant to encourage its circulation.

Talking of stimulants, we cannot forget we are in a coffee house, the coffee house, prior to the rise of the likes of Starbucks and Cafe Nero, being the centres of a post second world world discourse in art, theory and literature. Whereas the romance of the book orientated coffee shop—has largely died in London for example—the mix of sociality, politics and coffees continues in the Arabic speaking worlds. This coffee shop among its informal furniture, features anti-colonial artworks and posters. The type of place where you can nurse a coffee for hours, read poetry and have heated discussion you cannot have elsewhere. 

The COOP’s presence then is an unusual presence, that both hacks and maintains the vibe of the coffeeshop and the typical launch itself. This is partially achieved sonically, with an electronic improvised score that peppers the event, with an extended sequence at the beginning and end, playing from the bar’s porch. The fractured, unpredictable dissonance of this soundscape is a fitting accompaniment to the the content of the zines themselves; speaking in different ways from from poetry and  polemic to the focus and explanation of a particular word “sumud,” which can be translated as “steadfastness” that emerges alongside Nakba, to hold a notion of resistance, a refusal to be pushed off one’s spot. 

Inside the cafe were a number of stations hosted by the other student-participants of the coop, there was no linear route, but instead a series of opportunities to have one-on-one conversations in smaller groups—to watch a clip of video, or engage with a sound. There was also a text produced for oneself responding to a series of questions. This was another inversion, to attend a publication launch and then be encouraged to write—becoming an effective means of confronting expectations as to who writes and who reads. There were also readings in French, Arabic and English, which itself evoked other questions about who was speaking—and to whom. Indeed the subject of one pamphlet returned to this question of how to speak of Gaza in English and what does it mean to do so. 

One of the final moments at the launch was an impromptu reading by a local poet Noufal Saeeed Abdul Razzaq Al-Saeedi, who had also attended the launch. He spoke in Arabic, but his intensity and commitment to each uttered word was clear. This simple act reminded those of us gathered with affinities to DAI (especially the non-Arabic speakers among us) of the temporariness of our presence, while the locals continued to sit or stand outside, the poetry was as much—if not more for those who stay, than those who come and go. 

About the author: Harun Morrison

Read more on the 2023-2024 COOP study group ~ Assembling Land: Rehearsals towards Place-making

Read more on Assembling Land and COOP SUMMIT 2024 in Essaouira