Summary
Echoes of Solidarity is the working title of an exhibition, performances and a series of other events that will take place towards the end of 2022. The project was initiated as a collaboration between the A M Qattan Foundation and Mosaic Rooms to probe the epistemologies of cultural solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and its social and cultural manifestations inside and outside colonised Palestine.
The Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) and Conscience Collective have adopted the project for a South African audience in solidarity with Palestine. Through collaboration with Palestine solidarity movements, other organisations, individuals and artists, AMEC seeks to bring the project to life in South Africa.
The daily struggle of Palestinians to end the persistent Israeli colonial project has become global. Israel continues its 74-year onslaught against Palestinians through reinvented colonial forms aimed at suppressing Palestinian resistance through continuous ethnic cleansing; forced displacement and dispossession; the ravaging bombardments of Gaza; the fascist apartheid system of discrimination, control, and torture of Palestinian citizens living in Israel; and the occupation of the West Bank outsourced to the Palestinian Authority.
Echoes of Solidarity South Africa will revisit the universalism of the Question of Palestine using creative forms. A series of events will be held over three days in the last week of November 2022, coinciding with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (29 November).
Purpose
Post-apartheid South Africa has a strong tradition of active internationalism on the continent and globally. Palestinian and African decolonial civil society movements have worked intensely in combating all forms of apartheid and building global solidarity. The commemoration of the ongoing Nakba is regularly tied with South Africa’s own struggle against apartheid. Since the apartheid era, South African artists have creatively expressed their solidarities and found imaginative means of mobilising people through song, street art, poetry, and imagery, among other forms.
The Question of Palestine remains prominent in the minds and hearts of anti-apartheid activists who recognise the similarities between their histories and the contemporary globally orchestrated systems that continue to deprive Palestinians of their inalienable rights.
In partnering with the A M Qattan Foundation, AMEC seeks to contribute towards the global outreach of the Echoes of Solidarity project, bringing a unique angle to the concept, and adding a necessary South African voice to the probing of epistemologies of cultural solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Methodology
The project will be implemented over three days in November 2022, coinciding with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
After the successful execution of the project in South Africa, AMEC will submit audio/visual contributions to the A M Qattan Foundation for inclusion in the global project and exhibition.
Curatorial Direction
Echoes of Solidarity is envisioned as a series of events that will take place at the end of 2022. The project is divided into three main non-linear plots that intertwine in a non-chronological order, where each plot’s narrative does not necessarily follow the direct causality pattern of its constituent events.
Plot One – Rippling Sounds
Archival material from the research phase is offered to artists, musicians and poets who will reiterate the visual and textual material into a new poetry of sound. The commissioned artists will not only translate but also find the intention in the new work they produce that can awaken an echo in the archival material. The dual functionality of the artist both as ‘translator’ and as ‘poet’ is pivotal for the task whereby the translator’s attention is directed toward the archival material as a language and the poet focuses on the creation of new structures of sound and content. ‘Rippling Sounds’ takes the form of performances, sound installations, discursive radio programmes, podcast assemblages, readings, and other forms.
Plot Two – The Question of Palestine
Since the mid-twentieth century, the Question of Palestine has always been allegorical to larger global movements and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, and racism. The Palestinian struggle for liberation stood for a universal ethical response to the transformation of the world after the grave atrocities of WWII and the malign Fascist and Nazi examples of what humanity can become if universal rights of liberation, self-determination, and equality are not sincerely embraced. At that time, political and cultural solidarity with the Palestinians rendered their struggle for liberation universal, not only through the official diplomatic channels of supporting governments from the Global South, especially by the non-aligned governments, but also as an expression of wider historical and political epistemologies of peoples’ struggle for equality, self-determination, decolonisation, and liberation worldwide.
Plot Three – Echoes of Solidarity
A look at the history of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) shows that it created a moment of hope for the Global South in inducing a major shift of western hegemony in global political and economic structures, to strive to create a more just, equal, and peaceful world order. Amidst a spectrum of political solidarities and alliances between NAM member states, cultural and arts solidarity aligned with the political ideologies of NAM and was seen as people’s expression against global imperialism, colonialism, and racism. Many local and global art movements and initiatives were formed either by artist brigades such as Brigada Ramona Parra and Colectivo de Acciones de Arte in Chile, or more structured national projects such as the Museo de la Solidaridad in Santiago, Chile, the International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine in Beirut, the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Art, the Week of Latin America in Belgrade, and many others. Although NAM still exists as an ineffective alliance today, it underwent internal political upheavals after its inception, and its leverage on world politics largely disappeared after the fall of the eastern bloc in 1989. Such historical references, especially the array of insurgent cultural initiatives and their productions, are understood only in a determined moment of their history.
The Echoes of Solidarity exhibition responds to this exigency and to the history that was dimmed and did not partake in shaping our present. The exhibition imagines an alternate reality and timeline where the power of the Global South still prevails. What kind of cultural solidarity exists with Palestine? If there were another ‘International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine’ now, what kind of epistemology would be framed by the art, and what type of solidarities are shaped and unshaped?
Call for Submissions
South African-based artists of various genres are invited to submit proposals for works of contemporary art, photography, theatrical and interpretative dance, spoken word and poetry that will be curated into the three-day programme. In line with this, AMEC also calls on transnational and specifically Palestinian solidarity organisations and networks within South Africa that work for the eradication of all forms of apartheid, colonialism, racism, and authoritarianism, as well as all forms of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, to partner with AMEC or contribute towards the programme. We seek to tackle the history of colonisation and its genocides, and juxtapose it with contemporary genocides and forms of discrimination on the basis of class, race, religion, ethnicity and creed.
AMEC and Conscience Collective welcome proposals for collaboration from like-minded organisations that might be interested in participating.
Submission Guidelines:
- Participation in this project is on a voluntary basis, in solidarity with the Palestinian people;
- Proposals must be original and entirely the work of the artist/s;
- The proposal should demonstrate solidarity with Palestine and strong themes of decolonialism and anti-apartheid;
- The proposal should include the artist’s resume and portfolio (where applicable);
- Submissions should be emailed to echoes@amec.org.za;
- Selected candidates will be notified by email by 31 October 2022;
- As funding for the project is limited, artists will be responsible for funding their submissions;
- Selected candidates will be expected to complete their works and installation at the venue ahead of the 3-day exhibition at the end of November 2022;
- Selected candidates’ works will be submitted to the A M Qattan Foundation in Palestine for inclusion in the global project.
