RAMALLAH, June 19, 2018 (WAFA) - Under the theme of Solidarity, the fourth edition of Qalandiya International art festival kicks off on October 3 with a program of exhibitions, film screenings, performances and talks and walks until October 30, a press release said on Tuesday.
The events will launch in Jerusalem and will take place in several locations including Gaza, Ramallah, Birzeit, Haifa and Majdal Shams in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights in addition to several Palestinian villages with the participation of dozens of artists from Palestine and the world.
A program of collateral events will be announced with several activities taking place in major cities around the world under the same theme including New York, London, Dusseldorf, Beijing and Johannesburg, said the press release.
“By means of discursive engagement events across the entire program will probe the term “solidarity” through different lenses, by opening up for global experiences, yet forging local experimentations and contemporary definitions,” said the press release.
The notion of ‘solidarity’ has been synchronic with the history of the Palestinian struggle against successive colonial structures and regimes, although not always in perfect tandem with it, it said.
In Palestine, the term ‘solidarity’ has been, and still is, a buzzword in the struggle for liberation from consecutive colonial administrations. Its forms and ideological stances have morphed over time and geography, rising and sinking with the tides of change in the form of the struggle for freedom.
“The notion of the shared thoughts, values and objectives that bind us is stirred to re-energize and re-investigate meanings of solidarity and collectivism – values that have allowed Palestinian society to resist and stay alive for decades,” said the event organizers.
Qalandiya International was founded in 2012 as a joint contemporary art event that takes place every two years across Palestinian cities and villages and aims to place Palestine on the world’s cultural map and open up channels for dialogue and exchange, both locally and internationally.
The name ‘Qalandiya’ is associated with the main checkpoint operated by the Israeli military, disconnecting West Bank cities and communities from Jerusalem and beyond. The setting of daily subjugation and humiliation, it represents the oppressive grip of the occupation. Yet ‘Qalandiya’ has other connotations that have been blurred or erased. It recalls the closed and abandoned Jerusalem airport; it is also the site of the Qalandiya refugee camp, and the village of Qalandiya now divided by the separation wall. A meeting place of contradictions, it is now a place, and symbol, of disconnection, isolation, segregation and fragmentation.
M.K.
