Here in this no-here: Open houses, exhibitions and tours
Qatamon, Jerusalem, May 18-19-20, 2017

The project “Here in This No-Here”, initiated by Zochrot, calls for a contemporary perspective on the relations between the erasure of the Palestinian urban space in Jerusalem’s Qatamon neighborhood in 1948 and the traces it has left in space. Its title is borrowed from “Mural” (Jadariyya, 1999), a poem by Mahmoud Darwish that addresses the space between life in this world and the profundities of death as rebirth through the complex dialogue the poet generates between past and future. This new space, which is formed in the temporal gap between presence and absence, is the project’s main axis of meaning.
The project seeks to reconstruct, map and document the erased historical memory of the Palestinian Qatamon, and reweave relations – both imaginary and concrete – between people, homes, buildings and streets in Jerusalem’s past, present and future. The project’s centerpieces are artistic interventions in private houses in the neighborhood, which will be opened to the public, where absence and presence coexist most poignantly, and where the untold history can turn from absence into presence. The event will also include alternative tours, as well as a symposium concluding the three-day event.

The event marks the 69th anniversary of the Nakba, on May 15, 1948. It is a collaboration of Zochrot and researcher and artist Dr. Dorit Naaman (Queens University, Canada) and her documentary-interactive project on the neighborhood: Jerusalem We Are Here | يا قدس، نحن هنا.

Curators: Debby Farber, Hagit Keysar
Historical research: Ilan Stayer
Tour guides: Dr. Anwar Ben Badis, Dorit Naaman
Artistic consulting: Hadas Zemer Ben-Ari
English translation and language editing: Ami Asher
Arabic translation: Glocal Translations & Language Solutions
Design: Noam Shechter and Ayal Zakin

We thank Alona Baidani-Auerbach and Martin Auerbach, Hassan and Fathiya Abu Dalu, Lee Lorian and Danny Cronberg, and Sylvie Berkowitsch for kindly hosting the exhibitions at their homes. We thank Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman and Gideon Shilo for his assistance in the historical research.

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Open houses exhibitions

Old Qatamon: Live Archive

Dorit Naaman

This exhibition presents the fragments of life: photos, letters, maps, archival documents and films – biographies of absentee homes. Here, in the intimate space of the house in Qatamon neighborhood, past and present collapse into a shared space, where absence becomes presence and this no-here becomes here.

Design: Noam Shechter & Ayal Zakin

Address: 15 Dustai St.

Opening hours: Thursday, May 18, 18:00-21:00; Friday, May 19, 12:00-15:00; Saturday, May 20, 12:00-15:00.

///Qatamon: An Annotated Map///

A virtual vantage point overlooking the layers of Qatamon’s urban history, moving through space and time strata. The visitor is welcome to add commentary notes to the map, to expand and narrow the boundaries of the landscape flattened by the overview, making the hitherto impossible possible, if only for a fleeting moment.

Design and construction: Yonatan Vered, Gil Adam
Mapping and sound: Hagit Keysar, Dorit Naaman
Concept: Hagit Keysar, Debby Farber

Website design: Helios Design Labs

Address: 15 Hildesheimer St.

Opening hours: Thursday, May 18, 18:00-21:00; Friday, May 19, 12:00-15:00; Saturday, May 20, 12:00-15:00.

///The Imagined Qatamon: Channels///

Raffat Hattab

Between the stacked and subtracted layers of the mural and the expansion and disintegration of the sculptured objects of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (سورة الإخلاص), the house walls referred to by Raffat Hattab’s exhibition are present. At the same time, however, it digresses from it, shifts it, opens up a new possibility within it.  

Location: To enter the house on 116 Yavneh St. take the dirt road to the right of the circular street, next to Gonenim Park (signs will be posted on location).

Opening hours: Thursday, May 18, 18:00-21:00; Friday, May 19, 12:00-15:00; Saturday, May 20, 12:00-15:00

*Note: The open houses exhibitions may only be visited during the formal opening hours.

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Here in this no-here: Symposium

Saturday, May 20, 19:00-22:00The symposium seeks to expand the discourse on the Palestinian Qatamon by discussion actions taken in the present and in an imagined and possible future. The evening will feature artists and scholars involved in activism, historical research, city planning, literature and poetry, whose work is directed at recognizing the injustice and rewriting urban, cultural and symbolical space as a condition for redress and for the creation of a shared space, in Jerusalem and beyond.

19:00  Opening statement by Debby Farber, Zochrot

19:15-20:30 Jerusalem, We Are Here: Virtual space as a common archive and re-presentative action: Dr. Dorit Naaman, scholar and artist, Queen’s University, Ontrario, Canada

Respondents:

• Rawan Basharat, Co-Director, Sadaqa-Reut: To hear about Ma’lul Masbati and take action.
• Shmuel Groag, architect and conservation consultant, Bezalel: The Arab city – the roaming archive: The test case of Yaffa’s Jerusalem Blvd. 
• Gish Amit, historian and educator: Looting/return: Qatamon and the Palestinian libraries

Q&A

20:30-20:45 Coffee break

20:45-22:00 The poetry of Qatamon: Arabic’s right of return
In this bilingual, Hebrew-Arabic literature and poetry evening in Qatamon, we will ask whether poetry and literature can provide us with an alternative memory of the past, an alternative hope for the future, and whether Arabic-Hebrew bilingualism can really be our present tense.

Panelists: Sheikha Haliwa, Naama Gersy, Raji Bathish, Neta Weiner, Altayeb Ghanayem, Almog Behar
Moderator: Yoni Mendel

Location: Asher 1 Street, Bakaa, Jerusalem

Note: Due to sits limitation, please make sure to sign up in advacne as sits number is limited: fiestin@gmail.com.

Guided Tours

“Turn left on Rachel St.” – with Dr. Anwar Ben Badis

The tour will start at the Greek Consulate, with a review of the construction of Qatamon interlaced with anecdotes about several of its dignitaries and their houses. We will then walk up Rachel Imenu St. to the house of Abd al-Karim al-Karmi (Abu Salame), where we will talk about poet, read some of his poems and relate his fate in 1948.
Friday, May 19, 15:30-17:30. Meeting point: Greek Consulate, at the corner of Rachel Imenu and Tel Hai streets.
Registration and further details: tours@zochrot.org.

Who heard about Semiramis? – with Dr. Dorit Naaman

Semiramis Hotel on today’s Hahish St. is almost unknown to Israelis, not even those living in Qatamon, but is branded in the consciousness of many Palestinians as the start of the Nakba in Jerusalem. The tour will start at the Saint Simeon Monastery, pass through Semiramis and present four stories about the Nakba and its aftermath in Qatamon, from the point of view of Palestinian women living among us today.
Saturday, May 20, 10:00-11:45. Meeting point: Saint Simeon Park, near the monastery’s entrance gate.
Registration and further details: tours@zochrot.org.

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Notes:
- The open house exhibitions may only be visited during the formal opening hours.
- Please register in advance for the tours, at tours@zochrot.org.
- Please register in advance for the symposium, due to the limited space, at fiestin@gmail.com.

All events are free of charge