The symposium Palestinian Performing Arts and the Creation of Post-memory, supported by the Susan Manning Workshop Fund, successfully took place from 10am-5pm on 13 May 2024. Forty members of the public attended the event throughout the day, including students, staff and performing arts industry professionals.
IASH Affiliate Dr Farah Aboubakr and IASH Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Farah Saleh delivered the opening remarks, giving some context on the symposium and its intention to decolonise the term “post-memory”, since colonisation and its memory are ongoing in Palestine, not a concluded event, and propose the term “Sumud” (meaning steadfastness), in relation to the role of Palestinian performing arts. In the first session, Dr Saleh gave her talk “PAST-inuous: Embodied collective memory as decolonial gesture” and screened the dance video PAST-inuous. This was followed by Dr Aboubakr ‘s talk “Activated Memories: Homeland and Diaspora” along with a Dabkeh performance by dancers Jamal Bajali and Nadia Khattab, and a Q&A with the public.
In the following sessions, artist and archivist Mo’min Swaitat gave a lecture performance and listening session “Embodied Histories: Storytelling, Listening and Remembering as Resistance”; then singer and musicologist Reem Kelani gave a talk and listening session, titled “Homeland, a Song”. Finally, the musician and researcher Dr Louis Brehony gave the talk “Palestinian Music and Resistance and Sumud: Singing Back to Genocide and Liquidation”. The last three sessions were followed by a Q&A with the public.
Academic & Non- Academic Outputs
• The symposium fed into Dr Aboubakr’s findings and data analysis while promoting a needed academic dissemination of her ongoing research project on “Palestinian Transgressive Voices: Cultural Memory and Performative Arts in the Diaspora and Palestine”. In this regard, and as part of her field work, follow up interviews will take place with Dr Saleh, Reem Kelani and Mo’min Swaitat.
• It offered a platform for both artists and academics in the field to share space and have important discussions on the know-how, consolidating the interconnectedness of theory and practice in different temporal and spatial spheres.
• It promoted knowledge exchange among academics and artists, particularly that there is a gap in analysing Palestinian performing arts in relation to cultural, identity and memory studies.
• Potential collaboration between artist and archivist Mo’min Swaitat, and Dr Aboubakr on further exploring the archival multitude of Palestinian music.
• The symposium was timely to raise awareness among the public on the role of performing arts as a form of cultural resistance against colonial discourse.
• The symposium came as part of series of efforts to decolonise the curriculum at the University of Edinburgh, namely Dr Farah Saleh’s IASH postdoctoral project on “Decolonial Embodied Practices at the University” and Dr Farah Aboubakr’s research project as mentioned above; and fed into her initiative on organising the Research Seminar Series on ‘Decolonising the Curriculum in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies’ (2024) at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.
• Given the ongoing war on Gaza, the symposium was important in providing greater and better understanding among the public on Palestine, while also undoing a number of colonial misconceptions regarding the region.
Image credit: Acrobatics practice in Rafah (March 2024) © Free Gaza Circus Center