Time for a five minute break

Wherever you are in the world, when you stop for morning tea this morning, why not take 5 minutes to enjoy both the music and artist Paula Cox's magical expressive line in her video:

"celebrating the life of Palestinian women"

That's what we'll be doing during our tea break :)

"Her skin has the memory of trees" - Karl Schembri at the Byron Bay Writers Festival

Palestine Costume Archive Director Jeni reports from the Byron Bay Writers Festival:

It was an honour to meet Karl Schembri at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival, a small but lovely writers festival that's held in the very popular seaside town Byron Bay in northern NSW, Australia.  A few years ago my daughter Kadek Purnami, who is part of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival team, was a guest of the Byron Bay festival.   She took me along. Now, much to the amusement of other Palestine Costume Archive staff,  I'm addicted to writers festivals :)

I attended Karl's panel "Discomfort zone: how extreme environments affect creativity" on Friday afternoon (his other panels are listed on his blog here). 

Karl is a Maltese writer and journalist.  His investigative journalism is spot on - see his Wiki entry for details / press awards etc.  Being a museum curator / interested in lost cultural heritage I first encountered his name in 2005 when his investigations led to the clampdown on the trading of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts from Iraq on eBay via Malta (see this link).  He has had articles in The Sunday Telegraph and Guardian Weekly, amongst many others, and has reported extensively from Libya, Kosovo, Albania, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  He also works for OXFAM in Gaza.

He has written two novels and is the co-author / co-editor of several poetry anthologies, including an anthology of poems in solidarity with Palestinians published during the 22-day war on Gaza.  He has just published another book of poetry "Remember the future" in English, published by Writing Knights Press.  In a strange twist of synchronicity in terms of my different worlds coming together, he thanks the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in his acknowledgements.  Perhaps they helped with publishing, I must ask Kadek.  I know he attended as a guest last year - Juli from the Juli in Bali blog posted that at last year's Ubud festival "Karl Schembri had the best line, ‘Writers are the only people who can be someone else without needing a psychiatrist’"!.

"Remember the future" was available for sale via the Collins Book stall at the festival, albeit at an appalling price.  You can purchase it online for $6, which is much better than the $15 we paid. However we wanted a copy for the Archive's library and wanted to ask Karl to sign it. So the $15 was a bargain, really :)

It was certainly very interesting to hear him speak of life in Gaza, a place which is carved deeply into  my heart.  Karl described the constant drones - which of course are not part of my Gaza reality - as sounding "like a factory over your head".   Dr Jean (Calder at the Palestine Red Cresecent Society) has also discussed the drones.   Karl writes evocatively of them in his poem "Gaza":

"Drones watching on us
sending back images
to faraway aliens
capturing our daily dance
rituals of hope and misery
ruins of love and war
donkey-carting joy and sadness
the bitter lemons and the sweetest fried cakes
the olives, the grapes and the limbs
the God-sent births and God-taken martyrs..."

You can read the rest here.

Karl also read "The Buffer zone", which resonated deeply for me. Here's the first stanza of the Arabic version, which you'll find on his blog here.

تلك السيدة المسنة

شهدت ما يكفي من شروق الشمس

ليجعد وجه الأرض ..

بشرتها تحتفظ بذاكرة الأشجار

حينما كانت المزارع مفتوحةً  ..

 كانت تخطو على  أرض الوطن

 بقدميها العاريتين  ..

توازن برأسها جرار الحليب الطازج  ..

وترعى الماشية  التي كانت حيةً

عند حدود الأفق

You'll find the English version here. Here's just a little:

"The old woman has seen
enough sunrises to wrinkle the earth
her skin has the memory of trees
her head used to balance
jars of fresh milk
when the fields were still open
when her feet treaded bare
on homely land
and the livestock were still alive
grazing on the horizon..."

Do read the rest.  When Karl read this aloud at the festival, I scribbled down that line "her skin has the memory of trees".   It just went right through me. He certainly has a wonderful way with words, in any language.  I knew exactly what he meant, in regard to older Palestinian women.   But for me his words went even deeper and immediately evoked Palestinian cultural memories of how older women once wore the saru (cypress tree) design embroidered on their dresses, and more recently how the olive tree has become a symbol of nationalism, as in the intifada embroidery below, in the Palestine Costume Archive's collection.

I met up with Karl in the authors' book signing tent after his panel, and we talked a little about Gaza, and about the our own work, while he signed the Archive's library copy of "Remember the future".

I loved that he wrote in the book:

"to Jenny,
to keep remembering the future
by curating the past"

I'm sure that will keep all of us at the Palestine Costume Archive inspired. Perhaps we can invite Karl to morning tea so he can read us some more poetry :)

I attended another session at the Byron Bay Writers Festival after Karl's. When I left the festival an hour or so later, I stopped to take photos of this glorious sunset. I wanted a photo to send to friends and colleagues in Gaza, so that when I wrote this post they'd know how often they are in my thoughts.

References you might find of interest:

• Karl Schembri - Wiki
• Karl Schembri - Journey to Gaza blog
• Karl Schembri on Facebook
• Karl Schembri - Hopskotch in the rain blog
• Writing Knights Press - "Remember the future"

People we'd like to invite to morning tea: Iain Banks

Iain Banks
Source: courtesy The Independent

Here on the Palestine Costume Archive's staff blog we have a post category for "people we'd like to invite for morning tea". These are people we admire, who'd we'd like to spend some time with. From queens to celebrity chefs, over the years we've invited lots of people to take us up on our invite and come join us for our tea break, we even promise to share some home made cakes.  Today we'd like to invite Iain Banks.

As we wrote on Facebook today:

"We were sorry to hear the attached news about Iain Banks, an author who's science fiction novels have brought great joy to our lives. He is also one of the good guys politically, calling in 2010 for a cultural and educational boycott on Israel following its raid on a flotilla of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. Banks wrote in a letter to the Guardian newspaper that he had instructed his agent to turn down any further book translation deals with Israeli publishers: 

"Appeals to reason, international law, U.N. resolutions and simple human decency mean — it is now obvious — nothing to Israel... I would urge all writers, artists and others in the creative arts, as well as those academics engaging in joint educational projects with Israeli institutions, to consider doing everything they can to convince Israel of its moral degradation and ethical isolation, preferably by simply having nothing more to do with this outlaw state" 

"See his Wiki page for more details. We send our love and prayers to Iain and his family, and thank him again for his political courage and for writing magical novels that challenged and delighted us :)"

Now we know Mr Banks is no longer taking on any public commitments, but that doesn't mean we still can't send out an invite for him to join us for a cyber cuppa in our little corner of the interweb.  And if he can't attend, well no matter, we'll still raise a toast to him. Because his science fiction books especially have brought great joy to our lives over many years, including during some dark moments after the last Gaza trip.  We'd like to reassure him that we will share The Culture with each new friend and new generation. And to promise him that Wiki's List of Culture ships/ names will never stop making us smile.

Iain Banks: thank you :)

For more info:

• An article that explains why Iain Banks tore up his passport :)
• Iain Banks Wiki page
• The Culture - Wiki page
• Full April 2013 statement by Iain Banks
• Iain Banks - Small step towards a boycott of Israel

Why we'd like to invite Leunig to morning tea at the Archive :)

Sharing a Styrofoam cup of Iraqi tea

We have a label / category on this blog for posts about "people we'd like to invite to morning tea". For this particular post, it's less about who we'd like to invite to morning tea and more about who we'd like to share a Styrofoam cup of Iraqi tea with...

We wanted to share with you the Enemy Kitchen project's latest incarnation as part of Chicago's Smart Museum’s exhibition “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art”. According to Michael Rakowitz's website:

"Enemy Kitchen is an ongoing project begun by Michael Rakowitz in 2004. Collaborating with his Iraqi-Jewish mother, he compiles Baghdadi recipes and teaches them to different public audiences". 

The website lists all the project's many great ways of reaching people, including contact with American veterans of the Iraq War.  Veterans are playing a key note with Enemy Kitchen in 2012. Here's the story from Chicago's Time Out:

"The juxtaposition of veterans and Iraqi food—and the conversation that it could spark—is exactly what artist Michael Rakowitz was counting on when he began to assemble the players for the Enemy Kitchen food truck, which debuts as part of the Smart Museum’s upcoming show “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art,” but will roll on as an actual working food truck thereafter. 

"One of Rakowitz’s key players is Aaron Hughes, an artist and Iraq War vet. Hughes will work the typical service positions on Enemy Kitchen, but he’ll also conduct a performance titled “Tea,” in which each evening at sunset he’ll unfurl an Iraqi prayer rug, fire up a hot plate and begin the time-consuming double-boiler method of traditional Iraqi tea service. When he’s done, he’ll hand passersby cardamom-scented black tea in Styrofoam cups adorned with hand-doodled arabesque flowers. 

“In Guantanamo Bay, the only object detainees are allowed to have in their cell are Styrofoam cups for tea, so they draw all over them,” Hughes says. “They never write anything, they always just draw flowers.” Hughes was a soldier in the Illinois Army National Guard 1244th Transportation Company. He was stationed in Kuwait, and drove supply trucks in and out of Iraq daily. “We’d pull into these bases as the sun was setting, and the third-world nationals that are contracted to essentially be indentured servants to soldiers would roll out their prayer rugs, warm tea and offer it to us,” he remembers. “Every night, I would refuse.” 

“They were from Pakistan or Bangladesh or other third [world] countries and it was ingrained in us that these individuals—we called them hajis just as we did the Iraqis—could not be trusted,” Hughes continues. “Everything was racialized in war.” 

"Hughes returned to Chicago in 2006 and found a similar sentiment here, which prompted him to form the Chicago chapter of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. That same year, Rakowitz was leading a group of New York City high-school kids through an after-school program he dubbed Enemy Kitchen. In the utilitarian kitchen of Manhattan’s Hudson Community Guild Center, Rakowitz shared stories about his grandfather, who was exiled from Iraq in 1946; his mother, who lamented the lack of Iraqi restaurants in New York; and his grandmother, who still waxed poetic over their country’s prized dates. As he spoke, the students formed patties of ground lamb and bulgur for the Rakowitz family recipe for kubbe. Inevitably, talk turned to the war. 

“A few sessions in, this Puerto Rican girl came in and said ‘I’m sick and tired of making this food. This food is nasty and they blow up our soldiers every day and they knocked down the Twin Towers,’ ” Rakowitz recalls. “And then this one kid Hashim, whose family is from the Caribbean, says, ‘No, the Iraqis didn’t knock down the Twin Towers, it was bin Laden,’ while this other kid, whose family is from Mexico, goes, ‘It wasn’t bin Laden, it was our own government.’ So all of a sudden you have this snapshot of everything, from the misinformation out there and mainstream beliefs to conspiracy theory. I really loved them being able to express this, because I didn’t want to do Enemy Kitchen with an art audience standing around saying ‘Oh, I feel like you’…there’s no friction, no dialogue fueled by a certain sense of opposition.” 

"Now living in Chicago, teaching at Northwestern’s Department of Art Theory & Practice, Rakowitz has resurrected Enemy Kitchen as a repurposed ’60s-era ice-cream truck. And while that truck will be staffed by veterans of the Iraq War, the food will be cooked by Jawher Shaer and his two sons, who own and run Milo’s Pita Place in Rogers Park....

"[The] food truck dubbed Enemy Kitchen, serving exclusively Iraqi food and staffed by Iraq War veterans such as Hughes, Alejandro Villatoro, Ash Woolson, Greg Broseus and Crystal Colon, who are very publicly bringing issues to the table. “We were born in Iraq, we do Iraqi food, and we have a lot of respect for the veterans who fought there, so we are happy to be involved in this project, which we find very interesting,” Milad says. “For instance, Mike [Rakowitz] says Aaron [Hughes] makes great Iraqi tea and he will do this at the truck, which to us is surprising that he would have any interest. For us, tea is mandatory, in every house, after every meal. It is our custom. Now, to have an American soldier make us Iraqi tea? I’m dying to have some.”

We wish we were there to share some Iraqi tea, too :) Sadly, most Archive volunteer staff are too far away, but we do have Archive Friends in Chicago who we hope will take note of this post and visit both the exhibition and Enemy Kitchen.  Please, send us some photos!

The Smart Museum writes of “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art”:

"Since the 1930s, numerous artists have used the simple act of sharing food and drink to advance aesthetic goals and to foster critical engagement with the culture of their moment. These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using the meal as a means to shift perceptions and spark encounters that aren't always possible in a fast-moving and segmented society. 

"Feast surveys this practice for the first time, presenting the work of more than thirty artists and artist groups who have transformed the shared meal into a compelling artistic medium. The exhibition examines the history of the artist-orchestrated meal, assessing its roots in early-twentieth century European avant-garde art, its development over the past decades within Western art, and its current global ubiquity. Through a presentation within the Smart Museum and new commissions in public spaces, the exhibition will introduce new artists and contextualize their work in relation to other influential artists, from the Italian Futurists and Gordon Matta-Clark to Marina Abramović and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Feast addresses the radical hospitality embodied by these artists and the social, commercial, and political structures that surround the experience of eating together."

The exhibition runs for another two weeks (it will tour in 2012 and 2014). According to Time Out:

"Enemy Kitchen will debut at 7pm on Wednesday 15 at the Smart Museum of Art (5550 S Greenwood Ave, 773-702-0200) as part of “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art.” Beyond that it will operate on Sundays and Mondays throughout Chicago. Check Twitter (@enemykitchen) for locations and times"

Want to know more?

• Michael Rakowitz's website - Enemy Kitchen
• Enemy Kitchen on Facebook
• Smart Museum
• Smart Museum on Facebook
• “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art”
• Smart Museum's informal research blog about the exhibition
• Time Out article

People We'd Like to Invite to Morning Tea - anyone with Palestine themed bakery items

Source

Late last year Sami Kishawi at Sixteen Minutes to Palestine held a very interesting contest. He posted:

"Earlier this year, I featured a photo of a batch of cupcakes draped in Palestinian flags. It’s time we celebrate Palestine even more! I’ve decided to put together a small contest in which participants must bake, make, or create Palestine-themed sweets. The winner will receive a handcrafted Palestinian flag from the Gaza Strip. It’s a simple prize but because it was put together by the hands of people we admire for their fortitude and strength, the flag carries a great deal of significance. 

"The video ... explains a bit further, but the rules are simple. Design a cupcake or cake, snap a photograph, and send it to smpalestine@gmail.com. The deadline is December 15, 2011, and the winner will be announced the following day. Have fun and I can’t wait to see the final products! A brief suggestion: I urge participants to send the actual cupcakes too, just in case."

We were also very impressed by his judges - he was definitely taking this contest seriously:

"Excitement is high and the judges can’t wait to be impressed. They’ve already provided statements. 

“The children of Gaza broke a Guinness record by flying their colorful kites in the blue skies of Gaza. I envision the same level of enthusiasm from the contest’s participants submitting their colorful Palestinian cupcakes. The difference is that they’re under siege and we’re not. Truly, our imagination should be just as boundless as theirs!” — Anwar Kishawi 

“As someone who has been involved in the global Palestine solidarity movement through public advocacy, education and journalism, and as someone who believes in the redemptive power of baked goods, I am thrilled to merge these two realms together. Freedom for Palestine, and frosting for Palestine cupcakes!” — Nora Barrows-Friedman 

“This cupcake contest is a new way to show love to Palestine through something we all enjoy, cupcakes! We have seen and shown a variety of ideas but not when it comes to food. I’m looking forward to seeing how delicious and Palestine-loving these cupcakes can be. Bring it on!” — Nader K."

Political baking / cooking can be very powerful, especially when Palestinians need to reclaim their own much appropriated cuisine.  One of us even had the Palestinian flag on her wedding cake, which we thought was pretty cool - it was a surprise, but as she agreed later, what could be more perfect?  We'd not thought about combining the cupcake craze with activism.  We knew Sami would get some great responses, and that's exactly what happened. On 21 December Sami posted:

"When I first made the call-out for people to submit Palestine-themed cupcakes and cakes, I wasn’t expecting so many ingenious designs. As promised, here they are, in no particular order. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the winners, click here."

Looking at all the amazing photos of the entries in the contest really made our day. It also immediately put Sami and all the contestants top of our "People We'd Like to Invite to Morning Tea" list. Although sadly they probably think Australia is too far away.

Shortly after we'd had those discussions with Archive staff Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Technology announced via Facebook a "Palestinian themed cup cake contest":

"We're holding a Palestine cupcake and cake contest in the lead up to Israeli Apartheid Week (March 5 to March 9) on Australian campuses. 

"Why a cake contest? Because we all love Palestine and we all love cake. Combine the two together and, well, *melt*. This is a fun contest that celebrates all that is Palestinian.
All you need to do is bake, decorate (with Palestine in mind) and send snapshots over to sjpaus@gmail.com with your name, location/country and a few words. Be creative and original!  We will send out prizes to the winners! 

PUT YOUR APRONS ON AND SPREAD THE WORD! 

You don't have to be Palestinian and you don't have to live in Australia to enter. The best thing about this is that you get to dig into your creation (once you've sent us the pics first!)"

Blog post with video here.  Get inspired and get cooking, everyone :) 

We've not yet asked permission to reproduce any photos from the SMP contest so you'll need to head over to Sami's blog to see everything (we do hope Students for Justice in Palestine asked permission before swiped the photo they used for their "Palestinian themed cup cake contest"). Also if you are not familiar with Sixteen Minutes to Palestine you should check out the site. We think it's great.

• Sixteen Minutes to Palestine
• Put your politics into a pre heated oven
• Palestine and all her bakings
• Cup Cake Contest Winners
• I still can't get over these cupcakes
• Baking political - Gabriel Mathew Schivone
• How to make Fatima Ibrahim's amazing cake, which came second

"There is always a miracle in Cairo"

Wonderful, wonderful article by Robert Fisk in The Independent about the Saddam Hussein forged biography published under his name. Well worth a read - the title of this post is swiped from it :)

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-curious-case-of-the-forged-biography-776775.html

People we'd like to invite to morning tea....

Child's Quilt (prototype design) 1991
Jordan River Designs
Palestine Costume Archive Collection

“Today, at a time when, too often, humanity
is clashing instead of communicating, we need to
promote [a] universal language and indivisible heritage”
Queen Rania

Much delight today when the latest issue of Vanity Fair being admired by staff at morning tea, proved to have Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan on the cover. Annie Leibovitz had taken the photo as part of a series commemorating activists working for Africa. Each of the twenty activists featured on the cover separately - our director had looked through all the copies in Borders to find one featuring the Queen!

Queen Rania was being praised for her work on the board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization Fund and as Eminent Advocate for Children at UNICEF: "The world is failing millions of children, especially in Africa. Lack of access to vaccines means that the world loses over two million children every year. We can save them all. These statistics belong to the children of the developing world, the heartbreak belongs to their parents, but the responsibility belongs to us all."

Definitely. Here at the Archive we know the Queen best in her role of patron of Jordan River Foundation, which she established in 1995. The Foundation is a Jordanian NGO, working at the grassroots level to motivate low-income Jordanian families to participate in income-generating initiatives. Projects like Jordan River Designs, Wadi Al-Rayan and Bani Hamida not only assist women in creating additional sources of income to support their families, but help revive heritage crafts such as embroidery and and weaving. Bani Hamida for example currently involves 1,644 recently settled Bedouin women from 450 families, who produce traditionally made weavings and rugs, while many Palestinian women in refugee camps work for Jordan River Designs.

The photo above shows a quilt in the Archive's collection, embroidered with the Tree of Life motif by refugee Palestinian women employed by Jordan River Designs. Our director visited the project many times after Queen Noor established it in 1987 (before becoming part of Queen Rania's Foundation) and acquired this child's quilt in 1991. Originally she hoped to sell it, to raise funds for the Archive, but then decided it was so special that it should be preserved in the Archive's collection.

Archive staff love that Queen Rania shares a similar background to many Palestinian women in exile. Like many of our generation she knew the pain of a second exile when she lost her home in Kuwait after the Iraq invasion. We admire that she sincerely acknowledges the work of the International Red Cross / Red Crescent movement ("which has helped people recover from devastation and misery, rebuild their futures and carry on with their lives. And has spread compassion around the world...in the midst of tragedy and suffering, over generations of war and peace" British Red Cross fund-raiser), is willing to take on culturally difficult causes (such as her Child Abuse Prevention Project) and shows a willingness to use her celebrity to bring attention to various charities. And somehow she handles all her royal duties AND manages her own small children. We are totally in awe!

So we'd like to invite Queen Rania to come join us for morning tea. Next time she's in the country, lol. We'll promise really nice tea and some great home made munchies. We'd like to talk with her about Palestinian and Jordanian wildflowers, and about the importance of heritage for a people without a country, and share with her some of the Archive's treasures. We'd really love to discuss her views on heritage, which are so central to the Archive's cultural educational mandate ("Queen Rania has said that in order for different cultures to understand each other, they must let one and other into their homes, and see things firsthand" JBTWire) and exchange ideas about traveling exhibitions, publications and other ways to communicate the extraordinary beauty of Palestinian and Jordanian heritage to the world. And then we'd like to talk families and children....

PS: We do stock some lovely embroidered items from Jordan River Designs and it's sister projects, if anyone is looking for some really special gifts!