Palestinian Repairs - e-flux

Editors Nick Axel, Emilio Distretti, Nikolaus Hirsch

Contributors Khaldun Bshara, Rana Barakat, Muneer Elbaz, Dima Srouji, Samir Harb, Emilio Distretti, Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari, Marion Roberts, Cezary M. Bednarski, and more…

In many languages and traditions, “repair” means to find a remedy for what is torn or broken. Yet to speak of repair in the context of Palestine today—after more than two years of genocidal devastation unleashed by Israel in Gaza, and in the shadow of a neocolonial scramble for reconstruction—is to stand before its threshold: to confront its limits, its (im)possibility, suspended between grief and endurance, between what can be restored and what must remain a scar. To ask what is reparable, and what is not, is to ask how to mend destruction and pursue justice; how to reckon with incommensurable loss. It is to ask how life itself might begin again amid the ruins.

Palestinian Repairs is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Emilio Distretti supported by RIWAQ – Centre for Architectural Conservation, Birzeit University Museum, and the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London.

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10 essays

Rebuilding Cultural Heritage

Shatha Safi and Hiba Omari

With the genocidal campaign in Gaza, and the parallel developmentalist plans being drawn up by foreign countries, what does it mean—and what does it take—to do the work of heritage preservation in Palestine today?

A Sacred Ontology of Anti-Heroic Resistance

Husam Abusalem

“Everything in the amputated town reminded me of failed pictures painted in grey by a sick man,” wrote Ghassan Kanafani describing Gaza almost seven decades ago in a fictional letter to his friend in the diaspora.

Earthen Inheritances

Areej Ashhab and Raghad Saqfalhait

Although geographically small, Palestine has a diverse range of soil types due to variations in origin (parent material), climatic, and topographic features.

Reclaiming, Remembering, and Reawakening Gaza’s Scarred Landscape

Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari, Marion Roberts, Cezary M. Bednarski, and Lailac Al-Taie

At a time when global powers openly call for turning Gaza into a blank canvas and redrawing it again, and the spaciocide and systematic erasure of Gaza’s coastal city unfolds, architecture has the potential to challenge the colonial narrative and hierarchy of knowledge production.

The Exhausted

Samir Harb and Emilio Distretti

What constitutes the metric of exhaustion? Where might we locate its ground zero?

The Ghost of the Whole

Dima Srouji

In a recent interview, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian shared a haunting account of a young girl in Gaza who, after witnessing the aftermath of bombardment, begged her cat not to eat her body if she died.

Heritage Under Fire: Rescue Efforts in Gaza’s Old City

Muneer Elbaz

How can a city be rebuilt without erasing its memory? How can the material and immaterial be preserved in a postwar landscape?

Reconsidering Apocalypse: Etel Adnan and the Horizon

Rana Barakat

The sun hangs overhead; we mark the days by her presence and the nights by her absence. She is the maker of myths, but what has the sun become in the age of apocalypse?

Space, Time, and the Re-Making of Gaza

Khaldun Bshara

Colonization reshapes both physical and psychic space. In situations of power asymmetry and profound helplessness, even the smallest acts become significant in restoring meaning to a shattered world.

Editorial

Emilio Distretti and e-flux Architecture

Subject

Palestine, Ruins, Refugees, Architecture

Palestinian Repairs is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and Emilio Distretti supported by RIWAQ – Centre for Architectural Conservation, Birzeit University Museum, and the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London.

Contributors

Shatha Safi and Hiba Omari Rebuilding Cultural Heritage
Husam Abusalem A Sacred Ontology of Anti-Heroic Resistance
Areej Ashhab and Raghad Saqfalhait Earthen Inheritances
Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari, Marion Roberts, Cezary M. Bednarski and Lailac Al-Taie Reclaiming, Remembering, and Reawakening Gaza’s Scarred Landscape
Samir Harb and Emilio Distretti The Exhausted
Dima Srouji The Ghost of the Whole
Muneer Elbaz Heritage Under Fire: Rescue Efforts in Gaza’s Old City
Rana Barakat Reconsidering Apocalypse: Etel Adnan and the Horizon
Khaldun Bshara Space, Time, and the Re-Making of Gaza
Emilio Distretti and e-flux Architecture Editorial

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