 Hello and thank you CC arts link for assembling us today. I'm Ariel up here And I'm the curator at the Verilis Center research center and public forum for art culture and politics at the new school The Verilis Center for art and politics was launched in 1992 in direct response of the cultural wars in the US Today the assaults on cultural expression are more insidious and more elemental Prompted by political developments here and abroad the center's activities have been organized around a central theme a question if art is politics positing the art itself as a political practice If art is politics is politics art a dance Music if art is politics. What is its political currency? How does it shift and affect the sites practices and participants of political process in ways that traditional forms of political involvement may not Positioned as a political practice. Does it embrace values that transcend party politics? And how does it implicate cultural and educational institutions in this political order? For over two years, we've met examined this provocation through the work of our fellows including Fatima Zaktan from Amala Palestine We've been Privileged the hoster for over four weeks and we're sad to see her go I need to go home. I Believe her. I want to follow her Well, thank you all for having me for this Amazing audience and for arts link and the Vera less centered Today is also emotional for me because I woke up as I do every day. My name is fountain I lived all my life under the Israeli occupation This is the only reality. I know sometimes I hear artists and art operators and curators speaking about living Working under conflict in a conflict zone areas and all these big terms and for me They make no sense because that's the only life I knew and this is the only practice an Environment where I had to practice my work myself and artists Around me, so I woke up in the morning in my comfortable room here at Washington Square Hotel to the news of 25 Palestinians killed in the recent Israeli strikes of Gaza to a demonstrator in Lebanon who was killed He's the third I imagine Amanda Since the beginning of the revolution and to 300 300 youth killed by snipers in peaceful protests in Iraq and of course to the continued Attacks on Syria to two friends being arrested by the CC regime in in Egypt and To the so and of course I can go on and on and talk about Yemen and talk about other parts of the region We said that the world is at a sad place but for me in particular the Middle East is going through a very tough period at this point and We are all as art and art operators are trying to find our ways in In Palestine, it's really funny because until a few years ago wherever I went in any cultural event around the region A conference on culture and arts It was always Palestine at a certain point with the Arab revolutions that started in nine in 2011 the situation changed and Palestine was no longer under the spotlight and this was good and bad This was bad because we kind of left that we were felt left alone in spite of the fact that today Again, I felt that we're not left alone because Palestine was a recurrent theme in the Israeli occupation Throughout the talks even by non-Palestinians, but it was also good because for the first time we were on our own We were not following funders agendas and arts. We did not have to please anyone We did not have to be professional Palestinians as Palestinian artists curators Managers we were forced and I quote-unquote forced to address Narrative that is expected of us Palestinians living under occupation the victims and for the longest time Palestinian artists right even to protest that they wanted to do their own work They wanted also to address the Israeli occupation and the suffering and dispossession of the people but at the same time have the space To relate maybe even address the Palestinian issue from a global and more bigger context for me, I I'm very comfortable when the work with the word curator I'm comfortable because I feel that it has so much power that In decision-making and I have a problem My practice my recent practice I moved from working with elitist artists particularly visual artists in Palestine to working with the city of Ramallah Where I had to work with a wider audience and now to working only on small-scale projects that make direct impact on Communities and give power to communities. I I worry about the concept of being a curator because I don't want to make decisions on behalf of artists or the community anymore. I Started questioning even the language in 2006 when we had the second legislative and presidential elections in Palestine and Surprisingly in spite of all the work that we've been doing as civil society activists on artists Suddenly the majority of the population voted for Hamas the Islamist and that was a very difficult day in Ramallah I remember I was running Sakakini cultural center We had an immediate emergency meeting for artists and Operators as we do all the time in the midst of the political crisis and we wondered what we were doing wrong If we were working so hard and so actively What was the problem and one of the things that we realized is that since the first in Tifada which broke out in 1986 the Palestinian population has not had a Say in the course of the future of Palestine whether on the political level or on the social level or on the cultural level Decisions were made for us and this was It was the time to reflect and see how we can challenge our own practices to try to actually make an impact on ground Because the truth is was is that we were not really trying we were not being very successful making an impact on ground In this contact. I changed the way I am working not only me many Initiatives and artists and operators now you see a lot of initiatives in Palestine that link arc with agriculture and science That goes down to working with communities and giving power to the communities So in this context, I want to talk about three projects Maybe two that I'm working on the first is the reclaim of public space for Palestinians It's a platform that addresses one of our neighborhoods in the city Where it's a it's an it will end with a festival But the idea is to give power back to the people to decide on how they want to see their neighborhoods What kinds of plans they want to see planted in their neighborhoods? What kind of dialogue they want to engage with each other and also with the city and on the governmental level? What kind what do they want to see happening in their public spaces? How do they want to see their? Taxes being spent and so on in addition to this dialogue that will end up in a festival We'll also having a series of discussions among thinkers curators and artists to engage in Discuss new practices that can give back the power to the community The other initiative that I would like to raise and it's it's actually started here in New York City. Ironically It's called Rawa I've been one of the founders of Rawa working with Muhtar. I don't know if Muhtar is still here or he left Rawa is an attempt to democratize funding in Palestine. It's an initiative that was put to as initiated by Muhtar Kokash Muhtar Iran the The art and media Program of the Ford Foundation the Arab region for the longest time and suddenly he realized that it all has to go back To the community. It's not the big money that comes from the outside It is how the community mobilizes from the inside inside to make Change so this initiative through this initiative. We're not following funding trends. We have clusters that work in Gaza in with Palestinians inside Israel and also in the West Bank and in Jerusalem and we Identify for the first time in years our priorities and we decide where the money should go and in what way working with the community Directly So yeah, so this is what I do. I was impressed by Amanda's Presentation today I think change is going to happen and I think that Being a Palestinian Looking at Lebanon is giving us even artists and curators so much hope in the change in the peaceful change and also in the role again that the reclaim of public space and how The entire population not only artists have been presenting themselves and mobilizing. It's very is very important But I think that the region as a whole has very difficult challenges and we should not be blind or over Optimistic, I think it's going at a certain point to get worse before it gets better And I've learned over the years to accept that that's okay. So thank you Question for you. Oh, that's our song and dance. All right, that's a fine Again the most dynamic period I remember from my since my childhood of living under occupation What's the first intifada? Because that's when the community is mobilized. We did homeschooling. We We grew our own vegetables. We did our own activities without any Having to have a higher power and this is the model that through Rawa and Program that we're doing in the neighborhoods that we're trying to in fact bring back to Palestinian life to give back the power to the people