What the Olive Branch Has Seen
Curated by Àngels Miralda
Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
–Federico García Lorca
This series of films departs from a conversation on landscape in the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Mahmoud Darwish. It posits landscape as a place of connection as well as a reflection on memory, distance, and exile. The figure of the olive tree connects a wide Mediterranean region through millennia of parallel agricultural ritual and ecological coexistence. The olive branch is known as a symbol of peace while residing in a region that has been cut apart and divided.
Trees are a living archive of the land. Olive trees can live up to thousands of years, making them a stable and familiar element for generations of their neighbours. The olive branch is a symbol of peace whose stable grip has been wrested from the soil. They are also targets in the ongoing catastrophe in Palestine that is impossible not to speak of.
An eternal conversation blows through the olive branches of doubled landscapes.[1] Across the knobbed bark of grandmother’s hands, leaves like sharp fingers shading a ripening fruit. Every September, bitter and hard, little black diamonds melt into gold. With a lifespan of thousands of years – trees have drunk centuries of carefully watered soil. Planted and tended by ancestors whose names we no longer remember, but who still play with your hair in the autumn breeze. A symbol of peace – they say – and one who cannot move, cannot be displaced, cannot but stand still and be.
The village where my great-grandfather was born is in the hills that overlook Cartagena, where the sweetest oranges fall into the salted sea. Out of the yellow earth scorched by sun and the fine Saharan sand; almonds, carob, strawberry, grape, fig, and olive. Yellow summers, and green winters spark a power of recognition, presence, and distance.
More than 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted by Israeli forces following the massacres and forced expulsion of the Palestinian people since 1948.[2] It is said that Al-Badawi, an olive tree that lives near Bethlehem, is 4,000 years old.[3] These trees have become a symbol of the peace and resistance of the Palestinian people who risk continuous attacks from illegal settlers in order to save their harvests. Time does not heal but increases the intensity of destruction including the severity of the events in 2023.[4] The trees are an extension of the land and its people, they anchor communities to soil, making them physical and symbolic targets for annihilation. Farmers regularly find that their trees have been uprooted, burned, stolen, or vandalised.[5]
Environmental degradation is not a symptom, but policy.[6] The importation of foreign pine trees by the Israeli state caused acidification of the soil. In turn, desertification took hold in an already arid region. The walls built to stop human movement also restrict the natural migration paths of animals who carry pollen and seeds, now cut off from access to their feeding grounds.[7] We also form part of a symbiotic network of soil, seeds, and livestock in which artificial political boundaries play no part. Jumana Manna’s film Foragers follows the Palestinian elders who are patrolled, controlled, and stopped from clipping wild plants, a continuous practice of cohabitation of territory since Neolithic times that promotes the healthy growth of edible and medicinal plant life.[8]
Some of the state-sanctioned uprooting has been done for the purpose of building new roads to connect illegal settlements.[9] These roads serve to cut access further between villages as well as farmers from their orchards. New impositions of farming methods include monoculture techniques rather than a mixture of orchards, foraging, and mixed crops that work in tandem with the soil for renewal of nutrients and disease-resistance.[10] Shells and bombs that do not hit infrastructure still lead to long-term consequences for life in affected areas. It is unknown what contaminants and chemicals are inside of Israeli and American weapons, some compounds such as white phosphorus produce multi-front forest fires and seep into groundwater.[11]
A motor starts and the bus rumbles down the street, final destination Hebron Valley – a working-class district overlooking the city of Barcelona. Further than nomenclature, parallels in our landscapes have always been found. In 1963 Pier Paolo Pasolini visited Palestine with the hope of finding filming locations for Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (1964). The film was ultimately filmed in Southern Italy – a parallel landscape with geological and aesthetic similitude. Pasolini lamented that the Israeli settlements resembled the new suburbs of Rome, while the occupation marked the Palestinians with misery.[12] No matter the angle of the camera, it was unable to avoid scenes that testified to the militarised borders and omnipresence of colonial capitalism.[13]
One of the recurring references in the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish is Federico García Lorca.[14] Both poets wrote of the deep bonds between people and their landscapes while speaking of injustice and political repression. Lorca actively fought against the historical erasure of Arabs in the Iberian peninsula through references to the prose of Andalusi authors.[15] Darwish, a refugee since childhood, yearned for Al-Birwa – his place of birth that existed only in his memory.
In opposition to Pasolini’s “heretical orientalism”[16] it is possible to find Palestine under the shade of an olive tree as a symbol calling out for anti-colonial internationalism. Rather than searching for landscapes untouched by the scars of omnipresent occupation, it is possible to feel the trees shake due to distant vibrations and the ghosts of checkpoints under the sun’s rays. This landscape belongs to all seeds that drift in the wind and thrive in this climate, a shared recollection of familiarity summoned by closed eyes imagining something called home. Images, archives, and histories emerge from the interconnected region between Central Asia, Southern Europe, and North Africa. History flows outside of pacted borders and artificial segregations, whose hands are busy with the same action of picking, gathering, pickling, pressing.
If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them
Their oil would become tears.
-Mahmoud Darwish
Notes:
[1] Thank you to my neighbour Aida Qasim for the conversation about Darwish and Lorca.
[2] Raja Shehadeh, “The Uprooting of Life in Gaza and the West Bank,” 26 October 2023. The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-uprooting-of-life-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank#:~:text=Since%201967%2C%20more%20than%20eight,Many%20were%20centuries%20old.)
[3] Noor Ibrahim, “Olive Groves in the West Bank Have Become a Battleground. That’s Why Volunteers Come From Around the World to Help at Harvest Time” Time, 1 November 2019. (https://time.com/5714146/olive-harvest-west-bank/)
[4] Bárbara Ayuso, “Los últimos palestinos que resisten en el olivar: “Los colonos tratan de quitarnos la comida sobre la mesa”” 17 November 2023. (https://elpais.com/internacional/2023-11-17/los-ultimos-palestinos-que-resisten-en-el-olivar-los-colonos-tratan-de-quitarnos-la-comida-sobre-la-mesa.html)
[5] Amira Hass, “5,000 Trees Vandalized in Palestinian West Bank Villages in Less Than Five Months” Haaretz, 10 May 2023. (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-10/ty-article/.premium/5-000-trees-vandalized-in-palestinian-west-bank-villages-in-less-than-five-months/00000188-00b8-de69-a3ac-befb50690000)
[6] Mazin B. Qumsiyeh and Mohammed A. Abusarhan, “An Environmental Nakba: The Palestinian Environment Under Israeli Colonization”, Science Under Occupation, Volume 23. Spring 2020. (https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol23-1/an-environmental-nakba-the-palestinian-environment-under-israeli-colonization/)
[7] Vanessa O’Brien, “Animal migration,” 11 February 2012. (https://www.dw.com/en/israeli-army-opens-west-bank-barrier-for-animals/a-16351700)
[8] Jumana Manna, “Where Nature Ends and Settlement Begins” E-Flux Journal, November 2020. (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/113/360006/where-nature-ends-and-settlements-begin/)
[9] The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, “Some 1,000 Olive Trees Uprooted to Build Bypass Road on Azzun Village Land” 5 February 2017. (https://www.btselem.org/20170205_nabi_elyas_bypass_road_land_confiscation#full)
[10] Carolina S. Pedrazzi, “In the West Bank, Israeli Settlers are Burning Palestinians’ Olive Trees” Jacobin. 11 October 2023. (https://jacobin.com/2023/11/west-bank-israeli-settlers-palestinian-olive-trees-violence-occupation)
[11] Middle East Monitor, “Report on Long-term Effects of Israeli White Phosphorous,” 20 February 2014. (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20140220-report-on-long-term-effects-of-israeli-white-phosphorus/)
[12] SouthSouth, “Pasolini Filming Palestine,” 15 April 2010. (https://southissouth.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/pasolini-filming-palestine/)
[13] “The shots of Jerusalem surrounded by barbed wire are particularly compelling. As Pasolini’s voiceover expresses awe at the natural beauty of these surroundings, the camerawork displays the indignities of everyday life for Palestinian inhabitants. As seen above, the camera zooms in and out of a shot of birds perched on top of barbed wire, in and out and in and out, a syntactical repetition of a sublime and sordid reality.” ibid.
[14] Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, it was Paradise, University of California Press. 2003. (pg. Xvi Introduction) The first citation of the book are Lorca ‘s phrases “pero yo ya no soy yo / ni mi casa es ya mi casa).
[15] “In the Shadow of Lorca” (https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/shadow-lorca) Including 12th century poet Ibn Khafaja’s poetry about the fall of Valencia.
[16] Luca Caminati, “Orientalismo eretico: Pier Paolo Pasolini e il cinema del Terzo Mondo” Bruno Mondadori. 2007.
![](https://artviewer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ELECTRICAL_GAZA_1.43.1.jpg)
August 1 – 29, 2024
Rosalind Nashashibi
Electrical Gaza (2015)
16mm film, animation, sound, color 17’53 min
In Rosalind Nashashibi’s Electrical Gaza (2015), scenes of everyday life in the Gaza strip become mythical encounters with this isolated and besieged fulcrum of the Mediterranean. Filmed on analogue 16mm film, the grain of the surface and interspersed moments of animation create a dreamy atmosphere of respite from the violence typically associated with this enclosed landscape. It was filmed in the months preceding the Israeli ‘Operation Protective Edge’ that bombarded the strip in July and August 2014, this window of time allowed for an image of life in Gaza to be created that counters the mediated images of rubble and destruction with the familiarity of a community operating against all odds. The film is about access and observation of a place that few can get permission to enter or exit, one that became a place of myth after Israel’s military encirclement of the territory in 2007.[1]
If Gaza is typically associated with violence, bombardments, and buildings reduced to rubble, Nashashibi’s film captures the strip in a relative caesura of violence and dignifies actions of everyday life.[2] Although the film avoids political slogans or taking an obvious stance, it elevates the mundane into a realm of active significance. In Gaza, preparing a falafel or having a conversation with friends in a living room is always political, the existence of life in relative calm is a testament to the history that has forced its population to live under a siege for well over a decade. Nashashibi paints a portrait of a society full of joy amid its prohibition.
The analogue film is interspersed with moments of cartoon-drawn animation of the same cityscapes and interiors as captured by the 16mm film. These illustrated scenes recall experiences of childhood,[3] shared narratives and references made by children who have been the main victims of the continuing brutalities carried out by the IDF against the strip. These drawn intrusions pierce the narrative with the intentional construction of composition and frame – making the viewer conscious of Nashashibi’s observational and artistic intent. One of the frames captures the Rafah border crossing that appears like an inaccessible futuristic portal protecting a threshold to another world. Every frame is a way of seeing that follows the tradition of filmmakers influenced by Renaissance masters.[4] In combination with children’s chants, calls to prayer, and spontaneous choirs are the sharp whistles of Hamas brigades marching through downtown city streets to jolt us out of calm reveries. Gaza’s architecture and its people collaborate to create extraordinary visuals of the quotidian – an electrifying appeal for human dignity.
Rosalind Nashashibi (1973, London, UK) is a London based artist of Northern Irish and Palestinian descent. She received her BA in Painting from Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield (UK) and her MFA at Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (UK). In 2020, Nashashibi was artist in residence at the National Gallery in London (UK). She was a Turner Prize nominee in 2017, and represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennale. Her work has been included in Documenta 14, The 14th Shanghai Biennale, Manifesta 7, The Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah 10. Nashashibi received a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2014 and Becks Futures Award in 2003. Her solo exhibitions include; Nottingham Contemporary (UK); Musée Art Contemporain Carré d’Art, Nîmes (FR), Radvila Palace Museum of Art for CAC, Vilnius (LT), Vienna Secession, (A), Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, (NL), The High Line, New York, (US); The Art Institute of Chicago, (US); and ICA, London (UK).
Àngels Miralda (1990) is an independent writer and curator. Her recent exhibitions have taken place at Something Else III (Cairo Biennale); Garage Art Space (Nicosia); Radius CCA (Delft), P////AKT (Amsterdam), Tallinn Art Hall (Estonia), MGLC – International Centre for Graphic Arts (Ljubljana), De Appel (Amsterdam), Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic (Municipal Gallery of Zagreb), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chile (Santiago), Museu de Angra do Heroísmo (Terceira – Azores), and the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga). Miralda wrote for Artforum from 2019-2023 and regularly publishes with Terremoto (Mexico City), A*Desk (Barcelona), Arts of the Working Class (Berlin), and is editor-in-chief of Collecteurs (New York).
Nashashibi’s films have been featured in film festivals and screenings worldwide over the last twenty years including Edinburgh Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, Festival Ciné Palestine, Pesaro Film Festival and others.
[1]Unicef, “The humanitarian impact of 15 years of blockade” June 2022. https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022
[2] “Nashashibi’s is an observation that dignifies those on screen, and specifically Palestinian or Arab ‘Others’ with a wider spectrum of life experiences than that of the ‘wretched,’ oppressed, subordinate to white or European privilege.” Minou Norouzi, “On Discomfort & Empathy in Rosalind Nashashibi’s Electrical Gaza (2015)” October 5 2023.
https://maifeminism.com/on-discomfort-and-empathy-in-rosalind-nashashibis-electrical-gaza-2015/
[3] Annie Godfrey Larmon, “Rosalind Nashashibi” Artforum, https://www.artforum.com/events/rosalind-nashashibi-6-224176/
[4] T.J. Clark introduction to “Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting” Verso Books. London. 2023.