Nida Sinnokrot: Palestine Is Not a Garden

Description

On the potential for practice-based research to decolonize the social, political, economic, and agricultural structures that govern the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The ideal of the garden conjures conflicting imaginaries of security and abundance, disobedience and control, inside and outside, and the specters of exile and return. These binaries have ontologically distinguished the garden from untamed wilderness. The ideal of the garden in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) delineates a further series of genealogies that range from the Ottoman-era and subsequent British privatization of commonly-owned land and the commons more broadly. Presenting research and material relating to an evolving series of projects, including the agriculture research platform Sakiya, this volume explores how Nida Sinnokrot's practice, operating as it does through interdisciplinary research methods, agricultural and architectural projects, and collaborative processes, reveals and anticipates a potential future for the Palestinian garden.

Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa within the Faculty of Arts, Design, and Media at Birmingham City University. He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text and Digital War, and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press).