NY Culture Fest Breathes Life to a Nation

One could say that the past four years have been the era of reaction. World leaders, especially in the U.S., have invoked fear over introspection, and aggression over justice. No place has felt the burden of this era more than the Middle East, where dreams are constantly re-dreamed by foreign minds.

On September 24, 2004, Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition, will mark the end of this era-or the beginning of the end-with the "Festival of Cultural Resistance," which will bring together dozens of creative minds from Palestine, the U.S. and the Arab Diaspora, to launch a weekend of cultural festivities that will include food, dance, poetry, music and film.

The festival opens on Friday night at 7:00 with an art exhibition titled, "Representation and Misrepresentation," at the Alwan Center for the Arts in downtown New York. (The exhibit will remain on public display until October 3.) Saturday's festivities, titled, "An Evening of Cultural Resistance," feature a Palestinian debke (a traditional dance performance) group, and Palestinian folk music and poetry readings. For the film lovers, Sunday offers an evening-long film festival that will debut the latest Middle Eastern documentaries and short films by Jackie Salloum, Jayce Salloum, Ursula Hawlitschka, Dhana Abourahme and many more.

Al-Awda's decision to hold this event in New York emerged from the Second Annual International Right of Return Convention, which was held last April, also in Manhattan. According to Dean Bardouka, a Syrian-American artist and an Al-Awda organizer, the Palestinian liberation movement should not have to fall into the trap of reactionary politics. "There's a time to demonstrate in the streets, but there's also time to take ownership of your cause. Nothing achieves this more powerfully than artistic expression."

Bardouka knows the trap too well. Last May, he chose not to attend demonstraitions against the annual Salute to Israel Parade, an event that draws thousands of Zionist supporters-including, this year, Donald Trump-to march down Fifth Avenue to commemorate Israel's 1948 "Independence," a campaign that brought massacres and ethnic cleansing to nearly a million Palestinians. "I don't want to seek out a reason to get angry and depressed," Bardouka said. "I can get that from the biased reporting of the New York Times."

Bardouka's instincts served him well. That day, several hundred Palestinian solidarity activists, which included some local Jewish groups, stood on the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, protected behind double-thick police barricades. The protestors chanted justice slogans and waved Palestinian flags, while droves of parade-goers spat in their faces and hurled verbal insults-some of the assailants held signs from the Israeli activist group, Peace Now, while others held posters of falafel sandwiches that read, "Falafel, Israel's National Food."

If New York's tolerance for culture-vulture-nationalism is anything to go by, it is easy to believe that no public issue has been worse represented than Palestine's subjugation to apartheid and colonization. And despite the over-saturation of media coverage since the beginning of the current Intifada, no conflict has been more tainted with bias, even in the current climate of globalization, the occupation of Iraq and struggles against U.S. hegemony in Latin America.

Debated, derided and consigned to the status of "Terrorists" by mainstream pundits, the Palestinian people have long been adept at representing themselves, their culture, identity and struggle for self determination. Yet little of this is seen or heard.

"We are not just freedom fighters and survivors, but we are also an active, living nation," says Al-Awda member Rama Kased, a Palestinian who lives in Brooklyn. "The cultural festival will only affirm the radical notion of our national identity."

According to Conor McGrady, an Irish artist who is helping to organize "Representation and Misrepresentation," the artists in this exhibition call attention "not only to the conditions that the Palestinian people face in their existence and struggles, but also to the importance of visual communication as a means to address the current imbalance in the mainstream media."

McGrady continued: "The exhibition does not claim to impact the imbalance in real terms, but instead highlights the potential of visual art to both serve as an affirmation of identity and culture and to challenge the complacency of accepted notions of 'fact' or 'truth'. The artists in this exhibition not only stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, but raise important questions about the role of the artist, and of culture in general, by challenging assumptions often taken for granted in mainstream discourse."

Al-Awda's Festival of Cultural Resistance marks the 22nd anniversary of the 1982 massacres of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatila in Lebanon. It also marks the fourth anniversary of the current Palestinian Intifada, a liberation movement, which began in September 2000.

For media queries or information about donations, tickets, the venue or directions, please contact Rama Kased or Lamis Deek at 212-946-1458. Conor McGrady can be reached at the same number for details about the art exhibition.