Underground Palestine IV: Gaza

The studio posits heritage sites as sites of urban struggle and those that are weaponized for settler colonialism and occupation. Archaeological sites, and sites of cultural heritage, are generally understood as frozen in a moment of ruination. By highlighting those spaces as living and breathing today, and questioning the value systems and assumed linear time embedded in the classics and heritage discourse, the studio embraces a delinear and decolonized methodology in order to contest their prevalent instrumentalisation.

This year, the studio case study is the Gaza Strip in Palestine under an unfolding genocide.

Linear time assumes the deeper you dig, the older the strata, and usually the more valuable, especially when the extraction of objects from these sites align with nation-building agendas. Questioning this value system can happen in two ways; by restructuring, reshuffling, and confusing the strata itself by denying access; and by centring silenced voices on the surface in the present while imagining a liberated future.

Maps were a prerequisite for archaeological research, and a settler-colonial extractive entrypoint for colonisation. The studio aims to create new cartographic imaginaries through critical cartography and deep mapping in a bid to shift the politics of cartography.

The critical cartography and deep mapping methods undertaken in the studio will operate in two ways: The first, is through production of content and material that allows openings for intervention. The media used will include sonic, visual, textual, moving image, and object intervention.

Workshops for each medium will be provided throughout the first two terms to allow for experimentation with material and process. Two, the content will be presented in physical and digital platforms to allow the collected content to grow with the long-term vision of the studio. The interventions embrace science and spirit simultaneously and are encouraged to harness potential forms of urban resistances and alternative forms of being towards a counter-hegemonic collective repair and liberation from below.

The studio will work towards collective knowledge building and embrace a collective mode of operating. The studio work will engage collaborations in physical and virtual platforms where the output of those collaborations is to be used towards a long term plan. This long-term vision sets forth methods for making visible the manipulation and erasure of the ground (above and below) for political gain and to design despite these manipulations an optimistic future.

Gaza, one of the world’s oldest cities, has been a key geographical and cultural site for millennia. Its strategic location along the Mediterranean coast has made it an epicentre of ancient trade routes, bringing with it a rich layering of architectural heritage, from Canaanite civilizations to Byzantine churches and Islamic mosques. The city’s complex historical narrative is embedded in its architecture, with archaeological sites representing a wide spectrum of cultural influences and epochs. This tangible heritage includes structures like the Great Omari Mosque and the remains of the Anthedon harbour, both of which serve as physical remnants of Gaza’s integral role in regional history.

The weaponisation of heritage in Gaza reflects the broader dynamics of settler colonialism and occupation. Since 1948, the systematic destruction of cultural and historical sites has accompanied territorial aggression, aiming to erase Palestinian identity and history. These acts are not only attacks on the built environment but also on the collective memory and identity of the Palestinian people. The siege and repeated bombardment of Gaza have turned sites of cultural significance into battlegrounds, where the physical destruction of mosques, libraries, and museums becomes a means of erasing the deep-rooted connection between the Palestinian people and their land.

In the current genocide unfolding in Gaza, architectural heritage becomes a poignant symbol of both resilience and erasure. As the people of Gaza endure systematic displacement and violence, the remnants of their historical sites stand as silent witnesses to ongoing atrocities. The destruction of these sites highlights a continuity of violence that extends beyond the immediate present, linking past colonial projects to modern genocidal strategies. Gaza’s architectural landscape is thus a living archive of survival and oppression, reflecting the struggle of its people to maintain their identity in the face of systemic erasure.

The studio strives for a truly collective methodology where students will partner with specific NGOs and individuals in Palestine by working directly with them to produce work that counteracts the practices of oppression on the ground. The methodology of the studio therefore strives to not replicate the extractive practices inherent to archaeology and approaches the Palestinian community with true partnership through a process that is not transactional but mutually beneficial – centring Palestinian claims for land. In addition to collaborations with constituents in Palestine, the methodology embraces collaborations with multiple experts in their field that are situated at the RCA as well as those that are part of a wider network. This can include individuals and groups working in film, music, model making, casting, ceramics, glassblowing.

The entrypoint for the studio is through the lens of critical cartography and deep mapping that aims to contextualise the history of colonial mapping practices, and approach these new cartographic imaginaries as a form of evidence and decolonising interventions.

Term I

Building a Living Archive

1. Cultivate web of relationships with constituents, both individual, collective, human and nonhuman;
2. Collect witness accounts and other sonic and visual data as a form of evidence;
3. Challenge the weaponisation of the sites by identifying possible nodes of intervention.

In the first term, the studio is to focus on capturing lines of flight, moments of rupture, and to identify possible sites of intervention that can invent new space-times for the ground. Initially, the studio will cultivate a web of relationships and cross-pollination between disciplines, humans, and nonhuman constituents that will be negotiated through forms of care, kinship, and true collaboration. These will include archaeologists, rocks, farmers, plants, anthropologists, artefacts, musicians, sound artists, sounds, business owners, footballers, and storytellers.

Cultivating Coalitions & Collecting Evidence

The studio will then challenge the weaponisation of archaeological sites as battlegrounds for colonisation and occupation in Palestine today in close partnership with those constituents by identifying potential sites for intervention. This evidentiary collection will be harnessed virtually and designed to be in constant progression on a living and breathing website dedicated to the studio. The website will be launched at the end of the first term and will continue to grow through the studio’s progression over the years to uplift the knowledge production over each year.

Possible Evidence:

Surface traces of manipulation and dispossession including colonial archives, CCTV footage, iPhone footage, oral histories, physical records, sonic accounts, zoning laws and policies, GIS mapping, cartographic and surveillance data, Geomolg analysis.

Term II

Designing Beyond Urban Prosthetics

In the second term, the studio will organise with constituents by producing interventions that move beyond architectural prosthetics, or quick repairs, bringing together modes of production as a form of political praxis that bypass the prosthetics of the state, and seek to suggest an alternative space of solidarity and other potential imaginary possibilities. The interventions can begin through multiple experiments of media and techniques, with sonic, visual, and textual interventions all being considered as valid forms of production. Examples of deep mapping interventions can include evocative objects, time capsules, revolutionary films, sonic accounts, and speculative textual works. The site-based research studio contributes to urban practice through an earth-based methodology that centres experimental intervention as a powerful tool in imagining a decolonised and liberated urban landscape. This term will help prepare for the IRP.

Term III

Independent Research Project

Propositions

In the last term of the year, building on the concepts developed in Term II, students will develop further their individual proposals for speculative interventions which bring together innovative social and spatial design and pay particular attention to articulating novel forms of visual representation. The student projects, which can be either individual or group, will respond to the question: what alternative urban futures can we generate through the production of radical interventions, or object, image, sound, and textual works?

After the completion of each year, the studio will consolidate the evidence produced on the studio website that communicates the work internally with the institution as well as the outside world. After the 4th year, the studio will gather a collective book and exhibition in addition to the website to disseminate the work undertaken - documenting the production and interventions from each year.

By the end of each year the studio cohorts should aim to answer the following questions:

Term I: What are ways in which we can harness data to intervene in the weaponisation of these sites?

Term II : What alternative urban futures can we generate through the production of radical interventions, or object, image, and sound, and textual works?

Term III: Define your own questions!

Underground Palestine is led by Dima Srouji with Tima Rabbat.