Demos\u2019s interpretive framework, which considers nature and environmental matters as \u201cinextricable from social, political and economic forces,\u201d is crucial for understanding the entirety of the SuperMelon project, especially from the perspective of the foreign audience.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Demos, Decolonizing Nature<\/em>, 7.<\/span> In Western culture, we are exposed to a long tradition of plants being represented as weak, innocent, and completely apolitical, often used to symbolize opposition to violence or war. In traditional Western art history, painting genres related to nature were perceived as less prestigious and not intellectually demanding, and vegetables\u200a\u2014\u200ainconspicuous-looking and considered significantly less sophisticated than ornamental plant species\u200a\u2014\u200awere especially held in low regard.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - The issue of the hierarchy of genres and the marginalization of plant-related topics was discussed by Giovanni Aloi in his \u201cIntroduction: Why Look at Plants?,\u201d in Why Look at Plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art<\/em>, ed. Giovanni Aloi (Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2018), 25.<\/span> As a consequence, generally trivialized vegetation used as a political tool becomes camouflage for the actions performed through it. Intuitively, we do not expect to find politics between the flower or vegetable garden beds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n In Palestine, however, plants are highly politicized and can become yet another means of slow violence\u200a\u2014\u200aviolence that, at first glance, may not even be recognized as such, since it happens without any spectacular outbursts.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - See Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).<\/span> A case of this kind, Israel\u2019s criminalization of foraging for the herbs akkoub and za\u2019atar, was discussed at the Foraging Fireflies festival in a lecture by human rights attorney Rabea Eghbariah, but it also recently reached the broader audience as the topic of Jumana Manna\u2019s film Foragers<\/em> (2022). However, instead of focusing on oppression, Manna subversively put the emphasis on strategies of resistance by portraying how Palestinians continue their foraging practices. By stressing the importance of za\u2019atar in Palestinian traditional cuisine, she presents it as a part of the region\u2019s consistently cultivated identity and cultural heritage. This example shows that paying close attention to art projects engaging with plants can help to destabilize some of the preconceived notions about food production, rurality, vegetation, and art practices related to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is crucial to note that throughout the festival, no tangible objects were created as a result of the artists\u2019 contributions. The artists presented a range of performative, often ephemeral practices, such as walks, that do not contribute to the art market but at the same time are oriented toward usefulness. For example, in hands-on workshops on the medicinal properties of wild plants ran by chef and artist Amanny Ahmad or on various techniques of natural dyeing taught by multimedia artist Lara Salous, the actual production process was passed on to the audience. The artists participating in the festival took on the role of guides who were facilitating encounters and exchanges and sharing knowledge in a horizontal way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The festival\u2019s main events were held at Om Sleiman Farm, located in the village of Bil\u2019in near Ramallah. If you come to Palestine with an interest in topics related to plants or agriculture, this is one of the first places local people recommend visiting. The farm, well known for its location on the top of a hill facing a large settlement and the separation wall, offers a subscription plan for weekly baskets of organic vegetables, alongside training programs and extensive volunteering opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of the over-explored gesture of placing nature in the context of an art institution, the Foraging Fireflies festival drew people out of the city and gave them a chance to try working in the fields. The importance of such work was appreciated in various ways. Farming and food-related practices were not only celebrated as part of a cultural heritage, but also acknowledged as highly dependent upon the labour and knowledge cultivated by women. However, on an even more fundamental level, since one of the main slogans underlying the establishment of the State of Israel was \u201ca land without a people for a people without a land,\u201d the simple act of walking in the landscape is a manifestation of Palestinian presence and thus becomes a gesture of political resistance.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - See Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape<\/em> (London: Profile Books, 2007); and Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek, \u201cThe Faces of Palestinian Resistance,\u201d in Everyday Forms of Resistance<\/em>, exhibition catalogue (Warsaw: Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2021), accessible online.<\/span> Truly, any initiative that allows people to reconnect with the land gains additional significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting with the very first event\u200a\u2014\u200aa foraging walk along the Wadi Al Kalb, a valley leading from Ramallah to the village of Ein Qiniya, where Sakiya\u200a\u2013Art\/Science\/Agriculture is located\u200a\u2014\u200athe current ecological issues were presented in relation to the social and historical context. The knowledge shared during the walk included information about local wild plants and their properties, as well as the history of agricultural practices and urban sprawl threatening the valley\u2019s natural environment. By creating such a constellation of topics in the spirit of Demos\u2019s notion of political ecology, the curators escaped the trap of presenting only a romanticized vision of humans\u2019 connection to land and nature. Instead, Yara and Nader demonstrated that the processes connected to agriculture cannot be studied in isolation. For Demos\u200a\u2014\u200awho positions nature as unavoidably bound up with culture, economy, technology, or law\u200a\u2014\u200athe entry point was designated by the art projects related to environmental issues, whereas SuperMelon started from a reflection on food and agriculture and arrived at a similar cluster of topics, proving how inseparable they are. At the Foraging Fireflies festival, nature was considered to be deeply embedded in the socio-political reality, which in the case of Palestine under Israeli occupation is characterized by severe scarcity of land and basic resources such as water\u200a\u2014\u200asince 1967, Israel has controlled all groundwater sources and infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although grassroots initiatives such as SuperMelon often have independent origins and function outside of white cube gallery spaces, it does not mean that we should not expect cultural institutions to contribute to and encourage these practices. The essential role that institutional support can play in providing the space and resources for practices connected to land and agriculture can be observed in the example of Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research, based in Bethlehem. In parallel with its residencies for visual and sound artists, Dar Jacir has introduced the category of \u201cland resident\u201d and regularly invites people to carry out their projects in its garden, further reinforcing art-agriculture interconnections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Dar Jacir\u2019s inaugurating land residency projects was Urban Farm<\/em> (2019) by artist and permaculturalist Mohammad Saleh. Saleh established a fully functioning vegetable farm modelled on the tradition of victory gardens: urban gardens planted in the United States and the United Kingdom during both World Wars to counteract severe food shortages, later adapted by Palestinians during the First Intifada as an attempt at self-sufficiency. Archival footage presenting Palestinian victory gardens was included in the animated documentary The<\/em> Wanted 18<\/em> (2014) by Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan, which became an inspiration for Saleh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In May 2021, Saleh\u2019s Urban Farm<\/em> was burned to the ground during the Israeli army incursions. Since Dar Jacir is located right below the main street leading to the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the flares, tear gas canisters, and chemicals used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) all too often end up falling into its garden. To regenerate the contaminated soil, Saleh is currently working on a project called Ardawa<\/em> (2022\u2013\u200aongoing) in collaboration with Leila Darwish, a bioremediation expert and the author of Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes<\/em> (2013). Following bioremediation principles, Saleh has initiated a slow, fully natural healing process employing living organisms (bacteria, fungi, and plants) to detoxify the land. If the laboratory tests confirm contamination with heavy metals, total extraction of the pollutants may not be possible. Despite this, it is worth noting that Dar Jacir is open to such explorations. The institution also provided a platform for making knowledge about the healing effects of bioremediation available to the local audience through a series of articles published on its blog in Arabic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Memories of my conversation with Saleh in 2019 came back to me while driving with Yara. She told me that for her, an art practice connected to agriculture needs to reflect the reality of working on the farm. Her approach, maintaining a strong connection between real-life experience and art, resonates with what Saleh described as \u201cart coming out of necessity.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - See excerpts from the interview in the video accompanying the exhibition Everyday Forms of Resistance<\/em>, accessible online.<\/span> In both of their cases, making art provides one of the ways to convey their message and share knowledge\u200a\u2014\u200abut never just for the sake of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As reflected in the various practices presented during the Foraging Fireflies festival, art sprouting in between environmental practice, agriculture, and activism may be difficult to pinpoint and categorize\u200a\u2014\u200achallenging also, due to the trivializing ways in which farming and plants have been represented in the Western canon. However, staying outside of fixed categories becomes a great asset for the projects; it makes it possible to see the bigger picture of various forces intersecting within the political ecology. Perhaps, like wild plants growing between the paving stones, practices closely connected to agriculture have the power to erode stiff patterns of thinking about art. In addition to emerging as a rich domain of art, no longer held in low regard, projects such as these help to discern present and historical agricultural practices as a part of long-lasting cultural heritage. By avoiding the excessive romanticization of nature, they offer an experience that exposes our alienation from the land while simultaneously reminding us about the complex socio-political structures that influence processes of food production. They show that staying firmly on the ground is a necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since this text was written, the situation in Palestine has changed drastically. For that reason, I think it is important to include SuperMelon\u2019s most recent statement describing their goals for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe events of October 7, 2023, were not isolated incidents; they were the result of a seventy-five-year Israeli military occupation of Palestine and a seventeen-year siege on the Gaza Strip. This backdrop magnifies the impact on local initiatives, including SuperMelon\u2019s second edition of the Foraging Fireflies festival, planned for spring 2024, which now hangs in uncertainty. Still, we remain steadfast, with a renewed emphasis on food sovereignty in occupied Palestine. Given recent events and the way global media represents Palestinians, we feel a pressing need to spotlight true Palestinian stories and daily realities, often overshadowed by sensational news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cImages of intense violence momentarily dominate headlines, but they obscure the continuous hardships that Palestinians endure. Their struggle for justice isn\u2019t new; it\u2019s a generational battle. Using food as our narrative medium, we\u2019re dedicated to revealing these long-standing issues, promoting understanding, and driving change. The potential EU funding withdrawal further underlines our commitment to self-reliance, a testament to SuperMelon\u2019s enduring spirit and our community\u2019s pursuit of sustainable autonomy.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Email from SuperMelon to the author from October 30, 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n An art historian based in Brussels, Marta W\u00f3dz works as a PhD researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium), where she is developing her project on the role of plants in contemporary artistic practices aimed at reclaiming histories from below.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"SuperMelon\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/110_DO_Wodz_Foraging-Fireflies_WheatHarvest_FF.jpg\")
Wheat Harvest<\/em>, Saffa, 2023.
Photo: Roba Taleb, courtesy of Foraging Fireflies festival<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"SuperMelon\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/110_DO_Wodz_Foraging-Fireflies_IMG_02.jpg\")
Sakiya’s lead hike<\/em>, Wadi Al Kalb, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of Foraging Fireflies festival<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Mohammad-Saleh\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/110_DO_Wodz_Mohammad-Saleh_Ardawa_7078.jpg\")
Ardawa<\/em>, 2022.
Photo: Emily Jacir, courtesy of the artist & Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research, Bethlehem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Mohammad-Saleh\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/110_DO_Wodz_Mohammad-Saleh_Ardawa_6769.jpg\")
Ardawa<\/em>, 2022.
Photo: Emily Jacir, courtesy of the artist & Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir for Art and Research, Bethlehem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nAddendum<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n