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In this panel discussion moderated by Adam HajYahia, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme (Bilna’es), Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung (Decolonial Hacker), Akil Scafe-Smith (RESOLVE Collective), and  Zoé Samudzi come together to speak about insittutional censorship. Taking Germany, the UK, and the US as study cases, the conversation will lay out how large contemporary art institutions have been reproducing state politics of silencing, erasure, and illiberalism when it comes to anti-colonial Palestine organising, black radical traditions, and proletarian struggles, and propose thinking lines through which we can strategise as cultural workers in navigating these violent patterns.

About the speakers

Adam HajYahia is an independent writer, curator, and culture producer from Palestine. Adam’s current work and research focus on images and performativity in the revolutionary context of Palestine and the region, psychoanalysis and capitalism, as well as negative speculation and Marxist economics within contemporary art.

Bilna’es (in the negative) is an adisciplinary platform that seeks to find new models for artists to redistribute resources and support one another in the production and circulation of work. Functioning as an interdisciplinary publishing space with releases ranging from music to video games Bilna’es was initiated by Ruanne Abou-Rahme & Basel Abbas,
Muqata’a, and other anonymous figures as a way to support artistic communities in Palestine and
beyond.

Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung is the founding editor of Decolonial Hacker. He is currently Asymmetry Curatorial Fellow at Whitechapel Gallery and a resident at Delfina Foundation. Eugene was previously part of the curatorial and public programme teams at the Julia Stoschek Foundation and documenta fifteen, respectively. In 2021, he won the International Award for Art Criticism.

RESOLVE Collective is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the UK and across Europe, all of which look toward realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment. They have developed projects, exhibitions and residencies including at Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin; London Design Festival in Brixton; They recently had a solo exhibition at Barbican’s Curve Gallery and have presented shows at, Wellcome Collection, CCA Brighton, De La Warr Pavilion, S1 Art Space; V&A East.

Zoé Samudzi is the Charles E. Scheidt Visiting Assistant Professor of Genocide Studies and Genocide Prevention at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She holds a PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is also a Research Associate with the Center for the Study of Race, Gender & Class (RGC) at the University of Johannesburg. Zoé is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in Art in America, Artforum, Bookforum, The New Inquiry, The Architectural Review, The New Republic, the Funambulist, and other outlets. She is an associate editor with Parapraxis Magazine, a contributing writer at Jewish Currents, and co-author of As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation (AK Press).

Image: Design by Haitham Haddad, Studio Mnjnk.