I'm on annual leave from my job as a greengrocer this week. Naturally, this means I probably spent about 5-6 hours yesterday working on a piece I've been eager to share on 'Public Diners' in Edinburgh for a while now. So far, this time has been spent mostly cropping images from archived newspaper articles and editing the text, rather than actually writing about the content in the pieces, which is (unpaid), time-consuming and slightly frustrating, but hopefully rewarding and historically significant work!
Yesterday, I also summarised some notes I took from an event I attended at the weekend in Bamff: a workshop on "Rewilding the Archive" led by Theo Panagopoulos, a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker and PhD candidate.
Theo screened two Scottish films from the National Library Scotland, 'Wild Flowers of Palestine' and 'Flowers from the Holy Land', before sharing his new powerful documentary short,' The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing,' which reframes and reclaims the original archival footage. The film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and land.
Interestingly, he can only share the now digitised NLS archived films as part of events; they are not publicly available. It would be great to get Theo's film into wider circulation, both locally via community networks in Scotland and more broadly globally, so please read and like my Instagram post and share Theo's work.
I hope to write more about the workshop in the future, but I'm not sure my response to the workshop feels like it would fit with the format of Substack, it feels like it would be better as a collage or something. There are a couple of text quotes from the original silent films which are lingering with me, though:
One is: (Broom is) "All roots and flowers, no leaves."
Another: (Something along the lines of) "The Jewish girl colonisers…enjoy their first spring tomato harvest." *
*(The gap is because I can't remember the exact wording, but I will update here when I have clarified!)
With work commitments, pressing 'publish' on a weekly basis is getting harder and harder, but this commitment to consistency still feels right to me. I have a lot of things drafted for Autumn, but every time I'm unable to finish a piece or get inspired and write something very quickly, it messes up my fastidiously planned spreadsheet schedule!
Being aligned with my creative desires feels more important than ever. And for the first time this year, during August I have noticed I am feeling rooted, and balanced in myself; like I’m the most ‘me’ I have been in a while. This feels great; I can hold joy and rage and grief simultaneouly.
For paid subscribers, today is a piece I wrote in 2017/2018 as part of an assignment to describe a fine dining meal without referencing the food. I thought it'd be a nice companion piece to the Public Diners essay, whenever that may be ready!
For now, and as always… #FreePalestine
Amuse Bouche
“I’ve forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where.”
— Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
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