Imagining/Contesting Futures through Palestinian Wall Art and Digital Archive

Keywords: Desirable Futures, Street art, Palestine, Digital Archive
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Palestinian interaction with and negotiation of the West Bank Separation Barrier through the spatial practice of ‘Wall Art’ production is one method within a chorus of many that aid in rendering the Israeli colonial project incomplete. I describe how the Separation Barrier presents and enacts isolation, disconnection, and limitations to movement for Palestinians but also enables a contrarian energy that subverts its objectives. I examine how its form and technology make Israeli oppression highly visible and set in motion rejectionary practices and imagined futures.

Engaging McKittrick’s (2013) and Wright’s (2020) work on plantation futures and Marronage, respectively, I appreciate Wall Art creation as a means to revitalize and reclaim what have become undesirable spaces within the West Bank. I also look to these scholars and others in their company to examine the way Wall Art makes the future by depicting different worlds and hopes for the future. I use this to show how despite the fact that the wall may present a particular “border” and “checkpoint” future (Rijke 2021), Wall Artists depict their own that is in direct contestation of the Israeli colonial project.

I close this paper by contemplating how linkages made to global struggles for peace and justice in Wall Art and their documentation on social media calls the future into existence and digitally archives Wall art upon what is said to be, by Israeli officials, a temporary security measure.