JIDARIYEH

My first day in Ramallah was also my first day as a student at Birzeit University. After classes I went back to Ramallah with a friend I had met earlier that day. When the bus arrived at the city center we got off and started walking. I followed my friend who was walking faster than I was. I wanted to explore, every detail was interesting to me; every person walking, every street and store I saw. “This is alManara!” I said. “Yes”, my friend replied while keeping his head down and increasing his speed. But I wanted to stop and admire this place, “It’s beautiful!” I said to myself. Who knew that after spending one year in Ramallah I would become just like my friend, walking fast by the spots I used to admire. All my passion to explore Ramallah has faded away, Iike a robot, I started using the city’s network of streets and walkways solely to get from one place to the next. What went wrong? How can we make what has become invisible, visible again? And how can we give back to the city that we only seem to consume?

 In Ramallah, you cannot resist but see the intense dynamics of people heading in different directions especially around transportation nodes, not slowed down by the altering features or smells of the city. For me, transportation nodes are areas designated for parking of public transportation vehicles, embarking and disembarking of commuters, and the city spaces tangent to these. Such nodes and networks are normally designed to respond to the needs of inhabitants, allowing smooth transition and social interation. But in the case of Ramallah, street networks are more limiting and dictating rather than responsive to the flows of inhabitants, lacking proper infrastructures and connections.

 Over the past century Ramallah went through various transformations. Today it is an urban center with neoliberal/-colonial modes of development. The exponential pace of growth of Ramallah since the mid-1990s and the shrunken political space and resources of municipalities, combined these have created a reality where commuting networks follow consumption-bound, privatization and securitization principles. They grant little space for people to experience the city without having to consume something. I aspire to change this reality as well as the forms of the commuting nodes and networks, to reclaim the city for non-consumption purposes and to make connections between our lived spaces and us.

 Jidariyeh (mural) = Puncture

 Over the following paragraphs I imagine creating small Jidariyat (murals) as punctures along paths that can become public pedestrian spaces, as a way to create new connections in the city and to claim places for alternative functions (see Diagram 1). By doing so, I want to decentralize the city, reshape and expand the transportation network, and bring into attention new/old spaces to encourage people to claim and re-shape them to their needs and desires.

Retracing alternatives

I started the design process in 2017 with a walk through Ramallah like it was my first time. I followed different people to re-see the city through their eyes. I wanted to re-establish organic alternative connections between the different transportation nodes. I also mapped small informal economic activities I encountered along the way – mainly sweetcorn carts, vegetable, clothing and book-stands. When I looked at my sketches (see Image 1), I found that these informal economies drew a potential alternative pedestrian path to that of walking through the main streets.

 The Wings

 To test the idea of a Jidariyeh as puncture, a group of friends and I started doing some experiments with graffiti in the area of Ramallah el-Tahta (lower Ramallah, the old city center) in 2018. The parking lot behind Esso Gas Station on the Main Street that used to be a transportation hub until the 1980s seemed like a good starting point. We wanted to place an element that would capture people’s attention and engage them. The Wings graffiti was born (see Image 2), and people started taking pictures with it, hence drawing reactions on social media, creating a community of people and a new kind of space and relationship to the area. It made the invisible visible again, in that case: a wall. Ramallah alTahta was our starting point and from there we wish to create new kinds of city networks by following the path drawn by informal vendors. Here it is worth noting that in Ramallah there is not a single pedestrian-only street or zone.

A hybrid space

 Empowered by the experiment of The Wings, I wish to link the aforementioned small informal economies and their chosen spaces with artists. I find the art scene in Ramallah alienated from the city, and the artworks isolated from the larger public. At the same time, art plays a vital role in the collective imagination of the public, hence, Jidariyeh aspires to be a space, a canvas for artists to connect and situate themselves within the public and everyday life.

 If Jidariyeh succeeds in establishing pedestrian connections between public transportation nodes while following the path drawn by the street vendors, it would have managed to make the invisible visible; narratives that are not about the city as wanting to be Dubai, rather about the essentiality and flavor of small-scale economies. Diagram 2 shows the mappings of six segments in Ramallah.

Six Segments for Graffiti

 Diagram 3 shows six segments where graffiti can be applied along these newly highlighted/drawn networks. For me, Graffiti is a collective performance and conversation around a political discourse. In this regard, Ashley Toenjes wrote that “graffiti derive[s] its meaning from the medium, intentions of the artist, the intended audience, and ultimately how the recipient of the graffiti interprets the images and messages. Much of political graffiti’s power lies in the ways it is able to reach and influence an external audience, and this is linked to the processes of graffiti production and circulation.” [1]

Four nodes, four junctions

 While working on the areas shown in earlier diagrams, I noticed that four of Ramallah’s main transportation nodes are at the center, but not all centered in one lot. Rather, they are located at considerable walking distances from one another. While this is an advantage in terms of attempting to reduce traffic at alManara, it is problematic due to the lack of pedestrian friendly networks between these nodes (see Diagram 4). The daily flow through these nodes is in the tens of thousands of people, and expanding road networks is a priority for the municipality. Yet, the shapes, sizes, and number of pedestrian paths associated with the road networks servicing the four transportation nodes – spaces that would serve as junction paths – are discriminate against pedestrians.

Jidariyeh plugs into this field of needs, to find possible alternative paths in the city, to engage with their surfaces to produce a pleasurable and healthier contact with the physicality of the city space, and one another.

 Claiming space

 Wall/façade-claiming is about space claiming. The city is much more than the two-dimensional planes of technical and real-estate maps. It is first and foremost the flows of people and with them their experiences, dynamics, aspirations, goals, and labor. When I look at the busy collage showing the pedestrian path through the Arab Care Hospital in the Shatara Commercial building, the junction connecting al-Bireh Central Station with the transportation node servicing Birzeit (Diagram 5); I wonder how I can create an inviting environment for a pleasant experience – like turning a street corner and finding a musician playing a favorite song. People are encouraged to stop and look when they see others do the same.

Jidariyeh invites people to break the monotonous rhythm of the city as a way to give back to it. Jidariyeh makes the invisible visible by creating spatialized anecdotes that inspire new narratives and bring out forgotten ones.

Jidariyeh is storytelling

 Jidariyeh is about a vision where every corner of Ramallah can tell a story, it is about giving this city a new meaning. Jidariyeh is an imaginary of a much-needed revolution for claiming space in Ramallah. It is a dream about a time where we are able to find ways around the bureaucracies, privatizations and securitizations, to materially legitimize plural spatial narratives. Jidariyeh is my real and virtual space, where I am constantly re-imagining the city as I walk it and aspire to make it.

This is an article from the “Takhayal Ramallah” project conducted in 2019 with UR°BANA and Sakiya.