Tenses of Presence

A panel discussion on "Indicia", a special issue zine.

What does it mean to archive a place while it's being erased?
How can imagination be both rigorous and resistant?
What stories emerge when we write from the perspective of land, concrete, and seeds rather than only human voices?

This panel brings together the Gazan authors behind Indicia's special three-story zine issue to discuss their experimental approaches to documenting, imagining, and witnessing Gaza. Across three distinct, yet connected stories, the authors explore an alternative timeline where collective land systems continued uninterrupted, the material truth and deception of concrete infrastructure, and the perspectives of non-human others who live alongside us in silence.

Rather than providing a testimony, these zines practice what the authors call "grounded imagination" -creative work deeply rooted in research, oral history, ecological knowledge, and material reality. Together, they refuse the flattening of Gaza into a single story, instead offering multiple temporalities, scales, and perspectives that cannot be reconciled into one neat label.

Join us for a discussion about methodology, materiality, multiplicity, and the politics of form in representing places under present erasure.



Where: Spore Initiative, Hermannstraße 86, Neukölln
When: March 21, 18:00-21:00
Speakers: Shahd Alnaami, Shahd Alnaouq, Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi, Ahmad Elkhuwaja
Moderator: Abir Kopty

Event will be livestreamed.