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The world continues to witness an unfolding genocide in Palestine where tactics and technologies of domination and resistance continue recreate themselves, in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and beyond. This panel expands on what are ‘colonial technologies of contestation’ in a global space of which colonial technologies get reworked onto different geographies. To imagine “the colonial laboratory" is to imagine that there is an exchange/circulation of knowledges that take place of not simply colonial “technologies”. Laleh Khalili’s work focuses on technologies as tactics of domination, subjugation, counterinsurgency, and capitalism, to sever Indigenous peoples from their land relations. These technologies are constantly being reworked and contested - by continued forms of seed saving, planting, intergenerational oral histories of foodways, and asserting Indigenous forms of existence. Natasha Aruri will present collectively created work called (imagine), where women from Ein Qenia in the occupied West Bank speak of their liberation futures. Aruri will draw connections to how these women place themselves in relation to other urban spaces globally, like Egypt, Bolivia, India. Samah Hijawi will share artistic strategies of de-colonising art history, by sharing her artistic process in the project ‘Man on a Horse’ (2019). In this performance Hijawi takes iconic artistic works from Palestine and Belgium as a starting point to reconstruct an art history based on real and fictitious events.

Natasha Aruri | نتاشا عاروري

Nathasha Aruri is an urbanist, researcher, coordinator. Her work focuses on spatial politics of and resistance to colonialism, community-based design, and the intersection of critical mapping and social mobilisation towards transforming spaces and policies. She served as visiting lecturer at several universities, as Professor of Urban Planning at Dessau Institute of Architecture (2018-2020), and as Postdoctoral Researcher and Coordinator at K LAB, TU-Berlin (2019-2023). She is co-founder/director of UR°bana, an interdisciplinary research and design studio which implemented the Takhayali project in Ramallah (2018-2025, ). She has several publications in journals and magazines, and is editor and co-author of the book "Critical Mapping for Municipalist Mobilization. Housing struggles in Belgrade, Berlin, Barcelona" (2024, ).). She has several publications in journals and magazines, and is an editor and co-author of the book "Critical Mapping for Municipalist Mobilisation. Housing struggles in Belgrade, Berlin, Barcelona" (2024, ).

Samah Hijawi

Samah Hijawi (PhD) is a multimedia artist based in Brussels. Her projects are research based, and deeply rooted in historical narrative. From ancient history she takes inspiration for re-staging and representing contemporary life beyond the limited, polarized discourses that direct our lives today. Her research lies at the intersection between ancient mythology and farming, astrology and the spiritual traditions that connect us with larger cosmologies beyond earth. Her latest visual works 'Kinships and Cosmologies' explore a visual interpretation of ancient cosmologies between plants and the cosmos. Meanwhile, performance 'The Moon in Your Mouth' connects the plants that we eat with the planets in our universe. In an earlier performance project 'Kitchen. Table.', she focused on food and migration, and the body as a site of food memory. Her on-going project 'Aesthetics of the Political' explores how artists translate their political position in the aesthetic choices in their artwork. Previously, she collaborated with Ola El-Khalidi and Diala Khasawneh in directing Makan Art Space (2003-2016), an independent space for contemporary art in Amman. And together with Shuruq Harb and Toleen Touq she co-curated the platform The River has Two Banks (2012-2017), initiated to address the distances and proximities between Jordan and Palestine. Her works have been shown in Bukhara Bienniel 2025, KANAL Centre Pompidou Brussels, Vooruit Gent, AM Qattan Foundation Palestine, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Brussels, Museum M Leuven, The Hayward Gallery in London, BOZAR and Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Bureau Europa- Maastricht, MoMa and Apex Art - New York; Darat al Funun in Jordan, among others.

Laleh Khalili

Laleh Khalili is a professor of Gulf Studies at Exeter and the author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020) and Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy (Profile Books, 2025).

Danya Nadar

Danya Nadar is a PhD Candidate at the University of Antwerp and technically assists the FRICTION project housed in the Labo Agroécologie. Her work focuses on ways Indigenous peasants use their ancestral ecological knowledge to resist colonial and capitalist encroachments in their territories. She researches how different colonial technologies are used in attempting to rupture Indigenous land relations, to later be reworked in different geographies.