Moe met Tala on instagram. They both had a crush on one another because of skateboarding, and then they started dating. Moe is from Nablus, in the West Bank. Tala is from Haifa, in 48 Palestine.
He tells me, “I would never do a long distance relationship. Instead, we call it a medium-distance relationship.”
Every few weeks Moe sneaks in illegally to 48 Palestine/Israel to see Tala.
Landing is a collaborative look at the purposeful escape that skateboarding provides to a handful of Palestinian skaters, myself included. This purposeful escape is a radical form of resistance to a headspace of violence, situated in the layers of Israeli domination in Palestine. Woven throughout are tales of my own family’s experience of displacement, diaspora, and partial return. When I moved back to Palestine in 2014, after living in the US for nineteen years, I brought my skateboard because I knew I would be a stranger. I needed the kid in me to remind myself that all is well while I tried to find home.
Skating leads us into a parallel world, where we can participate in our surroundings. This participation is an interpretive dance with the built environment; a tool to assemble a community; and most importantly, a centering on the imagination. This project serves as a reminder for this pocket of freedom as we all try to find our landing.
Visit https://maenhammad.com/landing to learn more.
