FORBIDDEN LANDSCAPES

Our event consists of two parts: the first part of the workshop involves the foraging activity, and the second part focuses on cooking together.

We will encounter wild plants and trees growing in Spore’s garden and the adjacent area and explore their relation to the flora of historic Palestine, on which we will also share our findings. Together we will choose the plants that we will use in our cooking session. We will provide the basic ingredients for food preparation such as the pastry fatayer and tabouleh style salad. The collective cooking will develop based on the ideas and recipes of the participants. Please feel free to also bring additional ingredients to share for that. We will also prepare some foraged herbal teas together.

We will share stories and memories connected to the local plants and their siblings in the Levant area, also inviting references to other diaspora experiences, during foraging as well as the collective cooking.

 
In this workshop, two concepts “kinship” and “solidarity” will guide our exploration.

Kinship: from a social and ecological perspective it highlights the connection between people, plants and place. Plants from the same plant family grow in Germany and Palestine. Kinship tells of a continuity and legacy of our collective knowledge surrounding, relating to the lands this knowledge is rooted in.

Solidarity: exploring the intersectionality of the stories of people, plants and places with those in other localities fosters solidarity. Through the lens of the plants, the participants will discover things in common - shared struggles, as well as links to pressing global issues such as water scarcity, environmental change and cultural resistance.

About the Organizer: 

Fighting Seeds is a multi-phase initiative that combines seed collection, storytelling, and artistic performance to honor plants as active participants in resistance, to celebrate and preserve Palestinian agricultural heritage.

Our mission is to trace these seeds through community efforts in Berlin and beyond, helping them reunite with those who cherish them. Through seed-saving, community gardening, storytelling, workshops, cooking traditional recipes, and community exchange, we demonstrate how communities resist alongside the land, using seeds as both practical tools and powerful metaphors for resilience and regeneration, challenging the systems that separate communities from their agricultural heritage.  

Palestine has united those who are struggling and fighting for collective liberation. We hope that by planting seeds from Palestine and neighboring regions, we help preserve heritage and culture deeply ingrained in these seeds and plants while connecting diverse communities living in the diaspora to each other. It is important for us to understand the interconnections of diverse struggles globally and to include those living in the diaspora whose lands and peoples are affected by war, destruction, ecocide, and forced migration. In learning about each other’s lands and plants, we actively share stories and memories, which are forms of resistance, resilience, and liberation. We are creating kinship through our connection to our beloved homelands and solidarity with Palestine.

 ❝We see seeds as living archives of memory and resistance. We’re reclaiming seeds and plants that hold stories against erasure❞