Dayra and Communal Debt | Lara Khaldi on behalf of and with the Question of Funding | Rallying the Commons
15th December 2022
This writing was created for perfromingborders’ 2022 e-journal: Rallying the Commons
Lara Khaldi writes on behalf of The Question of Funding about sustainable community-centered funding models and the use of Dayra.
Read the text HERE
Image Credit: Credits: Dayra, still from video. Courtesy The Question of Funding
The Question of Funding is a growing collective of cultural producers and community organizers from Palestine. By producing, documenting, accumulating, and disseminating resources, experience, and knowledge with their wider community, it aims to rethink the economy of funding and how it affects cultural production both in Palestine and the world.
The collective was formed in 2019 by a group of individuals engaged in different facets of the cultural sector, from working for non-governmental cultural institutions dependent on international funding (such as Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Grassroots Al-Quds, and the Popular Art Center) and foundations and cultural centers (including Al-Basta Theatre, Dalia Association, and Rawa Fund), to practicing as independent practitioners. Born out of informal and open encounters within Palestine’s wider arts community, The Question of Funding sought to question, debate, and find solutions to the prevalent constrictive international funding models on which Palestinian cultural institutions continue to depend.
Lara Khaldi is a curator, critic and artist living between Jerusalem and Amsterdam. Since 2019 she has been a member of the curatorial team of documenta fifteen. In recent years she was the head of the Media Studies Programme at Alquds Bard College, Jerusalem and a core tutor in the Disarming Design MA program, at Sandberg Institute, 2020-2022. Lara is a co-founding member of the independent educational platform School of Intrusions and the collective Question of Funding. Khaldi has been recently appointed as director of de Appel Art Centre in Amsterdam, starting January 2023.