On November 30th, Hosting Lands and Til Vægs, welcomed Palestinian architect Sandi Hilal for a salon gathering. This open invitation attracted about thirty artists, academics, cultural thinkers, and other citizens who came with open hearts and minds - it was an essential gathering, not least a critical intervention in response to the devastating events in Palestine which culminated on October 7th. The salon format was appreciated by all, not least of all because it encouraged authentic, non-hierarchical connection. In a spacious living room in Copenhagen, with an island of books attendants brought with them in answer to the call to bring their favorite works - experiences, ideas, and not least of all grief were shared. Central to this salon, was Hilal who imparted much wisdom on subjects such as collectivism and colonialism, the dangers of the single frame, and how her experiences in the first Intifada (1987-1993) ensured that she knew metabolically what self-determination is. Here are some key take-aways from this special day:

How growing up under colonial siege protected her humanity

Hilal shared that growing up under the regime of Israeli settlers protected her from the process of assimilation. “I ask myself why I never tried to assimilate in the west. I have many good friends who have come to the west and have assimilated to be accepted, but I was one of these people who refused since the beginning.” She went on to describe that although she did enter the “race,” she felt that because she grew up under Israeli colonial occupation, this enabled her to keep her humanity intact. “For example, I lived in a society with no banks until I reached 16 years old. We didn’t have loans, (so) people were helping each other; women in the neighborhood would pool their money for those who needed it that month. We had a system where we were helping each other.” She lived in a culture where Palestinians were prisoners and under siege, and their colonizers didn’t want them to become modern. They had to keep Palestinians backward so they could still dehumanize them. “Backward” meaning alienated from the trappings of modernity. But being kept “backward”, for someone like Hilal, kept her humanity. “I arrived in Europe after being active during the first Intifada –we were primarily teenagers; it was my friends, it was me. Hilal spoke to something integral in the colonial project since its inception in the 1400s. The Native American poet John Trudell (February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015) speaks about this in the YouTube video "Becoming Human”. He talks about how by the time Columbus – and Columbus being any European coming to the so-called New World - had arrived, their humanity had been already erased. This is what the witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition in Europe were about – terrorizing the humanity out of its people. This is something that Silvia Federici recounts in her 2021 seminal work, Caliban and the Witch.

Civilization, modernity, and colonialism – is it all in a name?

“The benign discussion out of all this is civilization and modernity,” Hilal said. “They don’t use the word colonialism. They are behind you to civilize you. They also give explicit physical behaviors e.g. I (must) cue. This is an aspect of “civilization”. What are the protocols for civilization? It is fine to learn (about cueing) as it will help me when I am in your frame – I (will) do all the protocols and respect you. But what I find unacceptable is that you pretend that these protocols work with the rest of the world. Each culture has the right to produce its protocols. When I am a guest in this culture, I must show respect. So even if I am not cuing in my country, I will come here, and out of respect, I will cue. But don’t judge me in my country because I am not cueing. I will judge you on your hosting ability. Would you like that?

Many people ask me why I am so critical of Scandinavian countries. And I ask them to tell me what critical words (have) I ever use(d)? I am speaking about hospitality. If that makes you feel like I am criticizing you, you need to understand why my speaking of hospitality makes you feel this way. It is not my business; it is yours. I am speaking about my frame and what I think about hospitality; if that makes you feel undermined or that I am criticizing, it is good that you do some internal work. I am speaking about hospitality. It is that inability to see that there are two frames; otherwise, that person would not have felt criticized. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks on this in her 2009 Ted Talk The Danger of a Single Story.

Hilal continued, “When they colonize the body, you see checkpoints and borders, and you react to that. The problem is when our minds are colonized. One way of colonizing your mind is by imposing one-only frames. If we want to be decolonized, we must oppose that one-only frame. This is why I am against words like inclusion, integration, and assimilation.

These ideas remind me of something the Palestinian writer and thinker Magid Shihade once said to me – that the war against Islam is a covert war against the Arab’s way of life. By conflating Islam with Arabic culture – a culture to which we owe our western traditions – we erase this debt. In our settler arrogance, we erase this culture of living close to the land, of taking care of one another, of no banks/capitalism – as Sandi Hilal reminds us of and as the illegitimate state of Israel and all other white settler states express – from Turtle Island to Australia, that white settlers have no respect for land and all other forms of life. It is indeed the Death Cult, as Julia Suarez Krabbe teaches us in Race, Rights and Rebels: Alternative Human Rights and Development from the Global South, about how the Nasa people of Colombia describe the culture of the West – the project of modernity.

Collectivizing the Private

An idea that truly had everyone talking was her idea of collectivizing the private. She explained how it was important not to leave the private to capitalism and that our main task was to rupture this idea. Hilal told us the story about her grandmother, who made necklaces for tourists. “We were both born in Bethlehem. We were not displaced – we were/are among the privileged Palestinians who are born and hopefully die in the same place. There are only a few Palestinians who can claim this, and I feel so privileged that I could go back to Palestine and be in the house where my parents and grandparents live.” Her grandmother worked for thirty years to buy a small piece of land. Until very recently, she lived in only one room, but there was a vast space in front of her house. And this is where the gathering happened, among her large extended family and neighbors. “There was no planning. She did this every day. And she is my inspiration.”

Her grandmother bought the land with every penny she acquired. “She made this tiny, private place an anchor for all of us.” Even taking the remains of her deceased daughter and incorporating it into the foundation of the house.

“The problem is that we are imprisoned into thinking that the common can only come from the public.” Hilal reminds us that this is a global north way of thinking. She goes on to explain how, in Scandinavia – the public can become a tool of control, something she found out when her project for refugees was suddenly closed by the authorities without any reason.

Following the realization that being a refugee deprives one of being a host, Hilal had co-created Al Madefeh/The Living Room in Prästholmen, Boden. A performative art work for asylum seekers, the space was open from 2018-2021. The website Decolonizing Architecture Art Research writes:

"Boden is a former military town located in northern Sweden, 80 kilometers from the arctic circle. From being a military town, it has now become an important reception center for asylum seekers. The project is inspired by a story about a Syrian refugee couple Yasmeen and Ibrahim, who had moved to Boden from Syria two years previously, and drew on the tradition of hospitality, never accepting that they should give up their right to be hosts in their new home. They continued what was an important part of their life in Syria, opening up their living room to host both Swedes and others. The living room, when opening itself to host the stranger guest, functions as a self-representational space, that has the potential to subvert the role of guest and host and give a different socio-political meaning to the act of hospitality. The possibility of hosting had become, for them, a way to regain access to their lost personal and collective history, combining their lost life in Syria with their new life in Sweden. By exercising their right of hosting and activating their living room, Yasmeen and Ibrahim no longer felt themselves to be statistics, passive guests in Sweden but to be owners of their own story."

Hilal continues, “In New York during Occupy Wall Street, they could not demonstrate on private property. Capitalism has spent the last sixty years protecting the private. Can we use that same protection against itself?” Hilal tells us that about twenty years ago when they started to think about colonial settlements that Israelis illegally built, the main question was, “Can we use these settlements against themselves?”

She tells us that in Arabic, there is a saying that hospitality lasts three days, and after that, it is charity. Shihade further explains this concept to me on a recent phone call from his home in Galilea, “After three days we find out what the situation is. Does the guest need help? Do they need work? Protection? Then the local community would act accordingly to this, support them as a community.”

When Hilal first arrived to Scandinavia, she realized that refugees and immigrants were systemically being kept in a position where they could only receive charity—therefore, having no political agency over their lives. Hilal began to demand her right to be a host, not only a guest. The question she began to ask was, can we claim a place where we begin to host? “We got a ground-floor apartment. We began to do the inviting – to Red Cross, for example, “and all the other organizations that were always inviting us. “We would like to host these organizations,” we said.

“So, if you arrive as migrants on Thursday, already on Saturday, if you are in that living room, cooking together, eating together. This living room became an exciting space.” After three years, the space was suddenly closed with no explanation. Hilal could only come to one conclusion: they wanted to keep them as perpetual guests, as charity projects without political agency. “I mean, when they give you no answer and are not willing to look you in the eyes, you have a right to interpret what happened.” The place stayed empty for a year and a half, she explained. They did not need it.

“The collectivation of the private is very important because, after this experience, I no longer trust the public. This is where we can begin to attack the private by saying, ‘You don’t permit me to act in public. I act in private, then.”