Mirna Bamieh / Palestine Hosting Society

LAB Commission / World Premiere

In its first dinner performance in the United States, the Palestine Hosting Society presents an approach to “Palestinianess” that trespasses borders and geographies through a menu that brings together dishes from Palestinian cities and villages, refugee camps outside Palestine, and those that narrate intergenerational food habits and memory of the Palestinian diaspora, especially in the United States. Menu of Dis/appearance narrates stories about time, history, and parts of ourselves that we might have allowed to slip away.

Menu of Dis/appearance invites the audience on a journey through a selection of dishes that reflects the Palestine Hosting Society’s investigation and unearthing of traditional Palestinian cuisine. Some have been forgotten, their names rendered abstract to the current generation of Palestinians. Being denied a state of their own, Palestinians use food to express an identity that is constantly undermined. Life under occupation atrophied this connection to food, through imposing restrictive policies over food and water resources and inflicting control on wild plant foraging, as well as creating dissonance by showcasing Palestinian dishes as Israeli. Over the years, such measures created a kitchen that is dispossessed, making many traditional Palestinian dishes disappear, or be temporarily withdrawn.