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2.4 Sowing Solidarity with Vivien Sansour
100 Plays3 years ago
On episode 4, Nadine Almanasfi speaks with artist, storyteller and conservationist Vivien Sansour. Nadine has been trying to grow her own food and vegetable in her small allotment in north London and was very excited to speak with Vivien, who advocates for seed conservation and the protection of agro-biodiversity as a cultural and political act. She is founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, an interactive arts and agriculture project attempting to record ancient seeds and their stories and put them back into people’s hands.
To learn more about Vivien and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, visit: https://viviensansour.com/Palestine-Heirloom
In the podcast, Vivien mentions Esiah Levy, whose legacy you can read about on the Green Conspiracy: https://thegreenconspiracy.com/esiah-levy/
To see the yakteen seed labels that Haya Kaabneh illustrated for the Hudson Valley Seed Co., visit: https://modernfarmer.com/2021/02/palestinian-seeds-come-to-america-stories-and-artwork-included/
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Transcript
Heirloom Seeds and Palestinian Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
We talk about seeds and heirloom seeds. They're a way also for us to understand ourselves. And in the context of Palestine, for example, where when I left Palestine and I would travel, a lot of people would say, oh, you're Palestinian, Palestine doesn't exist.
00:00:18
Speaker
And I had to sit in my mind and figure out over the years, how can they? Such a dissonance, because for me, Palestine so much exists. It's in the hills. It's in the trees. It's in the seeds. Was my grandmother crazy? Or are these people just violent who say that to me?
Podcast Introduction
00:00:39
Speaker
And so I think, for me, seeds and heirloom seeds in particular have given me a platform
00:00:46
Speaker
to assert our presence and to assert that not only do we exist, we even have something so beautiful to share with the world. This is season two of Instant Coffee, where we explore everything related to food in the Middle East. I'm Nadine Almanasfi. And I'm Lyubal Sleiman Haydar. And together, we want to understand how food is shaping people's writing, thinking and organizing in the region.
Guest Introduction: Vivian Sansour
00:01:14
Speaker
Every episode we bring you a conversation between a guest and a colleague of ours at the centre. On this episode, Nadine will be in conversation with our next guest Vivian Sansour. Vivian is an artist, storyteller, researcher and conservationist. She uses these skills to advocate for seed conservation and the protection of agro-biodiversity as a cultural and political act.
00:01:37
Speaker
She is founder of the Palestine Erlim Seed Library, an interactive art and agriculture project attempting to recover ancient seeds and their stories and put them back into people's hands.
What Are Heirloom Seeds?
00:01:49
Speaker
Hi Vivienne, I'm really excited to have you here as I told you before because I've been following you for quite a while and as somebody who grows my own fruit and veg as much as I can. Well, I was inspired when I came across you and I saw your work and the way that you
00:02:04
Speaker
bring your heritage into your growing which is something that I also try to do in my little plot in London so thank you for being with us. Well thank you for having me and for planting seeds also. Obviously you founded the Palestine heirloom seed library but can you just tell us what an heirloom seed is because I think
00:02:25
Speaker
not many people might know what that is and the importance of it as opposed to like new varieties.
New Seed Project Collaboration
00:02:31
Speaker
Sure, an heirloom seed is a seed that's been passed down to us through generations usually or even there are
00:02:40
Speaker
new heirloom varieties in the sense that if you breed something and it's been in your family or you've been doing it for you know Many years that it becomes an heirloom. It's something that you pass down also heirloom seeds are seeds that are part of you know, they have a cultural system around them that that is attached to how they're grown and
00:03:06
Speaker
and where they're grown so there's that relationship and in Arabic we often say they know the soil. Do you have any examples of heirloom seeds that you are working to conserve at the moment that you can share with us? Sure actually I'm really excited about a new project that I started doing this last year
00:03:27
Speaker
And that's with the octin. It's a green gourd, or it's kind of a pumpkin, that grows very much in Palestine in the summer and I'm sure grows across the Mediterranean.
00:03:44
Speaker
different varieties of it. And in Palestine, for us, it's what declares winters here, you know, it's a very beloved dish when the yakhtyin is around. It grows in these big vines, it takes over people's backyards, but also often, even in the cities, people grow it in their front yard or their driveways and it provides shade
00:04:08
Speaker
and these beautiful velvety white flowers. And it also is a gourd that stays on and hangs and even can become like a lantern. So it's visually beautiful. It's also a wonderful seed that is delicious. And we like to, as we like to core and stuff everything, we core it and we stop it.
00:04:31
Speaker
But this year, I was really excited because I partnered with the Hudson Valley Seed Library, which is a seed library in New York that has inspired a lot of my work initially. And we've kind of created an art packet. So we commissioned a young Palestinian artist. Her name is Haya Khambani from Jericho. And she made a beautiful painting of women holding the octane.
00:04:59
Speaker
And a lot of people refer to the octane that it looks like a baby. But for me, it looks like a mother. So it depends on how you see it. But it's funny because in Arabic, we also call the vegetable you leave for seed. We call it the rabbi, which means also the mother.
Seeds in the Palestinian Diaspora
00:05:20
Speaker
So this mother has now traveled across the world and is giving birth to more and more children.
00:05:29
Speaker
and more and more stories across. And I'm really excited about this because it's now in this beautiful small seed packet. It's telling our story as a people also. For me, when we talk about seeds and heirloom seeds, they're a way also for us to understand ourselves. And in the context of Palestine, for example, where
00:05:53
Speaker
When I left Palestine and I would travel, a lot of people would say, oh, you're Palestinian, Palestine doesn't exist. And I had to kind of sit in my mind and figure out over the years, how can they like such a dissonance? Because for me, Palestine so much exists. It's in the hills. It's in the trees. It's in the seeds. Was my grandmother crazy? Or are these people just violent who say that to me?
00:06:22
Speaker
And so I think for me seeds and heirloom seeds in particular have given me a platform to assert our presence and to assert that not only do we exist, we even have something so beautiful to share with the world.
Art, Seeds, and Cultural Resistance
00:06:38
Speaker
One thing I've noticed about your work is that you do tie in art and seed conservation and writing and cultural history and things like that.
00:06:48
Speaker
And so you say that in London for some time, didn't you, on an art residency? Yeah, that was a very special time because the idea of the art residency at Delfina Foundation for me was to work on my book, which I'm still working on.
00:07:04
Speaker
But I had been to Oxford for a seat conference that same year in January and I met this lovely person named Isiah Levy who is Jamaican and he passed away not long after we met but we had these big
00:07:27
Speaker
plans and ideas of how we want to use seeds to exchange knowledge with each other and how we also we want to use seeds as a way to assert autonomy over our cultural heritage. Him being a black man in Britain and all the complexities of that and
00:07:47
Speaker
and me being a Palestinian woman in a place that has a lot of forces working to eradicate us as well.
Global Cultural Autonomy and Seeds
00:07:57
Speaker
So anyway, he passed away, which was quite tragic. But then his passing sort of led me to want to look for people who planted his seeds. And I got to meet a lot of amazing people in London
00:08:12
Speaker
who were growing seeds and who have engaged in allotments and it was a big learning experience for me and again it was the seeds kind of leading for new friendships and new life even in the midst of
00:08:28
Speaker
literally this cultural death, but also this literal death of a friend. For me, when I think about the Palestinian context and food sovereignty and farmer struggle in Palestine, it seems like a unique thing because of Israeli occupation and the specific instance of that.
00:08:48
Speaker
Do you think that there are struggles like food sovereignty, like movements across the world, maybe historically or even at the moment that there are similarities with, I mean, you spoke about Isaiah Levy and him being a black man in Britain and of Jamaican heritage, which I mean, I guess there's a violent history behind the UK and Jamaica's history.
00:09:10
Speaker
Absolutely. I see it all the time everywhere and I think it's naive to think of Palestine and the military occupation in Palestine as something isolated or separate. It is an extension of this global, both economic and political
00:09:29
Speaker
a system that exercises violence towards indigenous people, towards people, also towards people who don't want to be part of the dominant world, like people who don't want to buy a car on loan, people who don't want to be slaves in an apartment and call it home. For example, when I did go to Jamaica to see how people are selling their land, literally selling their soil,
00:09:59
Speaker
There are signs, top soil for sale. What does it mean when you're selling? Soil is the most precious thing. And it's also the most powerful tool that you have to survive and to be autonomous. And it all boils down to me, whether I'm in Guatemala, Jamaica, Palestine, California, wherever, it boils down
00:10:23
Speaker
to me to this idea that we've been fed over and over as as people of the land that we are not worthy and we need to become quote unquote civilized or we need to become somehow more educated in the
00:10:40
Speaker
traditional idea of what that means and wear suits and ties and abandon the way we speak abandon our lands and then the more and more I kind of dive into it for me personally like it it's really a personal journey
00:10:56
Speaker
that then obviously I am part of the world and part of society. So then you kind of start to see it in France. So with me and Isiah, for example, we were trying to rebel against this idea that who he is as a Jamaican black man in England was not wanted or respected the way me being a Palestinian woman in Palestine or in the world is not respected or wanted. So how do we,
00:11:22
Speaker
use the seeds as a way to kind of make us dispel all these lies we've been told about ourselves and from that kind of achieve liberation as individuals so that we can achieve liberation as collectives. The truth is this is the core of it and colonization has convinced us that we're worth nothing
00:11:45
Speaker
And we self-sabotage all the time. It's the bigger system that wins. And we end up losing not just who we are, but we even lose our ability to survive without the oppressor.
Lessons from Palestinian Farmers
00:11:58
Speaker
Because then, you know, like what's happening with us in Palestine is we're in this place where we look a little bit like we, who we are.
00:12:08
Speaker
But we're not. And so you're confused. Like, who am I? And when you don't know who you are, you really have no power over your life. And how has it been working with Palestinian farmers on the grounds? I mean, what are they thinking at the moment? What have you learned from it? I mean, I'm sure there's so much to learn from them. But anything that stuck out in particular, I guess.
00:12:30
Speaker
Everything I know I learned from them. I'm just good at talking and telling stories.
00:12:39
Speaker
people behind this work are the people who are every day in the soil and with the land. I mean, I am with the land also every day, but in a different way because I operate as this bridge kind of fuel. But the most beautiful thing I would say that I learn every day and I still learn today from farmers on the ground is humility.
00:13:07
Speaker
is this humility and dignity at the same time, like how you humble yourself without putting conditions on what it means or what it requires to be happy, but at the same time having so much dignity in refusing to be mediocre in your life. And I think in the world,
00:13:32
Speaker
We're so committed to mediocrity within our own lives. We settle for things that don't feel right, that are not real for us because that's just safer. And people may look at someone
00:13:48
Speaker
who has a phd and teaches at a university as oh they got it more together than a farmer who has a little plot but actually that farmer and this is this is just an example but that farmer may have a lot more freedom and a lot more dignity in the way they choose their lives sometimes for me i i learned from farmers that
00:14:13
Speaker
I'd rather die than live without my dignity and without my freedom and I'm willing to do whatever it takes for it and food and seeds really allow us that opportunity and it's not just a romantic idea, it's genuinely
00:14:30
Speaker
a real thing, you know, to have that autonomy over what you eat and when you eat and also when you work.
Food Sovereignty and Soil Connection
00:14:39
Speaker
What would you say to people who don't see food sovereignty and this connection to the soil as important? Because I feel like a lot of people are definitely alienated from
00:14:52
Speaker
from nature, from like feeling the soil, from their own heritage. I don't bother with convincing people for anything. Time is the greatest teacher and time has shown us over and over what's important and it's really about the readiness of individuals and communities to be open to
00:15:19
Speaker
the discomforts and the changes that are necessary.
00:15:23
Speaker
Otherwise, the changes happen anyway and the discomforts happen anyway. It's just when they happen, they become quite intense. So for example, I think the world has been asking us to slow down, pay attention, but we haven't. And then here we have a crisis globally that is forcing a lot of questions. And I feel like I say COVID has this kind of honesty serum
00:15:51
Speaker
because I feel people are more willing to be more honest about what's real, what's not. For folks who don't believe it's important, time will show that it is because at some point we're all going to be
00:16:07
Speaker
fighting over where to get our food and where to get our water. All of these issues, climate change isn't about just buying a fancy bottle of something from a fair trade shop. Climate change, you're not going to save it by your fair trade shopping only or by your organic shopping. It's going to be changed by you making new decisions about your life.
Vivian's Favorite Palestinian Heirloom
00:16:35
Speaker
you just might find out that you'll be happier without all these things you think you need so much. So we're running out of time, but I guess my final question would be, do you have like a favorite Palestinian heirloom seed or vegetable, or is there something that is like one that's very important to you? And then also maybe what's your favorite Palestinian food or dish?
00:16:58
Speaker
Oh, wow. Well, my favorite food is acub, which is called gondilia. And it's a wild plant. It's a thorn that I like to eat. But my favorite seed, it's a hard question, because I love many. But I would say the air loom spinach, because the seeds are very spiky.
00:17:25
Speaker
they when they dry they become like a cluster and they look like planets and I like my fantastical world and so I kind of disappear in imagining them in other spheres and planets and
00:17:45
Speaker
So that's the child in me. Thank you so much for this conversation. It was it was really enlightening and and good luck with all your work at the Palestinian Agency Library. Thank you, thank you so much.
00:17:59
Speaker
Thank you for tuning into Instant Coffee, a podcast brought to you by the LSE Middle East Center. Join us every other Tuesday for a new episode of Instant Coffee. To learn more about Vivienne and the Palestine Erlim Seed Library, follow the links in the podcast description. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our channel wherever you get your podcasts. Please make sure to like, comment and give us five stars.