SLOVENIAN CENTRE of ITI

ECHOES FROM THE EDGE

A Virtual Dialogue Space

An Opening Project

HERE, EVEN LOVE CANNOT MOVE FREELY, BECAUSE IT IS DIVIDED 

BY MAPS AND ROADS 

FULL OF CHECKPOINTS

An interview with Ramzi Maqdisi

Radio Slovenia's program 

Oder/Stage on ARS, in collaboration with the Slovenian Centre ITI, prepared a one-hour program dedicated to Palestinian artists, featuring an interview with Ramzi Maqdisi. 

He spoke about the situation from the perspective of creators at risk, his artistic work, and his struggle. Additionally, a letter from Mohammed Sha'Sha'a, an ITI member who is in Gaza, was read.

The Slovenian Centre ITI extends its gratitude to the authors, Petra Tanko and Gorazd Rečnik, for their meaningful contributions to making this happen. We also express our appreciation to our Palestinian colleagues for sharing their on-the-ground testimonies with us.

You can find the program in Slovenian on the podcast link below

 Photo Credit: R. Maqdisi

Extracts from the interview with Ramzi Maqdisi, a Palestinian actor and director living between Jerusalem and Barcelona.

HERE, EVEN LOVE CANNOT MOVE FREELY, 

BECAUSE IT IS DIVIDED BY MAPS AND ROADS FULL OF CHECKPOINTS

If you meet someone you love from the West Bank, you think about it ten times before being together. Moving around is almost impossible. Even love cannot circulate here, because the map is divided, full of checkpoints and obstacles. When you start to ask yourself: Why should I love someone from another place if it’s impossible to see them? — I think that’s the worst level of life we can face. I would love to write a love story, just like anyone else. No soldiers, no checkpoints, no suffering. Just a story of two people who love each other, whether they succeed or fail. That’s my dream.

MY ARTISTIC WORK

I work in cinema and theatre, and I perform in Europe, Palestine, and other locations.

To fight against this stealing, groping machine, we thought we had to make The Land’s Heart is Greater than its Map. The piece was born out of our need to resist in a different way. Protesting in the street is limited and risky, so we bring the narrative and this type of protest onto the stage. It is a way to tell our story, to show what is happening, and to affirm our right to exist. With The Land’s Heart is Greater than its Map, we wanted to expose the attempt to erase us — to say that the land holds our memory, and that our lives are bigger than the maps drawn to control us. The show is built on testimonies, on memory, on the land itself as a witness.

For me, art is not a luxury. In this crisis, art is a necessity. It is part of the struggle. It gives us a voice when we are otherwise silenced, and it creates a space where people can listen, reflect, and connect with what is happening.

Text from the performance

»Did you know that some parts of a city will always remain invisible? Unless you're looking through the right lens or unless you have the right guide. 

I want to become that guide for you. I'm here to show you around a faraway city whilst you stand in another. 

My city. A bit strange, I know, but what if we went on a little adventure together today? To dismantle the familiar to make space for revelation. Allow yourself to travel in time and space so that what is distant can come near. 

Close your eyes for a few moments. Please allow me to take you beyond what the accepted stories and myths have prepared for you. Allow me to take you to the only city that exists twice, once on Earth and once in heaven. To the city I was born and raised in, whose name cannot be spoken. 

Before I continue, allow me to ask you one thing. Please do not leave my city like the other travellers before you, without having really discovered it. «

THE STATE OF ARTISTIC WORK IN PALESTINE

Creating theatre in Palestine is very difficult. You cannot go anywhere without crossing checkpoints. A large part of the Palestinian society, for whom we do our work, cannot reach Jerusalem because of the separation wall. We always have to find solutions to move around to show a piece of theatre.

In the cinema, when we want to shoot on the streets of Jerusalem, we can never send the original script. We have to lie and invent a story that makes them feel it is acceptable. Producing art in Palestine is not easy at all. Even with access to European funding, there are restrictions. You are allowed to say some things and not others. They want to focus on specific topics, which may not be the ones we want to address.

When we developed "The Land’s Heart Is Greater Than Its Map," we decided we would never perform it in Germany. We feel unwelcome at the institutions, so we don’t go there.

RADIO

When I was a boy, I used to walk in Jerusalem with my father. He would stop and tell us about the places that used to be before 1948, before the occupation. One day, he showed us the building where the Palestinian National Radio used to be.

When I was 17, I bought a second-hand transmitter and installed it in my parents’ house in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. After three days, the Israeli army arrested me, and I was put in jail. When I was released at 19, I finished high school and returned to the radio. I ran it from 1999 until 2005.

In 2000, during the second intifada, the Israeli army attacked the radio and destroyed everything. I rebuilt it. Later, because it was too risky to stay in Jerusalem, I moved to Ramallah. In 2002, during the invasion of the West Bank, the Israeli army bombed the radio again. Three of my friends were killed.

PRISON

The first time I was arrested, at 17, I didn’t understand why. I was just a boy with a transmitter. All I wanted to do was speak about Palestinian radio. I didn’t want to attack anyone. But that was forbidden. I was accused of terrorism for simply having a transmitter.

I spent two to three months in solitary confinement. Time becomes liquid. You don’t know, you don’t have a clock, and no one tells you anything. You are just kept inside a dark room with very little light.

Later, when we made a film about prison, it was necessary but painful. We had to recreate the prison in our imagination because, when we were moved inside, we were blindfolded and could not see. We tried to reconstruct it from memory: how many steps down, how many steps up, left or right.

Describing this was a horrible experience, but it was necessary because we have to speak about these stories.

FREEDOM THEATRE

I knew the founder of the Freedom Theatre, Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was killed in 2011 in Jenin. Juliano’s idea was to open the refugee camp — a result of the occupation in 1948 — and bring art and theatre to the camp, to take people out of the horrible situation of living concentrated in such a small space since 1948. He wanted to bring institutions there and create art.

I believe that idea killed him, because Israel did not want that to happen in the refugee camp. To confirm this, Jenin refugee camp, where the Freedom Theatre was located, has been half-destroyed by Israel since the start of the genocide. People have been displaced from it. This action confirms for me that the Freedom Theatre project was intended to be erased. I hope they can keep going, though I don’t know how, with all the obstacles.

Talk hosts: Petra Tanko and Gorazd Rečnik

COMMENTARIES 

The Land’s Heart is Greater Than Its Map (Shubbak Festival, Barbican 2021) is an immersive theatrical experience in which audiences explore a cityscape wearing headphones, hearing testimonies that trace history, memory, and lived experience under occupation. The Land’s Heart Is Greater than Its Map examines themes of displacement and questions who has the right to claim a place's history. The production transforms the city into a stage, blending performance, storytelling, and spatial awareness to give audiences a deeply personal encounter with life in Palestine. The work is both protest and preservation — a way to assert memory and presence in the face of erasure. Ghost Hunting(2017), directed by Raed Andoni, is a documentary where former Palestinian prisoners—including actor and director Ramzi Maqdisi—reconstruct their experiences of incarceration in Israel’s Al-Moskobiya detention centre. Together, they rebuild the prison from memory and re-enact interrogations and daily humiliations, exposing both the physical and psychological scars of imprisonment.

Blending documentary and performance, the film captures trauma, disorientation, and dehumanisation while also affirming resilience and the struggle to reclaim identity. It won the Best Documentary Award at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival and was Palestine’s official entry to the 91st Academy Awards. Through memory and imagination, Ghost Hunting transforms spaces of oppression into a collective act of testimony and artistic resistance.

The Freedom Theatre, founded in 2006 in Jenin by Juliano Mer-Khamis, has long been a vital space for artistic expression, youth education, and community resilience in Palestine. Rooted in the refugee camp, its mission extends beyond performance to challenge structural violence, nurture critical thinking, and preserve Palestinian cultural memory.

Despite years of threats, attacks, and the assassination of its founder, the theatre remains a beacon of cultural resistance. Even after its offices were destroyed during a December 2023 Israeli military operation and key staff, including Artistic Director Ahmed Tobasi, were detained, the theatre adapted by working from temporary spaces and forging local collaborations. In June 2025, it relaunched activities in a provisional venue, demonstrating its determination to endure.

That same year, the theatre elected its 10th Board of Directors, reaffirming its commitment to community empowerment. Its workshops, acting training, and multimedia projects continue to equip youth with the tools to navigate life under occupation and share their stories creatively.

Internationally, the Freedom Theatre amplifies the voices of Palestinians. In September 2025, it toured Portugal with 15 – 16-year-olds… Stories of Children Who Never Grow Up, a production based on the lived experiences of Jenin’s children. Led by Chairperson Abdulrahman Zubeidi, Director Mahmoud Abu Aita, and young performers, the play transformed collective trauma into a powerful form of artistic resistance.

Through persistence and creativity, the Freedom Theatre stands as a testament to the enduring power of art to resist oppression, sustain memory, and inspire hope.