In the Presence of Absence by Shuruq Harb is a poetic and sensory live performance that contemplates a beautiful stone in Ein Qiniya, on the outskirts of Ramallah. Through this intimate reading of place, Harb reflects on a mountain suspended between preservation and prohibition, where the traces of mysticism linger amid the violent absurdities of “Area C”.

Part of BEK Symposium The Only Lasting Truth is Change 2025: Voice, Seed, Brutality.

For centuries the beautiful Ein Qiniya mountain has been a place for the practice of mysticism and spirituality. Today the mountain remains untouched because Palestinians are forbidden from building or farming there. This absence of life has turned into a strange form of preservation. The mountain falls under “Area C”.

According to the Oslo II Accords, “Area C” is a designation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank that have remained under full Israeli administrative and security control, for eventual transfer of power back to Palestinians. This transfer is yet to occur. In this perpetual waiting, Palestinian lands designated “Area C” have become absurd sites of exceptions.

The performance walks the absurdities of “Area C”, this tension between the desire to surrender back into nature, to sink into the subtle inscriptions of time on the stones and trees, while being unable to shake off the dangers of the current political realities. The imminent threat that looms and hovers, the violence that is felt but cannot be fully explained or documented.

The title of the work is in reference to Mahmoud Darwish’s book Absent Presence.Commissioned by A.M. Qattan Foundation, produced with Sakiya-Art|Science|Agriculture in collaboration with the French Institute in Jerusalem and La Ferme du Buisson in Ein Qiniya, 2022. Reworked for the context of The Only Lasting Truth is Change, BEK symposium 2025.

SHURUQ HARB
Shuruq Harb is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, filmmaker, and writer based in Ramallah, Palestine. On the occasion of the Busan Biennale (2024), she presented the first iteration of Off You Shore Paper Trail, a collaborative film project with Federica Bueti which looks at modern maritime histories, piracy, and mobility in the Mediterranean Sea. Harb’s latest essay, “An Hour Ahead and One Day Behind”, was published in kyklàda.press’s latest edition entitled Machine Paralysis, 2025. She is a contributing faculty to PRAXIS: fluent’s Study Programme 2025. Her exhibition “Interrupted Futures (2026)” opens at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in 2026.

Image credit: Still from In the Presence of Absence, 2025, by Shuruq Harb. Couresy of BEK.