Pro Occupation #3 teaser Pompei Street art Fest
Channel: Matlakas
Date: 2022-06-29

Video excerpt by Claudio Cascone
Music track: القدس هترجع لن
Performance by Matlakas
Commissioned by Pompei Street art festival
First-time Producer: Palomart Network
Special Thanks to John Chalk and Faboulous, Valeria Iozzi, Filippo Micillo and Anis Daraghma

Matlakas performs in Aielli, Abruzzo, his performance/Installation/ Action "Pro-Occupation" On his Pro-Occupation Number 2, Matlakas performed with the presence of H.E. ABEER ODEH who has been Ambassador of the State of Palestine in Italy and Permanent Representative to the United Nations FAO, IFAD and WFP since 2019. Matlakas occupied for the second time a piece of foreign land calling it Palestine. This project will only end when Palestine will be free, in the meantime, more pro-occupation actions will be made. Pro-Occupation is a live/action and installation project in solidarity with Palestine.
with this project Matlakas "Pro" will occupy pieces of land dedicated to Palestine in cities around the world in solidarity with Palestine.
The occupied area will vary in size according to the possibilities of the territory.

The performative intervention, therefore, includes a ritual where the artist holding an olive tree in her arms, like a newborn baby, connects to the pain of the Palestinian people who declare a collective pain that must end.
The olive tree will be planted during the performance and delineated by a perimeter, later declaring it Palestinian land.

The olive tree will represent the artistic action of Pro-occupation and reclamation of the Palestinian land, a symbol of the arrest of the daily injustice that the Palestinians have to face every day.

Reclaiming the land is very important in the time of covid-19 as it is a bond or an accomplishment and a change where equality should be addressed even more strongly and where humans are populating the same land and where countries should help each other instead of fighting.

The title suggests finally having a favorable occupation, projected towards a more sustainable way and where occupation, in this case, becomes a necessity; we, therefore, pass from a concern towards the Palestinian people and the injustices suffered day after day, for too long now.

The artist traveled to Palestine in 2015 for an artistic residency which was then destined for an exhibition at the Museum of Palestine in Cape Town. after creating a mural on the apartheid wall and creating various performances on Palestine including "Sweet Thorn" where the artist frees himself from a structure of 100 meters of barbed wire donating red roses to passers-by.
From the various conversations about finding a way to change things in Palestine, the artist, in the small of him, decides to occupy and restore the lost land of the Palestinians through art. Art can do anything, says the artist during a conversation with Palestinian Human Geographer, Anis Daraghma; and now art has already given birth to two "Pro-Occupations", attracting interest from other organizations to create even more Pro-Occupation interventions. In the second action In Aielli (Abruzzo, Italy) the performer Pro-Occupied in the presence of the mayor of Aielli Enzo di Natale and the Palestine ambassador in Rome Odeer Odeh a piece of land. Planting inside an Olive tree in July 2021. finally, Matlakas manages to carry out the project that he had already had in mind for two years. From concern to the action of "Pro-occupying". this project will only end when Palestine is free. Pro-Occupation is a project that was born as an act of solidarity for the "concern" for the lives at risk of the Palestinian people and the constant loss of their land.

The title suggests a favorable occupation: the occupied area, delimited and identified by an olive tree, represents a piece of Palestinian land given back to it, alongside, all the lands and losses of other countries.Pro-Occupation is a symbolic demand that pushes for a change toward equality and that will end only when Palestine is free. Suffering does not have a race or a Nationality and this is a call to end every existing conflict in the world.