Context of the kite project

pleasant side of kite flying in Gaza: ``On the other hand, kites are used to fly flammable materials and small explosives to Israeli territory and cause damage there.'' The intention was that the kite artworks would contribute to constructive thinking about such ambivalences. That did not work very well. Almost a hundred years after the kite competition of Jacob Israël de Haan, the Vlissingen kite project made it painfully clear that peace in the Middle East was still a long way off. It also raised a question that had often been asked in the confrontation between the Western and the Eastern world: is the kite an innocent piece of children's toy, a symbol of innocence and hope, or is it a means of fighting?

In 2021 the European Legal Support Centre took the project as a case-study about the Denial of use of public space for a kite festival in Vlissingen in the publication The Attempt to Chill Palestinian Rights Advocacy in the Netherlands ( see page 43 ). One of their findings: The political parties represented in the Vlissingen Council, foremost the SGP (Reformed Political Party) and the ( right wing liberal party HO ) VVD, as well as the local Perspectief op Vlissingen (POV), called for the prohibition of the festival on Vlissingen’s public beach, referring to a provision of the General Local Regulations based on which events may be prohibited, if their content and appearance do not fit with the policy or damage the interests of the Municipality.

The kites flew again in October 2018, in Nijmegen. Due to the same Israel-agitprop a lot of people did not dare to attend the event. The then city poet of Nijmegen, the Palestinian poet Amal Karam read some Arabic poetry. The young Palestinians present posted some pictures; Twitter Gaza exploded . . .

And now, in 2022, the kites are on their last two journeys: first to Sweden, to the Slipvillan Summer Festival in Stockholm and than to Lebanon, to the I.P.S.-gallery in Beirut.

hans overvliet Februari 19, 2022

1 From: Kites, David Pelham, 1977 [ Dutch version ] , ISBN 90 6210 067 8 2 'De Vliegerende Hollander' / ‘The Kite Flying Dutchman’ cultural history of the Dutch kite imagination from 1600 on

Gert-Jan Johannes and Inger Leemans.

Prometheus Amsterdam publisher, 2020, ISBN 978 446 463 9