Recipients of the OTO AWARD FOR DAR JACIR ART AND RESEARCH 2025
In 2025 OTO Sound Museum and Dar Jacir for Art and Research partnered together to establish the first Palestinian art prize dedicated to sound and listening. The 2025 prize was awarded to Dahaleez Collective, a Gaza-based research art collective whose work sits at the intersection of sound, narrative, and political memory. Dahaleez is a multifaceted sonic-arts archive, collecting field recordings, oral testimonies, and historical material to counter erasure, evoke memory, and open futures. Rooted in Gaza yet resonating globally, Dahaleez create spaces of listening that amplify collective experience.
For the OTO Award x Dar Jacir for Art and Research, Dahaleez produced a new sound piece entitled From-Towhich testifies and reimagines one of Gaza City’s most vital arteries, Al-Rashid Street. Intertwining past, present, and future in a multidimensional sonic narrative, the piece weaves together sonic fragments, voices, and orchestral compositions to reconstruct the collective memory of the street. The piece draws on sonic matter and reflections gathered during workshops held by Dahaleez collective in 2024-2025, where artists and cultural workers discussed the meaning and memory of the street. Original sounds from personal archives were woven together with music and symbolic sonic gestures to evoke layers of history and lived experience. At its core, the composition includes a musical piece by Mahmoud Abuwarda, originally written during the 11-day war in 2021 and later produced in 2025 with Lisbon Symphonic Orchestra. From–To becomes an auditory journey, an archive of place and time resonating between what was, what is, and what might be.
The work, conceived as a corridor through time, is accompanied by a bilingual booklet in English and Arabic, guiding listeners through the voices and narratives entwined into the piece.
From–To will soon be exhibited as an installation at Dar Jacir for Art and Research in Bethlehem at the end of November.
Dahaleez collective
Dahaleez is an artistic and research-based collective founded in 2021. The collective emerged from its first joint experience, “Geography of Divine Magic,” which was held at Beit Al-Ghussein Cultural Heritage House – Gaza, as part of its exploratory journey to deconstruct and understand the temporal and spatial relations of the Palestinian subject living under siege.
Between 2023 and 2024, the collective engaged with the question of the future through its project “Transcending the Possible Future,” through which it formulated its founding statement. The group has since continued working on the ongoing project “Taboo,” which is based on collective workshops that practice processes of remembrance, archiving, and documentation using diverse tools and methodologies.
In this same context, Dahaleez seeks to develop analytical and exploratory tools to understand and deconstruct the social and political influences on imagining future possibilities for liberation and reconstruction within the Palestinian context. The collective’s practice relies on collaboration and coordination with other artists through workshops, reflective gatherings, and exercises in joint production.
The founding members of the collective are: Khaled Jarada, Rehaf Batniji, Salman Nawati, Majdal Nateel, Carmel Abbasi, Mahmoud Abu Warda, and Mahmoud Al-Shaer.
The collective has further expanded its work through cultural practitioners who joined via the “Taboo” workshops, including:
Ashraf Alafifi, Alaa Kamal Al-Jaabari, Ahmed R. S. Mortaja, Ahmed Kamel Ramadan Alwakil, Bisan Natee, Sama Imad, Asem Alnabih, Fedaa Zeyad, Fidaa Najeeb Al Hassanat, and Mohamad Zaqzooq.