Commoning (Masha’eyyih), is an art research and social practice collective formed in Beirut in 2022 out of the urgency to respond to escalating hardships in Lebanon and the region, from the Lebanon economic collapse in 2019, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the aftermath of the Beirut explosion. Traversing different locales in the Levant (Bilad al-Sham), Commoning works on creating connections and exchanges between marginalized communities and activists through research and art as vehicles of co-learning with the capacity to effectuate social and political change.
Since the beginning of Commoning’s collaboration with CHRA, Commoning has sustained its political and pedagogical relationships with student organizing groups, refugees in Lebanon (primarily Syrian and Palestinian), and other working-class and marginalized communities. As part of Activism in Process, and born out of the collective’s experiences in the field, Commoning has been working on establishing the online platform Akkoub for activists in the region. The hope for Akkoub is to become common within itself by offering open-access and collectively authored resources about alternative/collaborative ways of working, convening, and learning.
The resources available on Akkoub range from reflections on anti-colonial literature to material analysis of local committees in the region and their function in times of revolution and tools for self-organization around the idea of the commons.
Since 2023, with intensified economic collapses in Lebanon and Syria, the genocide in Gaza, the expanded war on Lebanon, and the destruction of the Lebanese South, life conditions across the region have deteriorated for already vulnerable communities, such as Syrian refugees and agricultural workers, or Palestinians in Gaza and the remaining of Palestine. In this light, the collective and its social base shifted their focus to ensuring the safety and security of their communities and creating spaces to reflect and engage. As such, Commoning has also worked with grassroots initiatives led by refugee Syrian women who are among the most at-risk groups struggling in Lebanon today, alongside Palestinian and Lebanese activists organizing to end the genocide in Gaza.
Through collaborative exploration and exchange, Commoning fosters co-learning opportunities, resources, and workshops that address the particular needs and aspirations of activists and grassroots organizations to support alternative models of organization and co-learning for liberation and research for action.
Commoning was founded by Amr Saed el deen, a Palestinian Jordanian social scientist researching grassroots activism, and Joude Gorani, a Syrian cinematographer whose work focuses on the ethics of representation in the Syrian political context.
