Radio Alhara and Wonder Cabinet’s Creativity for Existence Between Jordan and Palestine
By Camillo Vegezzi and Margherita CordelliniOn a street at the edge of downtown Amman, a small Radio Alhara decal on a glass door is the only hint that Turbo – a studio that helped shape the city’s independent visual culture – operates inside. Outside, downtown hums with its usual chaos – cars, shop signs and voices overlapping in the air. Inside, the walls are layered with prints, a DJ console, design furniture hung like paintings – alongside flyers from past pop-ups. “You can see the fog marks from people’s noses on the glass,” Saeed Al-Jaber laughs. “They try to figure out what we actually do here.”
He and his friend Mothanna Hussein opened the studio in 2015, slowly shaping it into a defining force within Amman’s creative landscape. Their work spans posters, type experiments and brand identities. “For us, Arabic has to be the hero,” Saeed says. “It’s where everything starts.”. With a decade of experience designing posters and throwing some of the city’s best parties, they built Turbo around a philosophy of creative freedom and fun. Their language is instinctive and unfiltered. “Sometimes you see forty-page presentations for a logo,” Saeed says. “Fuck off – it’s a logo. We don’t use agency talk or write essays to justify a colour. Khalas, this is what it is.”
The studio doubles as an open space, hosting pop-ups and collaborations with local and visiting artists. They’ve sold prints here, and once turned the space into a temporary recording room for Never Records founder Ted Riederer, who mixed and pressed vinyl on site. “We tried to create a scene in Amman,” Saeed says. “But it’s not easy. Compared to Beirut – a port city, always open to new things – this city is a place of transit. Refugees, workers, people from everywhere: Syria, Palestine and so on. Amman’s identity is always shifting.” It was during one of these pop-ups that they met architects Elias and Yousef Anastas. Their Local Industries furniture – minimalist pieces rooted in Palestinian craft – has since become an integral part of Studio Turbo.
That encounter marked the beginning of a collaboration and friendship that sparked new artistic projects. One of them is Radio Alhara. Founded by five friends in March 2020, it emerged at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a moment when the world was experiencing what it means to have one’s freedom of movement restricted – a reality deeply familiar to Palestinians.
“Elias and Youssef were in Bethlehem, Mothanna and I were in Amman, architect Yazan Khalili in Amsterdam and later the sound artist Ibrahim Owais, met at our parties, joined from Ramallah,” recalls Saeed. “We started contacting people, many were at home and had more time to put together mixes and shows. It was the right place, the right time.”
From the outset, Radio Alhara (‘the neighbourhood’) stood out as a community effort. “The radio is an experimental space open to all realities: once you book a slot, it’s yours. You can bring your mom to talk about whatever” explains Saeed. Listeners from all over soon flooded the minimalist digital space where Radio Alhara lives. Just by clicking the play button they could tune in to hidden gems of Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, Egyptian mahragan and Bahraini wedding songs. Everyone can upload their contributions to a shared Dropbox, with the lineup curated by the Alhara community. As Saeed put it, “My favourite thing about Alhara is the continuous discovery: I collaborate with music labels I admire and stumble upon fascinating projects, like Everything is alive, featuring interviews with inanimate objects, or Cheese and Cheesy, streaming the clatter and chatter from the kitchen of an Italian café.”
Since 2021, Radio Alhara has had a physical station on the other side of the now nearly dried-up Jordan River. To reach it from Amman, the route crosses the King Hussein Bridge, linking the Jordanian East Bank with the Palestinian West Bank. In the slow line of travellers – a few internationals and dozens of Palestinians making the journey for work or family – the presence of the Israeli occupation grows increasingly tangible. After a series of security checks and passport controls, a shuttle heads towards Al-Quds; for Palestinians, this process can last long hours.
A short bus ride later stands Checkpoint 300: a claustrophobic, architectural mode of control, a narrow corridor cut by jarring turnstiles. For Palestinians who pass through daily, it is a mandatory ritual to reach Al-Quds – marked by arbitrary delays, shifting permits and routine violence. Beyond the last gate, the suspended echo of the checkpoint gives way to the voices of taxi drivers, their business heavily impacted by the collapse of tourism since October 2023. Past the nine-metre high Separation Wall – barbed-wired concrete layered with graffiti of resistance and solidarity – the road opens towards Bethlehem, and the destination comes into view.
The Wonder Cabinet rises like a concrete spacecraft in the immediate outskirts of the city, all sharp lines and glass walls. Its stainless-steel rooftop sign spells out the name in bold letters – a promise of the marvels inside. Waiting at the entrance is Italian architect Thomas Tellarini, who moved to Bethlehem three years ago to join Studio AAU and has been a resident at Radio Alhara since last year. “I came to follow their architectural practice,” he says. “Now Bethlehem feels like home. I came to Palestine not to give, but to learn – and everyday I’m reminded that it’s a place like any other, full of incredible people, far beyond the idea of victimhood.”
The building is conceived as a hybrid: part studio, part art residency, part social space – and home to Radio Alhara’s broadcasting booth. “Some days everything happens at once – workers weld and assemble metal furniture on the lower floor, a film screening upstairs and a concert outside,” Thomas says. “It’s built so things overlap – three stages looking into one another.” The space is alive, constantly shifting between thinking and making, sound and material.
Creating here has a different gravity. “You feel the occupation in everything – in how you move, buy, build,” he says. “Every action takes more effort than it should. But you learn from the people who’ve grown up in this.” The Wonder Cabinet becomes more than a cultural space: it’s an act of persistence, a place that insists on existing through work, collaboration and imagination. “In such difficult times, the act of making becomes something deeply real.”
AAU studio’s architectural language roots its vision in Palestine’s material landscape: “We build in stone – not as cladding, but structurally,” Thomas explains. “It’s a return to the traditional craft, reinterpreted through contemporary techniques.” In the West Bank, where buildings are torn down and lives are kept in suspension, choosing to build in stone – heavy, local, enduring – carries another kind of meaning. Architecture becomes a claim to continuity, to permanence.
Alongside its architectural work, the Wonder Cabinet hosts residencies attracting artists from Palestine and abroad – people come to develop site-specific works, music projects or simply to share time and skills. The open Tamam Bar welcomes the city in: a space to study, meet or gather for concerts and screenings.
If the Wonder Cabinet gives form to resistance through architecture, Radio Alhara does so through sound. The radio serves as an antenna amplifying the Palestinian daily reality and cultural scene, channeling an international network of solidarity that unites around shared struggles. In June 2020, for instance, the radio live-streamed Fil Mishmish, a five-day line up of artists joining in an ‘anti-colonial, anti-racist worldwide protest’, in response to Israel’s plan for further annexation of the West Bank. “I still perceive Radio Alhara as a radio first,” explains Saeed. “People often think about it as an instrument of solidarity with the Palestinian cause; for me, it’s about the music. But then music, of course, makes things happen.”
“In this region, you don’t get to choose whether to be political or not,” continues Saeed. “At Alhara we simply react to what is happening around us.” The twelve-hour program Learning Palestine was born out of that same reactive impulse. The third in a series, it was audio-streamed on October 31 and focused on transnational solidarity between South Africa and Palestine, featuring, among others, verses by Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd accompanied by the melody of an Oud and an interview with Mandla Mandela, who sailed on the Global Sumud Flotilla. “When people think about Palestine, an image of sadness and misery often comes to mind.” adds Saeed. “Beyond that, there are people creating new things and expressing themselves through art. Not necessarily because they want to fight the occupation, but simply because they want to exist.”
Camillo Vegezzi is a freelance music writer based in Milan. He has collaborated with various music magazines and is a contributor to the cultural section of Il Manifesto. Read more of Camillo’s writing on Something Curated here.
Margherita Cordellini is a freelance writer based between Europe and Southwest Asia. She collaborates with Il Manifesto, contributing pieces on Sudan and Palestine.
Header image: Wonder Cabinet by Mikaela Burstow.