“The quintessential Palestinian experience... takes place at a border, an airport, a checkpoint...it is at these borders and barriers that the six million Palestinians are singled out for 'special treatment,' and are forcefully reminded of their identity,” writes historian Rashid Khalidi (1997: 1). This is perhaps most salient in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt), where spatial mobility is governed by physical checkpoints staffed by armed soldiers, segregated roads and an insurmountable bureaucratic paper trail required for obtaining passes, visas, permits, and residencies from the occupying power. Hence, the 'barrier' frame is not only a major preoccupation but also a deeply embedded signifier of identity in people's psyches, bodies, and sense of collectivity. In the post-Oslo era, expressive culture - including music, theater, film, etc. - figures prominently in the construction of Palestinian collectivity through projects of resistance, nation-building, and international diplomacy. Such activities are sometimes framed colloquially as “cultural intifada.” This paper is based on ethnographic work conducted in Palestine/Israel in 2011-2012. My aim is to show how expressive culture is utilized to culturally reconstruct the making of place, and its associated epistemologies, under extreme conditions of confinement. The paper details a performance by the Youth Orchestra founded by the oPt-based Al-Kamandjâti music conservatory at Qalandiya checkpoint. Established by the Israeli security apparatus to control the movement of Palestinians between the West Bank and Jerusalem, Qalandiya is a daily passage point and a marker of fragmented lives for thousands of Palestinians. In this performance, the orchestra re-territorializes the checkpoint as a Palestinian space by confronting its disembodied surveillance technology with embodied, collective sonic power. Beyond confronting the brute hierarchies established by the occupation, the orchestra challenges the national, social, and moral orders that undergird its logic. This performance also participates in the buildup of cultural narratives about Palestine and Palestinians locally and globally.