Abounaddara and Syria Freedom Forever: Making visible the ongoing tragedy of Syria:

 

 

 

I am reporting here on two online sites that are actually speaking from the ground in Syria, the receivers of this tragic onslaught. The statement just above is an excerpt from Abounaddara‘s manifesto.

 

To begin with, here is just one post from Syria Freedom Forever detailing a recent attack that makes what is happening in Syria specific and real:

 

“On Sunday the 13th of December, 2015, Douma and surrounding towns were subject to 59 indiscriminate aerial attacks, as well as a large number of cluster bombs. The preliminary death toll is 38 civilians, including 9 children and 5 women, according to figures provided by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. This number is likely to increase as crews continue to search for victims under the rubble. Schools in Douma and Zamalka, as well as a medical centre were targeted in the attack. This, in an area which has become almost devoid of medical care due to constant shelling.”

 

Syrian videographers and grassroots activists communicate to the world how they are living and working in the midst of the relentless Civil War that has them surrounded by violence on all sides.

 

The news media here repeat over and over that “we” are “fighting” this “terrorist threat” and that “everyone” is “terrified”. The reality is that most of us are not terrified, we are going on with our comfortable, well fed lives. The people who are terrified are the people on the receiving end of the hundreds of bombs we are dropping. That is terror.

 

When Paris and San Bernardino experience a terrorist attack, that is truly frightening, but the people in Syria, in particular, experience that constantly from our bombs, from the Syrian government, from Isis, from other gangs of thugs in Syria, now also

from Russia and Great Britain.

 

At the same time they are continuing to resist oppression, sending us information, holding marches, speaking out. This resistance is not reported in the media and not supported by any outside assistance.

 

 

Abounaddara is a collective of anonymous videographers who post 4 minute clips every Friday. Each clip interviews an individual revealing their personal perspective, or follows someone in their home, or reports on a concert or some other act of creative resistance. In speaking with individuals they reveal the complexities of the situation.

 

For example in “No Exit” a young filmmaker speaks first of the participants in the revolution bringing together very disparate people, and particularly in prison real criminals are thrown together with children, truck drivers and political criminals. Then he speaks of the contradictions of both Isis and Assad tolerating people who oppose them, until they decide one day not to and kidnap or kill them. There is no clear line of right and wrong, of good and bad, of winning and losing anywhere in Syria.

 

Abounaddara has recently been praised by the art world, and included in the Venice Biennale.

 

This Fall, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in New York gave Abounaddara an award, an exhibition and a symposium.

They are a sophisticated group of artists, theoretically literate who are tired of what they call “televampirism” of the news, the representation of victims and its perpetrators.

 

The grizzly images of dead bodies become what they refer to as “the banalization of evil.” (Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase) They feel that “television can inform while respecting human dignity.” They resent anonymous social media with “low informational value” gobbled up by the international press. Abounaddara believes that those taking these images are motivated by “revenge” and provide  a “voyeuristic” view of violence.

They claim “The Right to the Image” they seek to “Stop the Spectacle’. They believe that “The persons whose humanity is suppressed in images from wars, mass violations of human rights and other similar situations are not allowed to speak. Their humanity stops at the rights of bystanders to freedom of expression . . . Your wounds can speak, but you cannot.”

 

I was fortunate to see the last segment of their exhibition in New York. While all of the videos are online to view, the curated selection in New York juxtaposed three videos at once on different walls of the gallery. Surrounded by the large projections in a public space magnified the experience.

 

The videos sometimes had little or no dialogue, only actions, frequently it was a single person speaking. The political positions of the speakers varied, Alevi, resistance fighter, ordinary person, government prisoner, ISIS detainee, sniper, musician. In each case, as the person spoke, or moved about their home, or described their experience, or stated their opinion, they spoke with dignity.  It was deeply moving.

 

Somewhat similar in intent, although less embedded in theory,  are the tactics of the resistance blog

Syria Freedom Forever

 

We see individuals on the ground holding signs and drawings about their situation. They are communicating directly with us. As more and more countries decide to bomb Syria, and more and more people leave, these are the people, men, women, children, elderly, who are still there, on the ground.  They are surviving, but they want our support. The support I am giving today is to write about their condition.

 

Schools are bombed, bakeries are bombed, civilian homes are bombed. Markets are bombed.

 

These two projects enable people in the midst of the Civil War to speak for themselves.

 

And then we have the issue of refugees and our hostility in the US to giving shelter to those who are trying to escape. As of November 17 there were 4.3 million Syrian refugees. Turkey as over half of them. Lebanon another million, Europe 680,000. Canada is welcoming them. Obama has suggested 10,000, as ignorant politicians encourage people to refuse them.

 

As the media, across the political spectrum, (with the exception of the non commercial Democracy Now and a few other alternative sites), repeat over and over, that we are afraid, we are concerned about terrorism, it fans the flames of the fear of all Muslims, all others. Racism toward all nonwhite people is escalating.

 

Lack of gun control is obviously the single most lethal source of danger in the US.

 

But, in reality, if we were to allow people here to speak for themselves, as individuals, as Abounaddara does in Syria, we would discover many more complex feelings than simply “fear”.

 

If the images from Syria Freedom Forever were posted every day on the front page of newspapers, or blogs, everyone would agree that more aggression toward the Middle East is useless, cruel, and obscene.