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Silence like time stretches eternally and when the Arab subject speaks, who listens and with what preconceived notions constricting the interpretation of the words and images? We do not perceive without a massive amount of baggage informing or misinforming us [aren't these the same thing?]. We cannot perceive as neutral subjects, we are too far gone for that. It confirms the fact that we are true creatures of habit in that we insist on trying to fool ourselves that we can be 'objective', as if there was such a thing.
We have (too) many images for this place/this region and as many names but none of them are accurate or adequate: Middle East, Near East, North Africa, Magreb, Levant, Holy Land, Arab world, Muslim world, the Orient. We have too few names for the people of these places. There is a certain violence in not naming (non-recognition), just as there is an innate violence in the naming (i.e. 'terrorist' or 'prisoner') that we engage in.
If you don't recognize a people they do not exist and are treated as such whether as individuals, a community, culture, or nation. This place has been over and under-reproduced throughout the history of its representation by its visitors, its conquerors, its 'allies' and those that are passing through or situating themselves on these lands for various parts of their lives. These representations are ours. We are implicated within these constructions. Our histories are present and our projections firmly entrenched. 'Understanding' is not possible, the 'subject' can never be 'known'. The most we can ever hope for is a limited awareness of the situation on the ground, a kind of empathy, and a sense of the subjectivities at stake.
This 'program' seeks to provide an audience for a range of work by established, little-known, and completely unknown Arab videomakers living in this (unnameable) 'region'. It also includes the work of those in exile, or 'dispossession' as are Palestinian videomakers inside and outside of the 'occupied territories'. Living life, loss, love, histories, territoriality, and the failure of justice, home, memory, repression, power, occupation, neglect, rejection, resistance, youth, gender discrepancies, the body, sexuality, violence, ego, patriarchy/authoritarianism, representation, retrospection, fragmentation, displacement, exile, otherness, image, identity, struggles of self, will, survival, commitment, and responsibility are the dominant motifs. Their trajectories are traced within composite movements, singular subjectivities and a multiplicity of methodologies. In lieu of being silenced and having one's existence ignored or obliterated, these works account for marginalized voices of experience, composing a history denied and substantiating a presence, a concrete discursive body of work.
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