Detainees in the Syrian regime’s prisons are subjected to “extermination” according to UN investigators. And the most undignified images of that extermination were exhibited at the UN in March 2015, without the world even lifting a finger. So stop exhibiting indignity, which endorses apathy, and instead show the Syrian struggle for dignity. That is the […]
[This post comprises the audio and transcript – with supplements – of the talk I gave in the morining of Saturday March 7, 2026 at the National Association of Art Education Annual National Convention in Chicago, during the Art Education Journal Special Issue Panel ‘Critical Peace Art Education for Social Justice’, with Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Mira […]
[This post was made a day later – on Saturday March 7, 2026 not Friday March 6, 2026 – because I was at the National Art Education Association annual conference, where I delivered my presentation ‘Insistence as Radical Empathy’. Even though I re-post the films of Abounaddara without a direct connection to the filmmakers, my […]
Listening to this space I sound this space Listening to the energy of all who are present I sound this energy. Listening to my listening and your listening I make this music here and now with the assistance of all that there is. I dedicate this music to a world without war. – Pauline Oliveros […]
On December 30th 2023, I visited artist David Harding at his home in Glasgow. Among the things we spoke about, he told me the story of the poem called ‘The Last Lauch’ by poet and classicist Douglas Young. As town artist in Glenrothes from 1968 to 1978, Harding used some of the pavement and road building budgets […]
Abounaddara Collective’s Journey in Winter – Aesthetics of Material Absence Another view of the journey’s materiality as a narrative of dissent comes from the short film Journey in Winter by the Abounaddara collective, which operates from inside Syria. The collective is made up of a group of anonymous Syrian filmmakers whose works have raised awareness about the political and […]
The Syrian who wanted the Revolutionby Abounaddara The Syrian who wanted the revolution is not in opposition. S/he does not belong to the system of opposition, the product of a power struggle in Assad’s Syria. S/he did not go out onto the streets to bring down the regime, but rather to shout: “Thieves, thieves” and […]
In another Abou Naddara video, titled “Everything is under control Mr. President,” we peer out a doorway at a man standing silently in a sun-drenched alley. After 45 seconds, the view shifts to the same man in a courtyard, seen first from a few feet away, then closer. As the image dissolves to white, a […]
