VLC Prize Recipient
Abounaddara
Winner of The New School’s 2014 Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, Abounaddara is an anonymous collective that emerged at the onset of the civil uprising that led to the Syrian Civil War.
A self-styled “emergency cinema,” Abounaddara transcends mainstream war reporting by making use of both the wide reach and anonymity afforded by online video platforms. Through brief impressionistic videos often focusing on a single individual, the group’s work depicts daily life in a society wracked by ongoing atrocities sniper—whose interview is intercut with images of a shooting video game—who estimates that he has killed up to 600 people but still cries for his wife’s miscarried child; an “unknown soldier,” depicted in shadows and tortured by memories of the atrocities he has seen; an Alawite woman discussing how she became a rebel sympathizer; a young man disappeared into police custody. To Abounaddara, defending the “right to the image” as a human right drives their work. Collectively these weekly video missives fight for the freedom and dignity of all Syrians, implying that the Syrian crisis is far from “local” or “isolated,” but is a matter of global concern and global doing.
Related
VLC Prize Announcement
2014-2016 Prize Recipient: Abounaddara and The Right to the Image
Oct 1, 2014
Screening
Abounaddara
Jan 1, 2015
Prize Ceremony
Abounaddara. The Right to the Image
Oct 22–Oct 24, 2015
Conversation, Panel
Abounaddara. The Right to the Image
Oct 22, 2015
Panel
Syria, Freedom of Speech, and Responsibility of Representation: The Films of Abounaddara as Tools to Enact the Right to the Image
Jun 16, 2015
Exhibition
Abounaddara. The Right to the Image
Oct 22–Nov 11, 2015
Exhibition
Abounaddara. The Right to the Image
Oct 23–Nov 7, 2015
Network
- ⁕ Long March Project
- ⁕ Alia Swastika
- ⁕ Hetti Perkins
- ⁕ Theaster Gates
- ⁕ Mai Abu El-Dahab
- ⁕ Hannah Meszaros Martin
- ⁕ Dinh Q Lê
- ⁕ Miguel Angel Rojas
- ⁕ Lee-Ann Buckskin
- ⁕ Ute Meta Bauer
- ⁕ Marina Naprushkina
- ⁕ Attilia Fattori Franchini
- ⁕ Forensic Architecture
- ⁕ Khaled Malas
- ⁕ Galit Eilat
- ⁕ José Roca
- ⁕ Mariam Ghani
- ⁕ Jenny Holzer
- ⁕ Dorothy Q. Thomas
- ⁕ Catherine Masud
- View All