 This panel is focusing on conflict, ethics and aesthetics and I'm really delighted and honored to be on this panel with this very esteemed group of individuals and also in this room with this very esteemed group of individuals. It's been a really stimulating couple of days so far and I really hope with this panel that we can try and have a very open discussion. So I really encourage you please to be engaged, ask questions, any thoughts that come to your mind, please feel free. Just don't wait for us to try and mark the moment for questions. Please just put up your hand if you want to do it, ask anything and we can engage free and open debate which would be nice. So this panel, conflict, ethics and aesthetics. Now the question that was thrown to us before I get onto the panel was, the question that was thrown to us by IETM was looking at the power of the arts to prevent, engage in and overcome conflict which puts a lot of pressure you could be arguing in on the artists themselves and to try to prevent conflict and whether arts can prevent conflict and whether the situation in Syria will be different now if just the artists have been a little bit more active, you know we were about a nice peaceful transition. But I think there is something in this question of engaging in conflict and artists and art, if art is engaging in the world as it is and every piece of art is a political piece of art, art therefore is inherently engaged in conflict too. And a lot of the talk so far has been in terms of looking at freedom of expression as very much a, you know it is somewhat of the assumption that the expression is going to be benign and good and the force for good but as obviously art can also be a tool for engaging in conflict and instrumentalise about provoke and continue conflict and possibly we'll talk a little bit about this on this panel. However it can also provoke empathy to those living in times of conflict and you may be wondering what I'm doing being chairing this panel and being based in the UK, but a lot of the work that we do both within the Shadak Festival and Planet Arts which is an organisation which I was involved in co-founding and works in collaboration with artists in times of conflict and looks through this prism of engaging with areas in times of conflict through the arts and in many ways we can be accused of instrumentalising the arts in bringing, trying to bring different narratives around people living in areas which happen to be in times of conflict. But at the same time it could be argued that we are in some way to reinforce those narratives. So I was looking back over some of the events that I've been involved in since Highland Arts was founded in 2008 and so in 2008 we did an event called Creativity versus Distortion, contemporary Iraqi arts, and then in 2012 Culture and Their Fire Creative Resistance in Syria, 2013 Art, War and Peace Responses in the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, 2015 Writing in the Time of Conflict and Crisis, and so once we're really trying to use the arts as a way to open up discussion and essentially re-humanise areas in times of conflict and people living within them and change the idea that they are just numbers and somehow abstract, it could be argued at the same time that we're in some way to reinforce those narratives and so I'd love to have a discussion with the panel about that. So I'm just going to very briefly introduce the panel and I'm going to ask them each to make a short intervention on between five to ten minutes and then we'll probably have a little discussion. Oh yes, we have a question already. In the language question, please don't forget that for me it's not my modern language. I apologise. Do some more. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. But I'm delighted to be joining from left to right with Roger Assoff Roger Assoff, a steam theatre maker, critic and thinker and politically engaged artist and based here in Beirut, who will be telling us about his work and his thoughts on the topic of freedom of expression. Next to him is Judith Knight, who is founder and director of arts admin, which is a London based organisation, supporting I would say some of the most interesting politically engaged performing arts projects in the UK. Then next to me we have Alma Salam, who many of you will know, who is from Syria currently based in Canada, independent arts curator, organizer and activist. Next to her is Mohammed Adalajee, who spoke yesterday using a film maker and director based in Baghdad and has made numerous films in our absence to the invasion in 2003. Next to him is Tania Ashgoudi, Tania Ashgoudi, and a member of the Dictaphone Group, who appeared and spoke about him yesterday as a performance artist and theatre maker, whose work focuses on the personal and the political and based between Beirut and London, Sabarra, and then we have Ma'an Havitalab on the end, who's a writer and thinker, also based between Beirut and London, mainly in Beirut, as of two days ago I think, Ma'an, and he's the founder of Ma'azok, and we'll be talking about that. So they will all introduce themselves a bit more depth and talk about specific projects, which relate to this thing, but if I can begin by handing the floor to Rajay, and if you'd be so kind to present. It's called upon liberation and freedom. We were always enthusiastic for the victories against colonialism and we believed that freedom of expression is very important for us pioneers in democracy, but then afterwards we learned from the recent history and after the disappointment because of what came after communism, we learned that the institutions that were built on the basis of freedom and having the conditions of freedom were subjected after all to the interests of the governmental authorities or non-governmental authorities that assign their mechanism and their objective. And our question today is the freedom that we're calling for, is it a part of the conflict for authority or between the different authorities and powers or is it a democratic project so that everyone and all people can express themselves and know more about the opinions of others? There is a proverb in Lebanon that says this is a lesson for those who like to learn. Around Lebanon, we have many countries where people are subjected to censorship, to strong censorship, but in Lebanon we have certain artificial liberalism and we have weak governmental institutions in front of sectarianism and then we have different trends of censorship, governmental censorship, sectarian censorship, social censorship, religious censorship, and we have also a foreign censorship. All of that gives to our media work and our artistic work some sort of a zigzag asylum in Ski. The development of the relationship between the media and authority make it today that politicians use and so they use the media the way they want and in a way that is only in the interest of the publisher. So it doesn't mean that media is an ally with democracy and it doesn't mean that it's used for the participation of citizens in politics. This is why it's important to integrate freedom of expression in the right of the professionals of expression meaning writers, artists so that the conflict between the freedom of expression and censorship becomes a necessary battle if we want democracy. Of course I don't want to deny the importance of these rights and the importance of this battle, however we need to be aware of mixing sense and meaning with profession and we shouldn't limit liberty and freedom and the freedom of expression because liberty and freedom is for everyone while the expression of freedom is not limited to us. I will not stop at what happened recently in Lebanon since 2005 the 8th of March the 14th of March and all what followed all the bazaar that followed so I will not speak about this so we have seen a lot of the absence actually we saw the absence of impartiality and the media has become a state for its users so each media channel follows the discourse of the one who is dominating it and we don't have a way of receiving the news in an objective way we have more sectarianism more inciting to sectarianism to have a liberal democratic media is something else we see today that in the media we see the sectarianism and how people are divided however we can see that the conflict for power and for authority like everywhere else in the world is linked to the necessity to do something necessity for action because the media don't find any platform for themselves unless they are backed up by a strong group by a strong ideology there is also the financial problems in culture and in media this is why they need the resources from the capital that are distributed more than any time before based on their belonging to the prevalent politics which terms and interpretations are made by the interests of different nations if we look at the different tv channels we have many questions here about the freedom of the individuals that are there they don't have opinions they have only the opinions of their bosses of their employers that use their money only to control these media outlets and if you were to look at what happened recently in france the country of lights where the freedom of expression was born so if we look at what happened lately in france we are really surprised to see the discrimination that is done under the name of democracy and in the name of freedom of expression i don't want through my sincere intervention but ask a few questions to discuss and i want to remind you of some principles that we find in the collectivity and that makes us meet all together and discuss topics just like what we're doing now under the umbrella of the legal and legislative logic that makes it important to have freedom of expression and journalism literature and art and to fight for it we find also that there is this possibility of people wanting to fixate this freedom of expression i need to explain this more i know to be able to understand this idea this paradox between freedom of expression and expressing freedom reflect upon these concepts freedom of expression that is embodied in the palestinians that are their occupied lands and the freedom of expression that the zionists have and the free world so this expresses freedom but this doesn't have the freedom of expression and the other one enjoys the freedom of expression but expresses the denial of freedom and we are of course overlooking both and we deny also the Islamic terrorism and we want to acquit ourselves of it so that we can follow the westerners who sometimes want to show themselves as big partisans of freedom freedom of expression yes but so that we can express freedom the authority of the politicians and the democracies can paralyze freedom of expression in a dangerous way because they don't need repression and oppression when the individual has no more the will to search for freedom so they give this to the media and they give their thinking also to this media and they don't want to think anymore themselves what to say about different ambitions and practices and the differences between them i don't know to defend the freedom of journalism arts and literature and to defend freedom of expression freedom of opinion is a cause that is inevitable however these are necessary conditions and insufficient conditions so necessary but insufficient the danger lies within the institutions that are asking for it or only exercising it in their own interest we see it in these institutions the democratic institutions like the parliament the syndicates and actions etc and the other illusion is considering that the abundance of the new social media that are not controlled by a censorship that they are representing democracy while we know that the highways and the traffic of the news does not mean that there is democracy it means that nothing is forbidden anymore because freedom of expression means a continuous battle to develop the capacity of all people to speak their mind through their access to the ideas of others through communicating with them which means a new way of thinking to put an end to the inequality of rights freedom of expression yes but so that we can express freedom thank you freedom of expression and if anybody has any thoughts or questions or questions on the side of the stage please do feel free to engage and i wanted to ask you Roger if i might also about your your practical lived experience here in Beirut in terms of offering avenues for free expression through the shams theater and i wondered if you could just tell us very briefly about the concept in your mind in bounding the theater shams theater or the cultural center of shams was established from two eyes based on two ideas the first idea is giving away to the new creative youth space so that they can express themselves so they can meet with each other especially for those who come from the extremities of our Lebanese society and second or the second idea i founded it so that we can discuss sectarianism not theoretically but practically through finding and implementing works that gather people from different beliefs and different sects in one work but not just in one discussion because discussion comes after work so for us censorship and freedom of expression here i can say that i never had a problem with censorship in my life but censorship had a problem with me and this is the main difference that makes my work important because i don't care about censorship i say what i want to say whatever the conditions of censorship are and then the censorship will have a problem because they need to find a window so that they can interfere and reduce the impact of what i'm doing so i don't think about censorship i don't care about it but they will have to think about me thank you very much and then in my mind and i'll move on to you judef microphone please this is possible because i'm in Lebanon but in another country it's not possible maybe i would have been in exile or in prison thank you and so judef you would give us an overview of the work in my mind both of us have worked in showcasing the work of artists and we're active in areas of understanding and i'd love to hear some of your thoughts on the framing and how you represent this work okay i'm going to stand over there i'm just going to show some images of some of the work we do but i would like to say i'm absolutely not an expert in art and culture and uh and i'm quite reluctant on this panel but it's very hard to say uh no to julienne as anyone can say it's all her philosophy talking here to hear what oh yes yes yes yes so i'll just explain you some of the work we're doing it's also strange to be on this panel from the uk because of course we have our own conflicts we have increasing inequality we have future divisions we have the disaster that is great and we have an increasing and very frightening amount of anti-corona and we have the extra on the picture talking about fortress europe this morning i think it's also talking about thinking about fortress uk because of the member tower to do this even europeans are foreign enough to learn everything else so it's a scary moment i think in the history of our country and but here am i in the middle east it's amazing to be here but surrounded by countries that have suffered much more than we have the fact the embarrassing thing is that the shameful thing is that ritzing has been responsible for much of this right from the carving of the northeast enjoying lines on sand many years ago uh without even talking about so many disasters intervention in the north so i should walk about with the big banner she is saying and sorry it's not my talk um even islands you know we're down in the north what a great history i'm saying so i'm just going to tell you a little bit of what we're trying to do in uh in reparation maybe at least something else that we've worked with this is us and we're based in east london and this is our building um and we've been asking to cross all disciplines from visual arts to theater to uh gallery in galleries and theaters and there's lots as we can be talking about yesterday in the public ground i think that's the organization terrifying these are some of the projects we've done and a lot of the work increasing this by just a page this was actually in xeric which some of you will know it's a very divided city in us but this project here was the first one i've been to talk to which is about which is a project of rhea miller who uh is being added on time now the great way to track all the places in europe and north america where people have literally fallen from a plane there are think trapped about 35 people who would try to get into europe a scientist or people seeking red align by actually hanging on to the the wheel cover of the aeroplane and unbelievably staying there until the plane lands and comes into e-gravel or jmsk and shards and grain these people just disappear and what grain wanted to go and make a memorial to these people so we tracked many of these sites around europe and around what i reckon was an image of them into the sky and named the first time it's also become a memorial and believe this is something that the arts can do it can actually put a name to victims it can put a name to refugees it can also name food and a life and action instead of looking at people's human beings and others it's interesting in recent years more and more artists are coming to us with projects that are about issues we as i said we've been going for many years they often before we're still doing wonderful art but i think the artist has a feeling that they want to do more about the current stage of the world and to me i don't really have a problem with artists being used to do that to be like as long as they want to do it but then we can never force an artist to do a project on that and of course if he's coming from the heart of that artist and i see my job as encouraging him to make that happen this project i'm hardly going to speak about because tanya is here on the panel so this he's done exactly what for me i've found is profoundly we want to do a tiny bit of this but it's gone on and on and she'll tell you all about it again it does the same thing it brings those people it gives you the lives and the stories of those people this is another project we're currently doing in development and i'm hoping it's actually going to dance festival next summer this is a company called station house opera and they're working with a team of performers in gaza and of course neither can get to each other's country sets and telematic performance that actually they're merging into each other as spaces are merging into each other but they're also their bodies and their performances and they're talking to each other and relating and it's in very early stages and they're going to take a couple of years to develop i think but it's um it's interesting to me that the gardens don't want to talk about the conflict they want to talk about the daily life they're having and they want to connect with daily life of london performance and there was as an academics many of you have got the help of jimms thompson who's done a lot of research into things and actually drawn up a sort of matrix that's actually it's easy to talk to make performance about conflict you feel further away in space and time or further away in minds and then it is if you're in the middle of the what we will be making more of but maybe not about the conflict itself in this case this will develop i hope in 2017 at the end of empathy we talked a lot about these things today uh as well empathy is in the end similarly it's a it's a bit short on the ground of an element especially in the UK this artist Claire Fete has made a project called Museum of Empathy a one one of these projects is called the mine and my shoes which is the many of them the expression walk a mile in my shoes and you'll understand about my life and so this project you have to wear somebody else's shoes for more half a mile there and half a mile back you must wear the shoes whether they're hiking shoes or whatever you listen to the story of a stranger so again it's trying to make the other it's somebody you understand and then and this is developing this project you've already done it in several places it's going and the stories have come with it so again incredibly good and then again i mean this is interesting there's climate change is it conflict yes i think it will be so anyway we're doing a lot of work about the issue of climate change um we are part of the 1920 20 members of european that's a lot of organizations and all of us are making work about the issue of climate because if we don't for us this is the most important subject we don't address this properly then the refugee crisis will be unconstitutional and we've made what we've got going on now so this is a really important direction again this project is called the museum of water and it's by an artist called Amy Sharrocks that's bringing to attention the necessity of water and that's a precious resource we have and she's got about six or seven donations of bottles of water from people bring the water with the story attached it has to be a house to have a story it might be your baby's first at the bath water it might be an empty bottle of water where there is a water flood we have a little bit of water from the the ice cap on the the Antarctic which is a hundred the vial of 129,000 year old water and so we do a festival every two years called two degrees festival which is again about art and activism climate change and i'm just showing the images i'm not going to explain the problem this varies from work indoors and outdoors there's a lot of it participation and getting the audience engaged and it's not just for the audience to walk in terms of conflict there are two projects i wanted to bring up really produced of this beautiful film installation by Zarina Vindy called Jambar which is also an exquisite piece of work and i think it's talking about aesthetics and conflicts in the same in the same sentence because it's so beautiful to look at the sounds of it broadly but it's it's all the way through it's got this incredible strong hint of the colonial classic shot in kenyan and it through the sound in the subtlest way the sound of the energy she brings about what happened to this the louder the history of it and there's a project i haven't got with me because we didn't produce but i just wanted to in case anybody never seen it i'm listening to one of the artists this morning talking about sign books because the organisation under the art age and they commissioned two artists from sarah eva to make a film called one thousand three hundred ninety five days without rent which was the most extraordinary thing i think i've seen i wish it had been the project we've done and it was just people queuing up to trying to cross the street uh there was no glass there was no gunfire it was just people walking down the street and waiting to see if they'd and the tension and the fear that you feel by watching it even though it's there was nothing violent to see it was absolutely incredibly strong and gave me a stronger impression of imagining living in that city and that scene because i've never i've never seen that scene and then i mean that's it i mean the question i always ask myself is does it make any difference is it totally irrelevant um here we are having this conversation in this amazing place and it's only over the board that sport is going on in the left hand this unimaginable and so sometimes it might do me as men i think it's not making a difference at all but you have to pick your own suppose you have to think to carry on if you'll make a difference in the end um the question is i suppose are we only reaching i mean we've discussed all these things i guess but audiences who will come anyway and totally believe what we all believe can we fight timidly with art i love the Picasso quote saying painting isn't done to decorate departments it's an instrument of war uh is it more authentic when the work's made with the people who are suffering in the complex or am i not the people there was a some of you again heard of an Argentinian director called Lola Arias who made two extraordinary pieces of work one with the sons and daughters of Pinochet's victims and Pinochet supporters and more recently one with soldiers from Falklands from English and Argentinian soldiers on stage together which is really kind of extraordinary thing but again it's the answer what are we affecting everything and that age old question of the photographer taking a photo of the dying charms in ways for the to say to the general price or use for the details the photo we asked to tell the world what's going on um when i do get the evening um which is quite interesting uh i come back to this quote by an Scottish man called A. L. Kennedy who just gives me a bit of hope that uh we are doing something useful i might need to talk about the translation that it says i believe in what we might call unnecessary beauty in art as an artist i would say that but then again individuals and groups are sought to control or extinguish populations to marginalize or demonize they seem to believe in the power of art even more than i do they are only seek out of the strictness internet ideas and chronic joys we find in the songs we sing the stories and travel with us the verses the sustainants the paintings and drawings and sculptures and windows and buildings and voices and performances images that lift us and give us dignity the things that show us the light in our art and in ourselves the things that show us individual human beings have the power to create wonders which last them from which transcend every classification of gender race religion nationality or age and i think that was jizz we are so basically a tyrannical legions and dictators if they really in the power of the art then we know better too and if we can't stop the barrel balls of today we have to hope we'll make a difference tomorrow thank you really wonderful i just want to ask you one question went just at the very beginning even before you made your presentation you said the work that you did was in preparation and i wonder do you do you feel that it is in some way i know it's you know but do you feel that it's always that there is a duty for organizations based from countries where there is obviously a huge power in terms of conflict in patients with the other countries that you may be working with artists from Syria or based in Syria or artists from Iraq or Russia do you feel that there is a duty for organizations based in the UK to engage with these regions and to engage with conflicts in the UK we don't bring in companies into our venue or anything from anywhere much i mean that mostly we're working with UK countries but i think i think there is a duty upon us all but and i really think it's a duty upon artists i really don't go along with artists on needing to take take this stuff seriously they're able to do it they should do it and i think the best thing we could hope to do is change attitudes in the UK particularly and i think i think as i said before i think the issues of the refugees i mean Britain is going to take 20,000 refugees 20,000 over four years that's 5,000 a year the one problem thousand a day going to Lesfos so that's pretty shaming i do so actually i think and the press i mean like you were talking about the press the Breitman press it's all the talk about the science seekers and it's very very negative and i think if we can do anything at all we can change attitudes to those people in the Middle East who are at least trying to get out of the countries they can't live in any one of their time being and i think that even if it's changing the UK minds it's at least doing something but who knows it's a struggle i would like to do them survey will they can do something they say now do you have your mind to change this group we have in the room is a very socially artistically and socially engaged group and i sometimes wonder about the work that we do if we should actually be trying to form media partnerships with you know the day you mail or the right wing newspapers in the UK to try and reach out to the audiences because the work that we tend to do even if we do work in the public realm still the majority coverage we get it's from more of that and i think it is a real challenge and we need to try and think about it do this kind of work is going to be the breakout of these bubbles and i'd like to move on now if i may move on mamad if you wouldn't mind i'd like to move on to you mamad yesterday and some of you i'm sure are very familiar with his work mamad is a hugely talented filmmaker who's been working face between the UK and iraq but now primarily based in iraq and he's made a number of future films and filmed in iraq and so mamad i wanted to first just ask you a little bit about i suppose your film making career in engaging with iraq film that i know of the from your catalogue about first reading in iraq is that correct and so could you maybe tell us a little bit i'm sure someone's many years old have seen him but could you tell us maybe a little bit about the film and what you made us and why you decided to make it i used to study in the UK doing my thing at least when the world started in iraq in 2003 and i saw a precaution in the BBC about the mental institution but and how it was hit by the bomb and then i saw a girl and she went right to us this is a precaution and she speaks a non-understandable language either Kurdish or Arabic or any of the language so the image of this girl shocked me just about the world to finish and i was like to finish my name and i want to pack that and i saw the city how it was damaged by the war in 2003 and it's like a city that i don't know anything about it it was like a sunstorm hit the city all the time and everything's being changed in the current of the year so as far as my family my family was the oldest where i was the only one that we had the oldest here in the world and it was us and then i went to the mental institutions and i was living for this year and i couldn't sit with her for a difficult condition and then i started to get this story of how it looked during the war and how the mental institution was going and then i spent about four weeks going there in the middle of the year started like my first future home there and the question that i raised was like really ill people of people people still try to sit in the middle of the world they might have to put in normal people and shooting is in the war zone but if there is no thing to exist for the normal you need to be also unknown and you need to find your way of putting things together and in the end it replace a lot of physical and a lot of problems and you come on like this situation so it was and at the same time have a crashing car from the other hand and but i didn't want to kill people so my staff was telling me you're coming from europe and making fun of us so why are you holding this gun this arm we had many many different situation we were arrested by the americans they considered that we were part of the kaida making movies for al-qaeda and that we are the remainder of al-baas party and we face problem with shia shia ita militias as well so we faced many problems in iraq back then it was very difficult but we find a pleasure a pleasure as a human being wherever you are you need to seek your your routine to find your presence the essence of your presence to be in a place and discover yourself because our journey as a human being is or aims at discovering oneself and all this human crisis are in my point of view positive experience because life is not made of always made of good moments but we have to live the bad so that was our journey we made the movie and our work started to develop in iraq and in the times of violence and war and especially when you are in the middle of bombs and uh shelling you ask yourself what is the art what is cinema is it a big lie we hear art about art about cinema about defending your personal opinion but when you are in the middle of life and death you make fun of yourself and the people start to make fun uh about themselves and you because it's a kind of irony in the middle of all this destruction you are trying to hold the camera and sing a song uh we used to sing when having the camera on we have a country we have it up if you want me to sing it no no i won't be singing it and then we you want me to sing in the in our in my movie i have the i say that my country is the joy is the dream is everything and when the 35 is on we are alive we are the humans etc so it was like a fun song what i want to say is that in the middle of war and destruction we created life and we started partnership with the iraqi association that was supporting the creation of cinema and trying to make sure that the cinema is a guarantee for our presence what i want to comment concerning our discussion now i'm talking only about iraq and that can be generalized what happened in iraq i expected that art will be so diminished and far from people and that's why the oppressive and dictatorship ideas uh they control over anything that we can see we have to ask ourselves a question as artists there's a public are we close to that public are we communicating with that public directly and maybe the lack of communication made the the culture of violence prevail and now we are seeing its repercussions in many countries we all have one concern from algeria to iraq to afghanistan because violence is everywhere and that's why i hope that we as artists ask ourselves is our art and the culture a reason that led our people to where to where they are and maybe we bear some of their responsibility um i think that's a really interesting point that you end up in terms of the responsibility before i wanted to ask you a question about you reflecting on the topic of this panel and looking at ethics and ethics of working in areas in terms of conflict i wonder it must it must have been challenging for you to come from the uk to iraq in a time of conflict and then have a local crew working and necessarily endangering their lives to fulfill the projects of the artist and i wonder about some of the ethical questions around that how you dealt with that public within a land but also within your in taser castle because obviously you've stayed working in iraq and i'm sure those questions have necessarily gone away where do you want to reach especially in moments of weakness moments where we used to cry where we used to be in the midst of killing the killing was in front of us we were in haifa street the dasa street and we witnessed the killing of a man so you ask yourself what is the cinema that you are trying to create and to make when people are being killed in front of you or a colleague is shot when when working so this question will accompany you and you will have to ask yourself do you believe in what you do and are you willing to sacrifice yourself and the others especially when you are responsible because the responsibility is something very critical you have to be responsible of yourself and all the artists and the crew but the strange thing is that when you enter the moment of the crisis or the problem you won't be asking these questions you have a problem and you will try to address this problem or be a part of the solution and after every movie i make or every workshop i make in iraq i always ask myself this question was it worth it my coming here is worth it but i was very encouraged when all the project that we were doing were far away from the people of iraq we were many people from outside iraq watched my movies but iraqis didn't and now after the project the moving cinema we were able to transfer and to move with our movies in the different iraq cities and villages and when you see people that are not related to art how they react the happiness on their face that will give you an extra motivation as well my colleagues coming from britain or france or the us italy etc when accompanying me during the shooting of the movie they are all afraid first of all having many questions in mind concerning what they are coming to do and between you and i sometimes i even lie in order to inside them to come but when they enter Baghdad or the environment we have created in Baghdad that they immediately feel very happy and work very actively forgetting about the violence we've discussed it was you and i and you've asked me about Baghdad i've told you that in Baghdad you have zero zero zero point zero point zero point eight percent of being that per day that are eight million so you can in a place of violence create things but always this question will remain why are you doing this uh why am i creating this that might stop you for a moment but you will soon come back raised in Iraq first of all i would like to thank the organizers for putting this session on the program it's really very rewarding to finally start talking about conflict and ethics and that's the only thing about the role of artists in our culture i think we've been talking about this for five years now so it's and at the same time the question of ethics and making the case for us for it keeps roaming among us is this arts reduced is it quality arts can we call it arts and all those questions i think that it's also very interesting to question us then uh what what should we do and how do we need this to work the ethical and ethical questions of conflict but i'll start by challenging the title uh of how was it yeah exactly well i don't think that anyone in the world can't prevent conflict i think that conflict is this is a natural process it's like life and it's like there's no one can stop conflict i also believe that uh on the contrary arts uh provide the platforms and legitimacy for conflict this is what i said in the first question if you remember the only stations the only place where it's pleasant to kill someone and to express anger to to do a hate speech and i'm for embracing all those um arguments and all those hideous aspects of of of and to support artists and art spaces to be a safe space for any kind of expression including the obvious one um in order to tackle the link between aesthetics and ethics conflict i would like to ask the question uh about the uh about uh legitimacy of another hangar movement can we speak about another hangar movement in the region and can we say that this was a creative revolution i think that the um maybe an interest to to link aesthetics to conflict is back to the words that we all know when we started to forget revolution was this a creative revolution so critics like claude and foster and said that the legitimacy of the hangar we can talk about the hangar movement if it was missed or a comprehensive critic of the bourgeoisie of course this isn't really the old line uh old line as well i think that we can rid of the theory and you can say yes uh the new art world uh they they did uh the criticism not only to bourgeoisie as a class but also to all systems of values uh in societies in the region uh they they uh it criticized the we saw a rapid uh expansion of conceptualism we saw new ideas we uh we saw a need to uh to distract and also to distract the following dominant ideologies of aesthetics like for example the vast ideologies uh aesthetic values we can talk about this very much and we know that it can now go down to the different cover of our books that we we used to have at school so we can talk about a lot of values of aesthetics that the revolution or the new projects managed to this decrease the age of destruction um so in the case of our youth in the region we went even more far into this building so not the only marketing social group we'll do but also uh the tackling social issues like corruption injustice abuse of freedoms and uh and also the over the past years and since 2017 the internet profession moved from endless of ideas to perfect new laws of exploration uh from evidence to the doubtful you started doubting and from a shackled clear travel transfer imposed by hideous doctors and regimes to an open space of new questioning and questions and i give that this is one of the key rules for for what art does is not about answering what's answering uh putting answers but it's mainly about questioning and this is this is where physical thinking comes really high as a privacy so it also uh we we see an openness to new global trends of genuine solidarity and new friendships a new surface in the art i would call it new institutions but i would call it new surface in the art also i believe the response to that question of legitimacy and link between aesthetics and and conflict um the question is that um this is a new set of ethics the statistics uh that uh related to conflict did it happen because this historical moment uh above the visual and artistic community created the funding need for research for finding new resources for education of skills uh also across all genre is it because we witnessed the birth of new definitions new experimentation created processes and new genre is it because of the pressure and to express it more in depth level of sophistication so really we saw for the first time uh the need to be to be sophisticated in times where this wasn't necessarily a need in the past set of values uh all those issues i might come back later on but i i believe that uh uh this is an effort interest to linking uh to start thinking maybe and thinking about the nature of those things and challenging ourselves did we go through uh the revolution can we speak about this did we see uh results and changes the level of aesthetic and religion thank you all my people that question our point from the back to your microphone what you said there about the questions that i can be answered reminding me of a quote from a collective called Nasa Nasi who you will know and we interviewed for the and they said that art is the unique gift of being able to provoke and make people react to questions and challenge but i've been forced to give answers and solutions in europe and syria um and so and also because there is uh a striking parallel of the situation of the region right now that has been developed today uh presented basically without the exhibition here and some of the questions we're having so we cannot bring original words from there but uh please some words but we're also looking to uh collaborate with uh artists here primarily that we need but from the discussions here we're also kind of engaged on the questions that were brought up uh just now um about questioning the studies about questioning um the situation that we're in about the role of politics about the role of the arts uh in uh addressing some of the social political issues we have data offers that kind of opportunity because that's that's what we're about anti-establishments anti bourgeois values uh anti-arts uh and they look for different ways to try and get their message across so i don't know of data movement per se in the region i don't know so but it's it's an interesting uh stone that we're going out there and hopefully we'll get some discussion going about uh art that uh that are the weird things that data did putting this in the framework of the definition i think this is what we didn't work on yet in a good way i think we might have a movement in one of the government or in the region but we didn't yet work out on the conditions and i believe very too early maybe it's not yet a generation of new practices maybe it's only flourishing uh but uh it's absolutely uh very valid to start doing this for the movement in history that will be amazing so thank you for i can just ask one question just in brief right now just as we can say that we're saying this right now but if you can tell us i know you a lot through your practical engagement with the work and i wonder if you just briefly tell us about and the third space exhibition and the product which you put together in a couple of sentences okay well the third space uh is a platform to showcase uh artwork it's called serious work space uh hopefully develop to the third space um it started uh it was based on a research uh by uh around the scheme of grants around 100 grand in a series of artists by the British Council between 2011 and 2014 and then a few after the research and the grand scheme there have been the needs to showcase uh some of the results of these grants so this is how it started uh the concept of third space uh comes from a theory developed by the artist backer the American artist in the 16th where he uh it is the origin of the philosophy of the social space it is a space that uh embraces talent that is flexible that is free that has no borders uh that uh that also at the same time is like an agorab so it's a space for negotiation for democracy for ideas uh and uh that was the idea so i took the metaphor of the third space which is a non-theory and uh i compared this to the situation of the syrian artist who were in uh placements trying to find the space that overcome the issues of uh of borders the issues of visa issues of mobility the issues of fellowship so the statement of the space is that it is a space that where an artwork can move where the artist doesn't need to be there and so in order to activate it wants to disseminate this work uh this is a russian media mostly digital platform it was excavated uh in the end of this issue now so it's a touric exhibition that started in london and went to the european parliament and to norman island but the key thing about it also it has a tool kit of educational tool kit uh in the third space i did the first twitter tool global twitter tool and i had people from around the world following me to uh to talk about the exhibition so many exciting social platform engagements and also curated conversations whatever it is uh with the plan somewhere it is also tried to create a discussion around especially about i think uh this part we focus on the role of image and what's graphic and not graphic versus ethical but uh yeah well thank you thank you sorry that was such a rapid introduction but a great overview i think that idea the twitter tour is really interesting in terms of the audiences that we were talking about and getting trying to get why their audience is engaged something we haven't really talked about over the last couple of days really is the digital and if i may now hand on to uh tanya and woody and a very talented director and artist space between main and favorite but between favorite and wrong i think you're going to talk about garden speak is that right tanya yeah and garden speak you saw one image and earlier due to this presentation but are you going to show the short film of it uh yeah i think if there are people who uh see me sure like a lot of people have seen it and obviously have not seen garden speak sorry i'm sorry you poor people well you will see a little bit there okay about my work and first of all thank you dan i would like to thank the organizers and the station i'm very happy to be in the discussions people that i respect a lot and people that are from both sides of my life from london and from maywood i'll be speaking about two shows but i think we have enough time only to speak about one show so i'll be speaking about garden speak and i'll speak about this relationship between aesthetic aesthetics and conflict political conflicts garden speak was presented actually here in the station a few months ago within spring festival it was really touching for me to be able to present it here in bay wood after it was presented in more than 15 counties around the world it's called an arabic garden speak maybe many of you saw this saw it or actually hosted it hosted its display now for those who don't know what it is i will show you a short scene so that you'll understand better what i'll be speaking about thank you so session i'll be speaking about the council and he's up if you have not seen her speak you poor people well about my work and first of all thank you dan i'd like to thank the organizers and the station i'm very happy to be in discussions people that i respect a lot and people that are from both sides of my life from london and from maywood i'll be speaking about two shows but i think we have enough time only to speak about one show so i'll be speaking about garden speak and i'll speak about this relationship between aesthetic aesthetics and conflict political conflict garden speak was presented actually here in the station a few months ago within spring festival it was really touching for me to be able to present it here in bay wood after it was presented in more than 15 counties around the world it's called an arabic al-hadha taqi garden speak maybe many of you saw this saw it or actually hosted it hosted its display now for those who don't know what it is i will show you a short scene so that you'll understand better what i'll be speaking about thank you in this session i'll be speaking about the concept of interactivity and the political dimension of interaction first of all between the artists and the participants in the work so here i mean the people that told us about the the stories of their children the activists and the journalists that you're able to interview and who gave us information as well as the other artists that participated in this work the writers the people who worked on the sound sound engineers and you have the other side that is the particular dimension of this relationship between this work and the audience and of course we can speak a lot about each of these relationships but in brief it was very important for me to search about the timeline between the political meaning of this project that is proposing a discourse that is against their prevalent dictatorship discourse or the international media and then open a discussion about how to use death to oppress people and to oppress the popular uprising or also kidnapping the corpses and not allowing them to bury their death so even if it was only through 10 stories it was still the beginning of the incidents it wasn't yet a war in Syria so we had stories of different people of regular people some of them were activists but others were only normal people like for example a teacher a person who had a grocery store and we have also the work itself and the audience here we can speak about the aesthetics about finding the political dimension of this relationship as well for example i'll speak quickly about these items what these bullet points this presentation happens without a performer i usually participate in the performance of my shows but in this show i decided that it wasn't important to have a performer because this is not my story i wanted to create an intimate space between the audience and the stories that they were listening to it was very important also to interact in a bodily way with in a physical way with the story because there are people on the ground using their hand to dig in the soil they were also writing a letter addressed to these people then burying it so they were really putting themselves in their story so that they are really testifying about these people and i noticed to which extent the audience puts itself in the place in the shoes of these people so when they're writing a letter they're speaking about themselves and not about the martyrs so they think that if they were in his shoes what would have they done or maybe they should have taken other courage and brave attitudes in other moments of their life so this artistic language that i chose this artistic language that was chosen is this and it also has a political dimension it was really great for me to see how many people saw the show they were really surprised that the place was nice and how it was equipped also was nice they expect that when an artist has a political attitude then this artist won't give enough attention to aesthetics to creativity and to the relationship of the audience with the show which was not true and so it was a long debate and it's happening everywhere in the world about the relationship between the aesthetics and the political content and many critics and many artists are sometimes facing contradictions in this regard so of course there is a problem for me and such criticism because it separates aesthetics from politics and i think or i'm trying to discover this through my work aesthetics or choosing aesthetics the choice of aesthetics is also political and has a particular dimension especially when it comes to the relationship with the audience and the content of the show thank you thanks a lot thanks a lot thank you to la ketonia go into your finance part right in some more detail with you can i just ask you um two brief points one on aesthetics which you were talking about and this is also something i was thinking about when madame was speaking and both of you are dealing with situations i mean garden speak specifically dealing with possibly one of the worst situations you could possibly have and yet you've created something with the strong aesthetic vision and you know you could say it's a beautiful creation and how did you when approaching madame try and make that balance between museum and creation of your aesthetic vision and the story that you were trying to tell i mean i don't think it's very much divided uh we need to have a new idea and a narrative idea or the language of the show the artistic language of the show is not contradictory with the political content on the contrary because it is political itself so there is no contrast for me they come together meaning the content and the picture the artistic picture so when i first started hearing about people who are buried in gardens in cilia this was really important for me and i wanted to know why it's happening like this on the political on the political level and also i wanted to see this picture of people being buried in such intimate places and because these gardens were actually gardens like yards around the houses and not public yard and not public gardens so through this show i wanted people to see this everywhere in the world and you could put your ear on the ground and they feel their stories so i invented the content myself and i created this artistic language for it and i wonder for you well two questions one our audience is important and then two if they are for 10 people at a time or 10 people and you're more recent as far as my fingers mistake me it's for one of the times right and so why have you chosen to go sorry intimate and blow against the audience so i do a lot of work for only one people at a time one person at a time three people at a time but thank you for that so because for me yes i feel really important and i always think about the targeted audience it's never one an audience actually these are people who participate with me in the work it's either people who are coming to visit where someone is worried or they participate with me in a certain game there is always a role that is played by the audience and i deal with the audience as a collaborator and not as a spectator only so there are people are collaborating with me in this show this is why we always reach this intimate relationship and this is why i don't have big groups of people it's like only one person three persons or 10 persons at a time because they have this role to play and because work is that intimate and interactive and it asks people to be interactive but also give their political viewpoint and not remain outside the story outside the content so they need to participate and show what their political viewpoint is this is why it's important for me to be in this intimate with this intimate audience i have a quick comment as a project is really great and marvelous and your idea is wonderful but with all due respect for one person for three persons this is one of the things that make me think that in culture and when you work with people we need to think about a wider audience not just the audience that is from the middle class or the elite no we know that we can always have this elite they're always with us and our ideas and the changes that we have but no we want the other audience we are proposing questions to our audience not giving them solutions let's say it's dash or mash or jahash so let's bring them and introduce them to our projects let them touch the soil where they killed these people many of these ideas should be taken by us and conveyed to the regular people that need us now especially in our regions because unfortunately we face many problems because of the ignorance because of the authorities that let us reach this phase this despotism where people don't really interact with the real culture and Syria and Iraq are the examples about that and here we're speaking about two states with one party the bad party okay i will answer you yes you're right i agree we need to always think about how the shows need to be shows not to be seen by wider audiences not only by the elite by small groups but usually these shows are repeated many times through the day and through the night and i always think about how my work can come out of go out of the art institutions so i do a lot of work in public spaces in bayou through the cta phone group and here we have people who come as participants but there are also the accident there's also the accidental audience that is just there and then they find out that they're an audience to my shows so even my work that is not done in the public spaces i try to do it outside the art institutions like in coffee shops and the street so yes i agree with you thank you very much and one way i think you also try to get the story effectively is through through the media it's one of the reasons that the strong aesthetic really works because it's picked up by the media and it makes good toxic rights because i've happened to possibly think about it also in terms of reaching wider audiences and so we're very lucky to be joined there's someone here man we've been very um studiously waiting for us so thank you very much man thank you to all of you who are sitting with us man is the final speaker on the panel and we'll talk a bit about the website which he is co-founder and founding editor of man so if you begin by talking a bit about that i want to speak a little bit about how the artwork is received when it comes from the arab world or when it's done by an arab person the situation nowadays is that the rest thing the writer the poet or the artist is responsible for is the quality of there were there are responsible or accountable for their political opinion for their discourse for the certain issues but the quality is always neglected and this happened in the both sides of the world and west and in the east in the past 20 years we didn't see a lot of criticism in the arab world but we found that the critical articles are either on the news like for example this album was issued it was produced by this and that on that date and that's it or it's some kind of a moral accountability for the artist for example this artist didn't go to that other demonstration that happened in the tahir square or this artist is racist is this and that or he is not leftist enough or rightist enough these are always questions that are not related at all to the artwork and this is a big problem in the west their only interest in the artist is through him or her being a victim so as an arab you can produce art only as being a victim or when you want to speak about victims so through this inferiority you are a victim so it's not a problem if your work is bad and this is another disaster through music we wanted to present one criteria which is quality where was where was i what we are trying to do in ma'azif is to present a sort of criticism only related to quality many people will find it it's a part of a formal school but that's what we are trying to focus on quality and our website is only in arabic because we are trying to build a racism discourse with the public with the audience before reaching the description because when talking about uncle sum in english we cannot write about it without about her without explaining whom is she but when we talk or when we write in arabic we have a common ground that we can that we can start from and then we can translate these articles but starting to write in english about the arabic and arab art is something that we cannot do and because we have to make very long introductions that's what you are working on sometimes we try to do some things that are considered to be problematic we wrote an article about the authors george rasov and many people who criticized us criticized us for that because but we said that we are not discussing the ethics of george rasov but his art we are not asking people to see george rasov as a symbol of good manners but as an artist so we are trying to focus on art on quality and the dialogue among us as our reps in order to reach new concepts and the new ideas thank you thank you so much now i'm afraid we're going to throw the panel to a close although you've opened up many kinds of words with your last intervention and including whether that is possible really to separate art from the world that's around it and the ethics of the artists and then the marketing and marketization of victimhood and violence but we're just going to save that for another day and we have to end yeah do you want to come in and find another right okay good we've got an extension right into this i have some burning questions in the audience please so just about the two because the the ethics are related to some rules and one can liberate himself from rules from time to time so is the question clear or my second question for tanya can you please tell us more about the technique you used in the garden speaking and a question to man i am a musician and i really love your website that is where i can find references and i would like to tell you that i really appreciate the website about you were saying that you are focusing on quality but i would like to ask about the criteria how do you define the criteria concerning the things that you will mention or your title yes or no thank you so we can go through the time in the moment hey i think it was a very interesting point that you brought up about the victimization or in a way even the glorification of victims especially coming from the western world which also applies to other marginalized groups and i work a lot in this way and that question always continues to come back in the rehearsal and how we can avoid these and i wanted to ask from your opinion or anyone else on the panel how you can deal with this to make two ideas i learned today in the session is the first one about creative revolution your ideas new movement and to give us time to really digest maybe and know if we are in this new era and the idea of a leg of the need of the critical the critical text writing along and i think the two are linked because the missing of the critical reading is also maybe an aspect of not knowing if we are in this great moment or not and in fact i am really being more african i jibin more african whatever i do experience this difficulty of communicating and maybe the other we will have quite a very rather occasion to see works out of work from middle east in north africa and vis versa but we also have leg writing and critical text between us like if we meet how we can talk and have a critical dialogue on what we are doing on artwork and talking about process and artwork and not talking about so that's really interesting how we can build to have this because i am also fed up with all the newspaper saying that we have a hundred percent coming they went and the minister was there or not there that's all and i so how can we create this critical interesting writing and record what we are doing because it's going very fast this question this transformative time needs to be recorded and i think we can take this authentication of this reason to think about it of course like the way you stuck on the subject concerning the victim that is beginning as a Palestinian i can tell you more about how they show you as a victim and then they will tell you why it's enough talking about that and they use the word of conflict we are not getting conflicted it is not even conflicted it is an occupation and it has not happened in iraq it was an occupation at some point i'm really fed up with these terms and of course i am very interested in the quality of the issue when i visit the arab first of all they don't give a lot of interest on the participation of the Palestinian representations and delegations so maybe there's something behind all this i don't know as if Palestinians cannot present anything that is beautiful anything anything that is related to art etc if you want to talk about the cultural movement in Palestine it is a very active movement even though we have occupation sometimes they try to tribalize that and it is a shame that the embassies are not taking that into consideration the Palestinian embassies around the world are not taking that into consideration are not shedding light on our work on our artistic work at large i want to say that sometimes some political works are very good very creative where we have a lot of aesthetics and through innovation and fantasy we were able to send the message a very important message and thank you so we need to we really need to wrap up i can ask just a panelist to give their final wrap up remarks try to stick up stick to about one minute each if possible i'll do the reverse order this time so i'll start with man before about the briefly concerning the standards our standards not subject not objective but subjective we cannot have our impression objectively on the arts this is a big line we take into consideration concerning the standards if it's something new if it's exciting if it is developing this type of music or was it that bad so we need to clarify why is it bad i won't be giving you examples though they are essentially but i don't have time concerning victimization the problem is that if the arts is not from the west don't have the right to talk about very essential and essential issues such as parenthood, jealousy, love, love needs to be under the bombs etc but the experience of someone living all this such as the person living under persecution can be reversed and we can say that person living in this environment tried oppression but tried as well in parenthood so maybe his human experience is largest and that is why he can express more about some humanitarian issues how can we develop that language first of all and the presence of a critical Arab movement because now London, Paris etc are defining what is and Berlin are defining what is a good Arab art what we have to define the good Arab art and maybe not now but after because the situation is bad concerning the Palestine i am very pleased you've mentioned Palestine because i'm Palestinian as well the question is the objective of the art is to send a message or the objective of the art is art in itself i do believe it's art and now in Palestine where you see home is very famous you can notice that there are people that are taking advantage of the Palestinian situation while people such as Camila Jobran and Tabrabu Ghazali and Muqata that are trying to do something new are barely known so no no quality in Palestine now i don't have many things to add since we are running out of time but i want to answer your question concerning how not or how to respect quality and abide by a certain form i didn't feel that well i never felt that i was presenting compromises in terms of language in terms of messages political messages etc because the artistic language have some political content and meaning and because my theater is an interactive theater where people always interact with the artist and that is a platform for innovation we don't have something abstract that we are trying to offer compromises on concerning the technique i will need much more time but the speakers are telling each speaker is telling one story related to one program that and the speaker will start telling the story once the audience is in art culture are very important in terms of prices values and worth but the quality of our work need to be at the level of the quality that we can see in countries where there's no violence the Palestinian cinema is one of the most important productions in all the region it is even better than the egyptian production not because they are victim but because they are working well yeah i just want to say that i think that only good artwork and about artwork cannot achieve the good message and as for all those experimentation validation at the end is for the audiences including critics so the the legitimacy of the artwork at the end comes to the question what extent is achieved concreteness of reality in other words what extent is irrelevant to the here and now in the world where it is and it answers the questions who the viewers are what kind of existence they have what kind of effects artwork exercise like garden speaks i would say that's changed my life i would say very many and that it was the first time i cried after the Syrian revolution and it was in garden speaks so that's it i think it's when the artwork is a life-changing experience and it just when when the subject becomes the third space when it becomes this way of imagination becomes a solution this is what artwork is and is absolutely linked to its content thank you so much i'm sorry to rush you very quickly and i agree with nearly everybody said that absolutely don't think that that aesthetics and beautiful art and politics are separate things and they even make it strongly a political work in a very beautiful aesthetic way um i think there's no harm in sending a message we need to be sending messages if that work is so deep and so strong and the fact that Tanya has 10 people at a time if they can make Alma and me cry then we go away and we tell our cousins and our aunties and uncles and our next and our friends that this was the most moving thing we've seen at that even though hundreds of people party visit at a time the depth of that experience and the beauty of how to put together are the things that make us talk about it so i think that's if the small gets doesn't worry me in the end because it the news spreads and i take the think about virtualization but i think it's how the work presented it has to do with respect to every side and believe the only chemical where i come from the more we can send a message about what's happening in and out of that and it's really important we do that through the beauty of art here we are talking about two worlds pertaining to the same family and the artists need to take into account any of those two aspects concerning the aesthetics they are very important and necessary for any artwork because art should be an entertainment but an entertainment in the service of the mind of the culture so we need to accompany it with the innovation and the artwork don't have to be doesn't have to be a tradition but an innovation and we cannot predict if the art that you are producing is we will know later on and history will give the quality the characteristic of the quality to our work and the aesthetic to our work thank you so much Raleigh yeah thank you thank you again for the room full of brilliant people together so thank you to all of you and thank you to all the panel thank you