 evening session with our keynote presentation and I'll introduce our keynote speaker, well, I'll be asking you, you know, that just to welcome you all once again to the session, to those of you who've just arrived, to introduce very briefly the conference and give some thanks to some of the people who have organized the conference. First of all, to the Martin E. Siebel Theatre Center, to the PhD program in Theatre and Performance, both based in the Graduate Center, and to our colleagues from the University of Beirut. We are presenting this conference on the Arabic homotergies as part of an exchange that was established as a memorandum of understanding between our president, President Chase Robinson and the president of the American University of Beirut. And it gives me great pleasure just before we hear our keynote tonight to invite President Robinson, who has crucially established this exchange between the two universities to make some welcoming comments. He is an Arabist so he'll be able to thank you very much, Chase. Thank you, Peter. How many microphones you have up here? And how many computers? Well, a lot of my jobs are performative. I show up at a lot of anodyne greetings. Sometimes I do a better job than other times in feigning enthusiasm or interest. Certainly expertise. I do a lot of performing the possession of expertise that I'm actually. This is a genuinely bittersweet moment for me, in part because it's the first, actually the second or third of several events where I'm giving greetings on my way out of work. I'll be living in the Graduate Center early in December. So there's a kind of generic bittersweetness about it. But this one feels especially cute because although there are many initiatives and projects of which I have a part of the Graduate Center, this one is genuine close to my heart. And it's close to my heart because of the excellence of our theater program and the institution's commitment to humanities, but also because I spent many, many years of my life devoted to the study of Middle East in a pre-modern period. And it gave me a particular pleasure to spend some time in New York visiting with fun and quality. And call it a little bit of my lost friendships. So it is a genuine heart for me to stand before you and enthuse as much as I would like to. But what saves me from being modlin or even more modlin than I'm already being is the great pleasure in seeing this partnership which Professor Anderson dare to do in such a powerful way. This is the first of several expressions of that partnership. For instance, there are colleagues in the sciences who have begun to work together and there are plans in that center as well. But this is the very, very first manifestation of the goodwill that we gave as more contractual for the NYU that Peter mentioned. It's wonderful to invite back and like welcome to the art master's act. Great to have two visitors for the room. Great to have an international visitors. Great to meet the acquaintance of the speaker. I would like nothing more than to stay. But I'm very proud. The only motive of my responsibility is to run to another event which I can guarantee will be much more interesting than yours. It is because of the terrific set of columns we have in theater in the Segal Center that we have the tradition that we have on the go. It's part of this institution's really exceptional commitment to the humanities and performing arts, to those expressions of our common humanity in the May. I'll totalize a little bit. Mr. Carlson, as there are no more inspiring figures in our field, Mr. Carlson, that this event has taken place and the symposium has taken place. So I wish you all the best. I envy you all and I will be keeping an eye on DC, making sure that all goes well. It does feel a little bit like a parents' child in a college. And as it is a formal launch, I'd quickly like to just name some individuals who made this event possible and thank them. From the Segal Center side, of course we have Professor Frank Pagecote who is the director of this event. As a cultural producer and dramaturg, it's Salma Zondi, our colleagues from the American University of Beirut, Professor Robert Mayans and Professor Salma Asaf. It's a pleasure to travel the long way to be here and I'm going to Beirut in two weeks' time with a colleague from Philosophy and also Frank to return our visit to make a delegation there. I'd like to acknowledge Professor Marvin Carlson also from the PhD program here. We also have Professor Jim Brown-Jones from the PhD program here. So this is a topic about trying to think about dramaturgic in relation to the history, culture and practice of Arabic theater. It's a field that I don't have any particular expertise in myself, so it's very fascinating to me. Although I am very interested in dramaturgic as a way of conducting research and also a way of conducting practice. We've worked a lot on dramaturgical theory and practice in our program and this event is one of the manifestations of that. So this afternoon we get several papers I think that introduced us to various perspectives on dramaturgy, how to make theater, how to make theater in sites of occupation, how to make performance in sites where particular bodies are expected to be invisible and want to become more visible, how to make performance as a form of cultural, political, social activism. And all of those things are dramaturgic with questions because broadly they're about relating a set of ideas, a set of perspectives, a set of political possibilities to create an artistic and a mention of outcomes. And dramaturgic describes that through something from an idea or a politics or a place in the world, an experience of the world finds its representation in artistic practice. So I very much welcome all of you who've come, many of you have come from far away to present papers both today and tomorrow. And as a way of framing our conversation it's actually a great honor to introduce our keynote tonight. What I've not met you until today but I know you'll work very well because prior to coming to the Graduate Center I was working at the University of Melbourne where I met a very talented PhD student who about 10 years ago discovered your work and actually I don't know if you know this but half of her dissertation is about your work. So through this actual connection I've been introduced to a remarkable practice, a practice that is embodied, that is dramaturgical in the sense that it is about a certain kind of clarity of perspective and a certain kind of politics. And so I'm very pleased to be able to welcome you tonight and to have you present the keynote in framing our inquiry. So just as a more formal introduction I'll just read you a little bit of Watha Bilal's resume. So internationally acclaimed Iraqi American artist Watha Bilal will discuss select projects from this extensive body of work including domestic tension aka shoot an Iraqi virtual jihadi and the third Bilal work lends technology and performance to pose questions about geopolitical and personal realities with an emphasis on dynamic encounters and relational antagonisms. Watha is a working artist, he's also a professor at the New York University teaching in I think the artistic program there and a very widely recognized international artist. So welcome to the Graduate Center and welcome to this conference. Thank you so much. Please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Well thank you so much for the invite. I wanted to thank Frank and I'm glad I sent you for extended invitation to be here today. And I wanted to tell our visitors from the group, I have to be honest with you I am not an expert in theater. I'm not an expert in theater however I know what it means and how it functions in terms of engagement. It is about storytelling but in a creative way. I remember our days in Iraq and I grew up in time when we did not have television and it was all about storytelling. I think the experiences we have in our life came from our ancestors and then of course media account and ruined everything. It ruined that center state which is the grandmother of course, the player and the actor and the director and the story teller. It ruined that. I grew up in Iraq in the end of Saddam's routine in the 80s and 90s. As a young child, grew up in another, it was hard for us. We were idolizing the routine because when we opened our eyes we saw the routine as a way to propel the society forward. Any things we are not happy with in that society. Later on we discovered the routine was really not what it is. It was all about impressing. It was all about control. Nothing to do with it. So we revolted. I was a student studying geology in the heart of Iraq in 1990 with Saddam, with Saddam who made it to Kuwait and I was one of these college kids who protested the invasion and then as a result I was on the run in the refugee camp for two years in Saudi Arabia then in Afghanistan. Through all these years, one thing that kept my sanity and one thing I always embrace is the way I express myself. It is art. Later on the medium evolved but we had the essence of it. It is about engagement. We grew up in a very politically charged world and I remember my first days at the University of New Mexico as a student people told me you make political art and I didn't understand what that means. I thought all art is political. So we evolved, I evolved as my education and might understand people with it as well. I think I came from a zone I called a conflict zone and now when I arrived they exist in the conflict zone of United States and unfortunately these two zones have been engaged in world politics as long as I remember. At the beginning of my work I was making political art as a statement imposing on my viewers in the conflict zone regardless of what they know, what they don't know and most I have to say of them did not know what is happening back in the conflict zone. They did not know the complicity of the government of United States and the crime that this government is involved in. When I made the statement through art I found myself in a very difficult situation and immediately the very people I'm trying to meet. Then as things happen in our life to their expectations there are moments I refer them as cornerstones of our life that have changed the trajectory of our course, our life. One of these moments took place in 2004 when I was teaching at the art institute of Calgary that is one year after the invasion of Iraq. The news was my brother Hedji was killed by a truck attack on our hometown an American drawing. Three years as far as I did not know what to do and how to communicate my loss and my family loss to the people I exist with. Not until 2007 when I was watching an American soldier directing drones, dropping weapons on Iraqi with absolutely no psychological or physical connection to it and I remember I am already having a show, a schedule, a plot file in Shikha. I immediately called my gallery Susan Aranco and I said I have an idea I want to do it is completely different than the prequels have shown. I said honey what is the idea? I told to move. Simply the idea is to move my living space, my living room into the gallery, constructing a website and the website could be the strip of any political rhetoric about Iraq. Provided navigation buttons to the result were completely unexpected. I was shot at 70,000 times. 126 countries were engaged in the shooting and with 18 million hits on the website. But I think the most amazing thing that happened is the amount of dialogue that took place in the chat room of this project I was able to express the life here to be the solo actor and performer in that room. I offer my file things going great technology work team I put together always were there until the time when the Chicago Tribune had the project on the front page and then and so many people coming to the website interacting with each other shooting and I thought it is the end of the project when the project sees to work I see here is a video of how I was mentally on that day. The large happens with with the server it sees working the project is working at about one o'clock this afternoon and it didn't come up until seven or eight p.m. just now. What happened is just the server totally overwhelmed and the bandwidth was not strong enough to handle all the traffic so very much the DSL more everything we have give up so now we increased the bandwidth to about five times faster and I'm hoping we could even improve on the server tomorrow when we put the entire server outside somewhere somewhere more reliable with larger bandwidth so it will handle the traffic pension to be an adjacent mark over here to help today I was I was very emotional throughout the day and I guess part of the project is bringing a lot of issues I haven't dealt with the loss of my father the loss of my brother and today it hit me really hard but now and also it's another strange on another strange feeling another on another hand the the when when the project sees to work I think I got even more depressed because it's very strange when the gun is my company in this space and when it's it's silent I all of a sudden I see you think about my safety or there is no need to think about my safety since the gun is not going off so all of a sudden my guards are down and just so much emotion come to the server so now the project is so up again and so many moments took place like this moment during the thirty days in terms of losses I think once we put in this losses in our life we tend to like that we tend to build an emotional wars to protect us from knowledge and I think only when I was in the physical and say collides with a stressful situation I was able for the first time ever to acknowledge my loss many people participated including and not surprising hackers which they love to hack the gun turn it to an automatic let it shoot on its own or people from the left who love to hack the gun turn it to the left keep it to the left preventing people from shooting me that was expected and day 14 was one of these days I really did not know what happened why there are so many people where shooting apparently the project was so popular that is people on a website called dig.com decide to come all together and shoot on that day alone I was shot 20,000 times and here is a quick video from that day okay everybody it's day 15 this is being insane because what happened is it was hit at home and the streets have been completely botarded non-stop for the last two to three hours and you could see it's absolutely the truck so much I mean you cannot not a second I cannot even um I cannot even keep the truck I keep all the problems out here dig.com this is really disturbing this is nonsense I cannot keep track of us I cannot film these people fast enough uh to keep with the demand okay I'll let you go because I think I cannot do the camera and cannot play so I'll just have to run back and forth see I have to run back and forth between um between so see now I'm not taking hit I'm taking this so yeah there you see I mean this is absolutely non non stop and this is so disturbing right now okay okay I I'm gonna go in now in a in a safer place very very disturbing but I guess I I set up a situation I cannot give up right now and I won't give up can I go in to be honest I did not know what my role in that project at all neither I have the clarity of purpose but I guess sometimes in the process of me things come together all they pull apart when they pull apart we want them to pull apart in a fantastic way when they succeed we want them to succeed and fortunately fortunately others succeed to reach our objective and you can see from the next video I changed as the project reached its goal and I think one of the most important things to me as an artist as an Iraqi as an American it was the project reached the the interact with the right way it worked each other and art I was once again assured the power of art and the power of engagement to achieve and what I'm trying to shoot at is even now there is not even a single second between these shots right now it's very busy right here and I think I don't know why the traffic all of us but it might have to do with the last day of shooting but I am going to extend this to one more day so instead of India on day four I am going to end tomorrow which is 31 days this is dedicated the extra day is dedicated to the people doubt it I will go through with us so to the supporter thank you very much you've been great in history it has been very hard to me ups and downs and united people united people but that's what art supposed to do it's supposed to inform it's supposed to educate and it's supposed to be part of life so thanks everybody for your great support and one more thing I would I have no resentment to the people who shot it's an encounter it's an open narrative one we can all impose our own narrative on it so to to end the sorry I'm in great spirits the energy is great there is a of course there is a mental and physical pressure that I could deal with that after five o'clock tomorrow I hope to see some of you when I walk out of the gallery otherwise I would love to see everybody on the 16th of June when we take this place down so either I see tomorrow or I will see you on the 16th thank you again and it has been a great journey bye for now so as I mentioned it really the project gave me clarity of purpose and it gave me an opportunity to see to say to myself why did it work then I start taking notes down and see what work and what did not work and I come up with very simple few ideas and I refer them as a strategy of engagement first no one my person I exist as I said earlier in simultaneous two zones one is physical and the other one is mental by living in the comfort zone I saw my art being rejected and eliminated people if it was straight on a hammer hitting people on their head then I start employing very simple tactic which is aesthetic pleasure versus aesthetic aesthetic pleasure is simply us the project at the face value it is not too serious I mean who wouldn't like to shoot a guy was dragged in a room over the internet with your phone everybody liked it it became the water cooler talk right and you can see from this project and the next other product as well at the face value it is very playful then the aesthetic paint which is the meaning the objective of the project delivers when the people engage with virtual platform physical platform that is very simple that is utilizing the power of the internet by allowing people to come and interact no longer their interaction is limited to a physical place which is the gallery or the museum now I could be in their homes I could be in their offices talking a lot in them to talk so my role as an artist become a trigger for platform rather than somebody who can impose on them the body has a tool mind which I think you guys know this if you are in the theater business the body activate other bodies in front of them that is why theater is one of the most powerful art of form we could engage with and could affect us I realize that because I saw that in my world not empathetic to my car then but they become sympathetic to my body and then of course all these ideas lead to one thing which I call them which I call it an encounter which is a platform which all possible in the state of unknown what does that mean simply coming from computer programming it means I would not write the script entirely I would leave a large answers to my viewer give them a very important role to assume the very narrative there are writing once they write part of the narrative they invest in it become their own and then they can be edited which was that's what exactly happened during domestic tension should anywhere now the project was a big hit I start receiving other invitation from people to do other products to engage communities and it's always now when he is an Iraqi he is Muslim we wanted to bring him to do something that he did before and is it sure I will do that the first one from our center in Saratoga when was like come engage our community and I said fine all what I'm going to do is this simple project I want always people to communicate to other people this way I propose building a farmhouse an Iraqi style for a house and equipped with technology for people around the center to come and live there for a day or two and talk to Iraqis at home and the center and the people around it is kept by in a great way within one month we build a complete house we use the the material from the ground itself the water from the ground and by day there yet we got a beautiful house and of course with with the internet connected to here is what people around the center didn't know on that opening night on that opening night I wanted to blow up the house and I agree with the center but then in the last minute they said no I said why not they said it's kind of innate our audience I said what this is all about it's about you have a sweat and you need to build a house and then in a matter of a second it all disappeared they said no and I said wait wait what kind of democracy it does not let you blow up your own house you should come to Iraq this way you can blow your neighbor house if you don't like that of course they didn't get the job you know so because I'm behind way more to another project this time it was from an educational institution ran similar by a technical institute and they proposed the same thing come here for a few weeks engage our classes and at that time it was 2008 I believe it was so difficult in terms of being being Arab and being Iraqi and it was all talk about waterboarding when the military with the CIA are doing a subject they call them the subject they capture in the Middle East around the world a waterboarding is a torture method invented by the Spaniard and then American army adopted to impose it on the soldier to force them to confess to crime they probably never committed and I also an artist as an activist as an Arab wanted to know if this is a torture method because the Pentagon said this is not a torture method it's not a drama it's a similar drama so I thought I set up myself to figure out is it or is it so but I really didn't want it to say okay I'm not gonna hold the sign and the intersection say this is torture it's not good it's gonna kill people it's like well let's play and I launch a website called that or Iraq a lot of people do for it for 30 days to who would they get a waterboard at the end of the day at the end of every day so many people got mad at me they thought I get a waterboard at the top I don't know if they eat a man for a hair they eat a man for a hair seriously they were really serious about it and I was kicked out of campus and I remember I picked up the phone and I said have you heard about this awful things this artist doing trying to waterboard the dog they said yes we do I said great um can I ask a question this is yeah I asked a question just like I said is there a speedo for Iraqis and of course they hang up on regardless I lost the dog we moved on still wanted to know if waterboarding is similar to drama or drama then I had no choice because to subject myself into this torture method with the help of two friends of waterboard anybody we ran from the media we find the basement and the waterboarding which also received a lot of media attention uh virtually had the um uh come uh inspired by a video game released by Alqata in 2005 under the name of the game called the night of pushcatcher which is I doubt it that Alqata know what the meaning of the title itself and I really thought it was like maybe they start getting into the foreign business right but I feel like they were not even aware of what that what the title even means you know so I thought okay I wanted to know how did they make this game so I went on to investigate an impurity the game is not even Alqata came it was an American game released in 2003 by Jesse Petrova to go and shoot Iraqis which all of them have sat down face and speak non-Arabic nonsense Arabic when he shoots at them and even just like the rhetoric that the vending machine called chemical not a cookable so what Alqata did they went on to change the skin they're from from chemical to Pepsi they're from sat down face to Bush's face they're from um an Iraqi soldier to an American soldier and then it was an ally cry and a simple change of the skin outrage people in the comfort zone I got to do something with it to address multiple issues so I developed the objective the objective were very simple thank you I wanted the game to be a middle explosive hypocrisy and racism is reversing the role of hunter and hunter addressing the issue of suicide and then involvement people who may not be willing to engage in the dialogue simply I went on to insert my own narrative as an Iraqi living in Chicago teaching happy one day I get the news of my brother get killed and then my father died after two months after that I go into rage and become a virtual suicide bomber I went on to hack the game and insert my avatar this is after assassin if you know in the games and it becomes like a medieval warrior when the suicide built it didn't really make any sense so I agree with 3d artist and you did a terrible job in my avatar make my face good they did because I was really happy and I inserted my avatar to go on a mission you send you send me on a mission to assassinate president and I mentioned that was a bad idea on the opening night I had the CNA the homeland security and the local police showed up it was so intense environment arctic I put four body guards around me and I loved it I thought every artist should have four body they really didn't last very long it lost the opening night of course students start lobbying to close down the show the president send the provot to investigate and then the show was suspended the second day say the product is from terrorist organization it's in school and for the FBI come to the school and say you know what and that was my argument it's just a bit okay it's like when we object to our image being destroyed on on on on on the video game and people said oh it's just a video game people are playing okay this is just a video game but people are playing but they didn't take it very well because this time they were they were hunted the work um shut down at the school and then immediately there was an art center called a century for the independent media any choice it wait the school shut it down we are going to reopen it and they did reopen it immediately but the story didn't end up there we have a new opposition to the show immediately somebody who is in the government called this a terrorist act and called me of course terrorist and called for the shutdown and here is an interview between both of us yeah i started with rpi suspending this exhibit but it is going to take place today at the legislature majority leader there robert murch says he's disgusted that they are going to host this exhibition there was a serious uh safety concern not about me but also the story of the people and i wonder about the concern and there's any steps we need to take care of the neighborhood is the most heavily police neighborhood in the capital region i have called the rest of county district attorney and called it home today left him a message saying that we're concerned that one person who's simultaneously an employee of the suit county as day is putting his organizing a protest and using various lines for language i'm not sure how to pronounce last by out so long so i did a i have not seen the game b i only know about you from what i've read in the paper and i've seen on tv that should be nothing but terrorist it's so far in my view from art it's just it's it's terrorist i've been told that muzzles war muzzles are liars and secondly that all of us should be closed you're going down you and you're like i'm going down i think we went out of our way not to kill iraqi though maybe they're probably doing more than i thought at this point but i think he's just a terrorist thing it shoots we're trying to get rid of any kind of here's a here's a friend so these are clothes we got from that you know you think we're not taking it here i have i have not heard them say it is going to be a peaceful protest and i would appreciate very much uh for him to say that on the air everybody would be peaceful sounds like he has a little fear once again great gathering people protesting on both sides and then the day after the opening of that show and the censory the government this time shut it down and they said has nothing to do with politics just the doors to the gallery were 29 inches not 30 inches that's it so people did not buy of course that argument the beauty of this it angered them it allowed them to have a real dialogue it got people outside and it got them to the point to protest in front of the city hall for many days until they force the government not only to open the door but to compensate their to fix the door the free speech has got to go so far it's time for more i'm all for freedom of speech i'm not saying you shouldn't show it we just disagree with the content of the video as i am thinking about these projects i can't help but to say these are performances i initiate them and then i play a role in them but also at the same time people are welcome to that state whether it's virtual whether it's physical but the objective we make the same is to engage sometimes in order to engage you have to agitate and sometimes you have to bring people you know an common method the one that was uncommon to Neal's role it was when the Elizabeth Foundation of the art in 2010 required me to address the issue of the invisibility of the Iraqi civilization i questioned myself how is it possible to build the monument or to um have an octopus to commemorate a hundred thousand then i wanted to do another count i wanted to build another state where people are welcome to acknowledge the losses so i went into the research mode again where i looked at the Iraqi map Iraq map then i went on to figure out according to the information i have where every Iraqi died according to the map and after that i took all the information and i translated that every Iraqi death equal a dot i went on to translate that into my own body physically by first doing a tattoo with the regular ink on my back later on in a 24 hours performance i am a two tattoo artist to indicate these dots at the same time i allow people to come and pick up a stack of papers one for iraqi's loss the other one for american soldiers loss to read the name of love and i thought it's a symbolic gesture by reading the name we have knowledge of the lost one thing i wanted to um directly illustrate the idea of visible invisible when i ask the tattoo artist to allocate these dots i ask them to use invisible dot which is user an ink that cannot be seen unless you are i am and nothing could prove them more right than the next seriously it's cold at third hour and i remember waking up at four o'clock in the morning cold from your eye from my family ran to say did you really do this i said yes i did they were watching cnn i was approached by uh what happened to one of the museums of other two to be part of the show called told and told me about how are my stories where we existed at home and i i remember a very unusual way in addressing that topic i decided to implement a camera in the back of my head certainly the camera was connected to the internet that shoots one minute one image a minute and streaming live to the internet objective was simple again a story telling telling my life um specifically the places i left behind with no record capturing the image objectively unifying the body with the machine creating the shooting apparatus could get them basic in the future also people back home think art is crazy and how they always live in the dark it's true i mean 800 thousand images a lot of them nothing right i just you've been out images from dark that night while i'm sleeping into the walks i take in york city people close by people turn in their head away people say seriously you have a camera in the back of your head but hey some people were happy to be on the camera it was voyeuristic which is expected right and the camera we have on the street and institutions as well it did counter some the most important thing i found out about that project after well it is the beauty of being connected it is worldwide connectivity that allowed us to voice over something i've never existed before if it interviews which is like every system at least we have the same deal if i am wherever i am i could tell them what is happening and 800 thousand images were shared publicly included to apparently every art or muslim has been watched by three fbi guys all the time they were shared with them and hey this is really nothing see they're wasting your time of watching so for something better i wanted to share my talk now in talking about poetic just-her-in-art it is not a secret to crowd thank you the performance takes so much energy from your body your mind and i wanted to balance that that balance count really from something completely and down and one of these project i went from 2003 to 2014 for the ashes the ashes series um it was a symbol of i was disturbed by the images coming from back home from 2003 about the places i visited i visited i know of it with whether there are public institution homes so for me it was 2003 i couldn't go home i wanted to come back to back home and i wanted to show that you were in the in in my own zone down to look at these images as not images of a nether war and they don't register anymore and they got so it was slowing down the process of looking and i found myself building these images with native scholars and literally inserting the human earth into these images by spraying 21 grams of human ashes in these images before i take a shot i think when we come from troubling places and having hard times spent there sometimes this trauma is stained with us and i find one way to minimize its effect is to look into the humor and so when i asked by um uh to do something for the armory here in new york i went back to look remembering things one of these things it was when sultan was alive the bad party proposed this kind of a crazy idea of building a giant scepter of him and gold plated in gold released it above iraq to be secret do you synchronize above iraq so when you're at he's look there is this gold star shining on them forever right they didn't they didn't had a chance to do it and i thought okay good how what if i do that project right it would be good to let the power go and minimize that the psychological effect of the dictator on us so i solicited um veterans of the iraq were to come and help me to realize that project we produce very nice bust we produce a dankle of candle holder she was just like if it's visible and it's almost there we don't even think about the dictator it become an art it become a denial and then hey book ends and then the bus was prepared to go to the space to actually need to your synchronize above your right and we said the somebody said why don't you just synchronize it above texas but i didn't get a chance to do it and i heard we said be somebody sent a tesla just like into the space i don't know if you guys know this project or not so i'm thinking about going into uh mask and say can we collaborate on this project it might be nicer than having a car in this space it could be just like a great dictator in this place um quickly um going into what have we contributed from our own culture into the rest and this project is called i think i could tell addressing the issues of the post-traumatic stress disorder that is i as an iraqi american soldier and so many people suffer from and when i was looking into methods of healing i come across a very interesting one it's called chroma ladi and it is invented by evin cina in the thirties interest and it is healing with colors and there are seven colors he indicated each color have a different effect even on the mind l on the body and apparently you have to immerse yourself to see what color that is going to react to your body to your mind in order to heal what you suffer from and apparently a lot of people using that method of so what i did with this installation extremely simple i state another uh place another counter where people simply encounter this giant threatening war and then they could when when they move beyond that war they are faced with a known person which he was an american veteran and i kept him very well and i stopped offering the place to the veterans to to witness or to heal from what they are suffering from one of the last project i don't want to share with you before there is a bonus to us as well so i apologize for the bonus so after this project one sixty eight hours and one minute it was 2010 and it was a curator from canada asking me if i wanted to do a project about the loss of culture specifically books and i thought this is this is very appealing took me six years thinking about how to stage what the shape and if i come across so many things have been destroyed in one thing that stopped me in my track it was the college of fine art library about that 70 000 titles were brought to the ground during the invasion and i sketched an installation point for people to interact with in the last minute literally a month before the show i called the curator and i said i changed my mind and i had a better idea i wanted the idea to be participatory in nature and i wanted to be rewarded for people who interact with it and i said this is the title and she said what the title is i said i recall an anecdote from childhood that is when the mangolian invaded in order for them to cross the river they took the entire holding of the libraries included which was the largest library at that time they built a bridge over the tyco's river and the story goes that is the river ran the blue for seven days washington the ink and the knowledge seven days equal to 168 i added a minute because i wanted to reverse of course the destruction the Iraqis are not new to it they rebuilt because it's their home and in that book i stayed nothing but empty white books completely no content in them just like after the seven days being washed in the river and the extremes take place to place where a viewer walk in for all online take a white book and donate a book from the list generated by the faculty and the student of the college of fine arts and it was and still very rewarding to see people interact with it given to me the most important thing it's not the book itself but this idea of the hope the future of iraq the idea of the rest of the world is not leaving iraq behind of forgetting about after what it has been and i'm very happy we deliver our first shipment of 1700 books and many of them come to still keep going more informational that on my website then we wanted to find a better place because the library structurally built that nothing has been no model so we send funding to the interior design of the school their own design with the faculty them i wanted to finish but i wanted to share one thing with you in the last minutes of my presentation human is a big part of our life um and i think sometimes in the name of atrocities i remember days in 1991 when v-52 bombing that's of i remember sitting with them i with my families and they're making jokes and it was part of that interest because without the humor you would use your mind just like you can't really minimize the effect of the dictator by the look of it down by making fun of it but and humor specifically comedy have this ability to decode heart politics in to be now to make it accessible to to hold that mirror in front of our faces to look at that reality and that's what artists are mirror reflecting a social culture one month and only before trump got elected we are actually after we initiate this call and rica that's how we say america back home and in it it's a state it's a life one it is everybody welcome to it and we invite middle history for millions people are disenfranchised once a month to come to this stage and share with the community share her laughter but also created the space of community given strength so why my parents are christian they're christian era and so in our home for breakfast we were fed the jewish conspiracy theories and then for lunch we had like a really healthy dose of islamic horror stories like do you guys remember all of you most of you are young but do you remember in the 80s you you had this drug commercial that this is your brain on drugs like we were told this is your life on islam when they give us white names like that's a lot of people ask me if my real name is fatima or khalija but it's not it's really a susie for now see his names like your favorite name that they picture is victoria my aunt's name is victoria there is no b in arabic there's only an f so good luck keeping muslim boys away when you call your daughter phakhtoria i worked with phakhtoria though she met she met a christian guy i need to summarize when a christian arab girl falls in love with a muslim she is either disowned or her mother gets a heart attack or somebody kills her in an honor killing so you guys can imagine how scared i was when i fell in love with a pakistani it wasn't easy and i'm actually writing a book about my experience and it's titled i married a muslim and no one like i think i captured in my book which was released a few years ago so if you're um you could grab a copy of it it makes a great need a great gift us as well questions any questions yes um we have about a couple minutes for questions five minutes okay five minutes so i know you guys are probably anxious to get your cocktail drinks i hope where is it from i hope you have cocktails for them okay good good shots shots you right thanks for your presentation um just a point of verification you said you were in a refuge camp for two years how old were you okay now can i ask you how old are you i'm 58 i'm 52 okay i left iraq in uh 91 at age 25 spent two years in a refuge camp until i was 26 i came to united states now it's almost half life in the united state and half life in iraq and follow up your experience in the refugee camp as far as an impact on your um imagination and creativity as well you know i guess the question is how did that impact your life as an artist thank you so much um i have to say even it is hard to think about these things because many of us were confined into one mile by one mile um barbed wires or many many years but you know it really depends on you i'm one of these optimistic people and when i landed in in in in the refugee camp again i i went over there back to art how was it i could survive this and i remember the days when we i didn't even have any um materials for artwork and it was instant coffee and our hair we make an arrest of that just to keep us alive because i think that's what art is but it also it reminded me of how precious life is and how much we've taken for granted imagine i was in bogota living there very busy city i'm lively city and all of a sudden i'm in a camp with my life disappear so once i left the camp i thought i just been given a second chance of life and i used it i remember day one arrived in to albuquerque new mexico i walked to the nearest university and i said i want to be student and they said well you first you have to go learn English and then take back i did you know so sometimes really we end up in a situation we never how can we get the best out of that that's the lesson i learned from we're good friend no one more and never one more question okay thank you so much so and i'm writing western english and doing stuff here so i just i would i was so impressed by your work and so delighted by i just would love your thoughts about how as we are working in primarily spaces where our working sanctions by people who are not Arabs and for audiences who are primarily not Arabs and critics were not Arabs because against them yeah how is that how should we as young rich youngish artists i don't know i just want some of your thoughts on how to you know how to cope with it how how to see oneself because obviously you're doing i'm doing different art than i would if i was living in Palestine you're doing different art than if you don't stay in the realm so i just what how does that shape us as artists great question thank you so to me i think i i stated very very in my talk it's just like how my mode of shift mode of production shift really i think the first thing i may start realizing after a few years is is i'm speaking to completely different audience and in order for my work to succeed i have to filter it in the tradition and the local language in order to be affected because in united states i'm speaking about iraq i'm not speaking to iraqis iraqis not their struggles are not their iraqi struggles the rest of the world maybe you know but americans do not how do i make these topics how i do make people relate to them right by really filtering it through their local struggle for example when we talk about the post-traumatic stress disorder i wasn't just speaking about iraq in iraq is it what they self are from i invited the veterans to be part of the dialogue and i think with that the great thing about being here it is and it's not what we think about it it's very uncentralized society and there are a lot of people who would return to you and so many people who would accept what you said and i with every project i have to determine who are my friends right when i wanted to raise awareness about video games about the retric and video games but um the discrimination i'm educated when i wanted to speak about when they go through i invited them to be part of the dialogue so really every project i mean i am i have the privilege as a performer performance artist artist um to think to suspend these odds until they mature and once that thought the project is mature which is the right to speak the right time it is take the central state what happened honestly i had no idea about the project fell miserably but i did the best i could to make them succeed and sometimes there is nothing coming back we work really we as a performer we love the idea of the echo sound coming back to us because it assure us it's not just just i'm thinking that of our voice the reaction from the audience is very important because it assure us we are communicating our what we say is effective is giving me to the and to me the failure of any project when it fall on a day when nobody hear it can i say one last i wanted to ask you about i finally figured out how this might work you have to talk like right this project that you did in chicago shoots in iraqi and you said that you have in a dialogue space underneath it i feel i feel as somebody who grew up without the internet and then with the internet arrived so excited like this was gonna fix humanity and always it was a chance to talk to each other it's each other it'll be okay like i feel so disillusioned i feel it's a failure so i wonder if if this chat room where those lovely people and martin people were hacking who were hacking to kill you and hacking to save you if do you really feel like that was i mean it's interesting of course to see those conversations but i feel i feel less and less optimistic about that as a space of dialogue how did you feel about it to me it was like i'm not straight i grew up with no tv so there the internet come when i was really late in my theory to be honest i i thought it was really important to go back and look at three thousand pages of uncensored dialogue and i think a non-mini-take it was the key people were doing and saying things they had because there is there is no very much they thought nobody knew who they were right there is nothing could affect what was on because of the action and the work they were doing and it was fascinating to watch a lot of them did not know i was recorded at the ip address they ever come from and i remember one of these days just like day 10 when so many people were shooting at me and i had no idea what is happening and i talked to jason who helped me all the time and i said okay another group of people attack he said look at me see and this is like the beauty of of technology and the connectivity he went on took two minutes and came back and he said well we have a big problem and i said what is the problem he said um a very advanced hackers in texas turned every idle computer in entire texas into a sure and idle computer this computer is idle and that was it so that computer is a sure and i said how you're gonna fix it and he said just give me 10 minutes sure 10 minutes later he was all of a sudden silent and i said jason what did you do he said i banned the entire state of texas so all right i think frank one of us got a problem thank you so much again we're not quite ready to be but thank you so much for such a wonderful presentation and i think that a very fitting presentation as a keynote so a symposium on driving technology and performance with many many references to the kind of structural problems that we face in making out about complex situations actually highly performing so thank you very much it was wonderful wonderful work and we'll continue that conversation when we break for the reception downstairs um but before we do that there is um a very serious uh it's downstairs okay so um we do have a colleague who who passed away in the summer and we i won't introduce it now we'll go downstairs and we're going to reception followed by our reception it's a bit like a you know a wake I guess but it was a very very happy thing in my culture so um but if you could go down to those of us who are joining us go down to the third floor and room 3001 which is uh I mean I'm sure we'll have many people to guide you down there but if you get lost it's quite complicated so you need to look for the green room for the theater program so but if you come down with us