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Video

Vox Populi and The Syrian Archive

Documenting revolution and conflict in the digital age
Public Debate
Eye Film Museum
Saturday, January 21, 12.00 - 17.00

The program at Eye explores the complicated relationship between the activist moment, increasingly mediated by the participants in these events themselves and increasingly in near real-time, and the static character of the archive and its implicit ‘suspension of time’. We center for this on two ambitious projects under development:

Vox Populi
- Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, of Egyptian-Lebanese artist Lara Baladi, which draws on the vast materials produced during the original uprising in Egypt against the military regime of Hosni Mubarak and their aftermath, collected by a group of artists, writers, theatre makers who would subsequently go on to found the Mosireen independent media centre in Cairo.
http://tahrirarchives.com

The Syrian Archive, an initiative launched by a collective of human rights activists dedicated to preserving open source documentation relating to human rights violations and other crimes committed by all sides during the conflict in Syria.
https://syrianarchive.org

Next to the complicated politics and ethics of these online archiving initiatives we want to question what the role of the artist is in such processes - a kind of stage designer? a choreographer? a facilitator?  Or perhaps a creator of imaginative ‘interfaces’ as in the work of the American artist Robert Ochshorn, whose stunning interfaces for digital rich media collections far transcend the realm of ‘design' into a new kind of art form. Ochshorn will also present his remarkable work during the event.

Speakers:
Lara Baladi
http://arts.mit.edu/artists/lara-baladi
http://tahrirarchives.com/read-me
Hadi Al Khatib
https://cihr.eu/hadi-al-khatib/
Jeff Deutch
https://cihr.eu/jeff-deutch
Robert Ochshorn
http://teleputer.org
Charles Jeurgens
www.uva.nl/over-de-uva/organisatie/medewerkers/item/k.j.p.f.m.jeurgens.html?f=charles+jeurgens

Moderated by Annet Dekker & Eric Kluitenberg

Timetable Vox Populi & The Syrian Archive

11.45  -     Doors Open
12.00  -     Welcome . introduction: Eric Kluitenberg & Annet Dekker

12.30  -     Lara Baladi: Vox Populi - Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age
13.15  -     Discussion

13.30  -     Hadi al-Khatib & Jeff Deutch: The Syrian Archive
14.15  -     Discussion

14.30  -     Coffee break

15.00  -     Response to both projects by Charles Jeurgens & discussion

15.30  -     Robert Ochshorn: Reimagining the Interface

16.00  -    Closing discussion
17.00  -    Doors close

See als the report by Iona Sharp Casas.

March 12, 2017