M98 Abounaddara

What is to be done? (2011)

In 2011 a Syrian art collective calling itself Abounaddara (meaning ‘man with glasses’) began posting weekly short films online, no easy task during a revolution. Using a cinéma-vérité style of filmmaking, first pioneered by the Soviet documentary director Dziga Vertov, of whom ‘man with glasses’ refers to, the group revealed what life was like for thousands of ordinary Syrian citizens as the populist uprising of the Arab Spring descended into a murderous civil war. Many of the films are poetic meditations on everyday life: a shopkeeper joking with his customers, or an underground school for beauticians. Others evoke the realities of civil war with horrific candour – child refugees talking about heads and hands being cut off – while never explicitly showing them.

Abounaddara describe their output as ‘emergency cinema’: they use an expedient, pared-down aesthetic to convey their messages and counter the information being reported through the international media to the outside world. The group’s manifesto, ‘What is to be done?’ (‘Ma al-Amal?’), which was posted online on 15 April 2011, argues for the way that society can be brought together through shared artistic values and cultural pride. Recalling the Syrian Civil War of 1860, the manifesto discusses how Syrian craftsmen and the Syrian nationalist writer Butrus al-Bustani once energized a battle-worn and beleaguered people. The mention of ‘Adonis’ in the first paragraph refers to the pen-name of the influential modernist Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber. In October 2014, Abounaddara won the Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics.

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What is to be done?

They shout ‘One, one, one / The Syrian people are one!’ and then they fall one after another. Still, here we are, behind the walls of our screens. We rant, we foam at the mouth, we weep from powerlessness, hoping that the monster won’t single us out, the way they were singled out. They are our brothers and sisters, actually. And we support them, naturally. But we keep quiet or cover our backs or slip out of view or wait and see what will happen on Friday. For the wise man never confronts, or so the wise man Adonis advises us.

So what is to be done?

That was the very question being asked on days like these in 1860 when our country also faced civil strife. It was besieged by the sultan’s janissaries and his thugs, when the answer came from the hand of a carpenter, who invented an original art form. This art form embodied the desire of Syrians to live a shared life within the frame of a nation they had crafted themselves. The name of this carpenter from Damascus is barely remembered, despite his overflowing artistic talent. But he was at work while the great Butrus al-Bustani called for something new, something called ‘the nation’ that included all people regardless of their religion (‘religion is for God, the nation is for all’). Everybody remembers, however, the mosaic art that our carpenter invented through his synthesis of wood, mother of pearl and bone, inlaid within a single frame, bringing together the traditions of Byzantine mosaics and Arab-Islamic abstraction. This mosaic art became a national symbol that Syria’s people took pride in, especially when their president stood in front of foreign delegates.

Today we are faced with a monster that threatens to break this frame over our heads. But this monster is our monster, and we can only call for him to return to his humanity, and then to the ranks of the Syrian people. This is precisely what our brothers and sisters are doing when they respond to bullets with roses and songs. And this is what we must also do. Produce dignified images and music which reflect the shared humanity of the Syrian people, and shun mainstream media outlets, whether partisan to the regime or the opposition, and their sordid ploys.