Forrige uke var Oslo et samlingspunkt for noen av de viktigste stemmene i Syria. Arrangementene var organisert av det nyetablerte Syrian Peace Action Center (SPACE), en gruppe jeg er grunnlegger av sammen med Zeina Bali og Murhaf Fares. Vi er i dag vitne til en fragmentering av det syriske folk, der stemmene deres er spredt…
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Today we remember the courageous Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya. Anna is widely known for her brave coverage of the human rights violations committed by the Russian military forces as well as the Chechen fighters during the Chechen war. Anna was a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, writing on corruption and repression,…
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Even before the revolution broke out, but certainly after it, artistic practices in Syria often centered around democratizing the access to performative and artistic spaces. In the face of collective political calamity, a “democratization” of images takes place. This democratization, as Susan Sontag argued, turns the Event or calamity into an object that can be…
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“There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory. Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation” Jacques Derrida Since March 2011, Syria has witnessed deep cultural mutation; forms of expressions have evolved trying…
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Our Terrible Country’ takes us on the perilous journey of Yassin Haj Saleh, a well-known Syrian intellectual and dissident, and the young photographer Ziad Homsi who travel together in an arduous and dangerous route from the liberated area of Douma/Damascus to Raqqa in northern Syria, only to find themselves eventually forced to leave their home…
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One of the most important formative experiences for the Syrian youth in the past four years is the emergence of an active civil society. The concept of civil society in Syria was virtually nonexistent before 2011 under the Assad’s dictatorship. But as the Syrian uprising started, the explosion of self-expression mediums turned with time into…
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The picture in Syria today looks increasingly gloomy, especially for those watching from afar. What was widely recognized as an uprising for shared humanitarian values, is no longer seen as such. As the situation became intractably complicated, faulty generalizations and simplifications emerged, and the gloomy picture was, consequently, obscured. Nonetheless, many Syrians still believe in…
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The situation for the refugees has become increasingly present in the Norwegian and European media over the last weeks and months. However, the debate about the refugees is still being repeatedly depoliticized and reduced into a question of numbers only. In this debate we will take as a point of departure the assertion that the…
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While Media and western observers have mainly focused on the Sunni Jihadists moving to Syria to fight Assad or to join the “Islamic State” and fight Syrian opposition factions, other Jihadists – Shi’a ones – have been deploying in larger numbers in the country to defend Assad and “protect” his regime. Whether from Iraq, from…
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By organizing ‘The Question of Syria’, SPACE aims to portray the ongoing, multifaceted Syrian uprising and to introduce the alternative democratic forces in Syria. In addition to the panel discussions and film screenings, we also agreed with the New Internationalist magazine to distribute the magazine’s September edition on ‘Syria’s good guys – Inside a forgotten…
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