X-Mission | 2008
VIDEO ESSAY I 40'
"X-Mission" explores the logic of the refugee camp as one of the oldest extrateritorial zones. Taking the Palestinian refugee camps as a case in point, the video engages with the different disc ourses – legal, symbolic, urban, mythological, historical – that give meaning to this exceptional space. According to International Law, the Palestinian refugee represents indeed the exception within the exception.
In the course of 60 years they had to build a civil life in the camps, fostering an intense microcosm with complex relations to homeland and diaspora. The refugee camp harbors an intense microcosm with complex relations to homeland and to related communities abroad. Given the vital connections among the separated Palestinian populations, the video attempts to place the Palestinian refugee in the context of a global diaspora and considers post-national models of belonging which have emerged through the networked matrix of this widely dispersed community. Special case studies include the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon and the entanglement between the Qualified Industrial Zone in Jordan recruiting its labor force from China and India and the among Palestinian refugees of a nearby camp.
The narrative relies on a series of interviews made with experts (lawyer, journalist, architect, anthropologist, historian) interspersed with multiple-layer video montage deriving from both downloaded and self-recorded sources. Speakers include Susan Akram, Bilal Khabeiz, Samar Kanafani, Ismaël Sheikh Hassan, Oroub elAbed, Beshara Doumani. The video also reflects on the fine distinctions between humanitarian and artistic missions.
"X-Mission" premiered at the Gwangju Biennial 2008
selected for Documentary Film Festival Duisbuirg, Steirischer Herbst Graz, Kasseler Dokfilm Festival, 2009; Images Festival Toronto, 2010
PROLOGUE 3’ 20”
JURIDICAL SPACE 5’ 15”
SYMBOLIC SPACE 7’ 40”
ZONE OF EXCEPTION 7’ 05”
MYTHOLOGICAL TIME 2’ 00”
REFUGEE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 5' 00" (new section on QIZ Jordan)
POST-NATIONAL SPACE 9’ 30”
X-Mission at Tate Intermedia Art
X-Mission video clips on my YouTube channel
ArteEast/ArteNews issue on Extraterritoriality in the Middle East, edited by Ursula Biemann