The Residues, Part Two: Collected Writings 1990-2020 by Stephen Barber

Author:Stephen Barber [Barber, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, General
ISBN: 9781909923829
Google: nYMTEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Elektron Ebooks
Published: 2021-01-31T18:30:00+00:00

Mroué often works with found-footage (as in experimental or avant-garde filmmaking practices), in the form of iPhone sequences recorded by protestors in Syrian cities shortly before they were shot by government snipers. In works such as The Pixellated Revolution, such found-footage appears to have been amalgamated into Mroué's own work, in which the dual status of 'filmmaker' and 'performer' is presented as a near-identical, simultaneous one, that cannot any longer be fully disentangled in the cross-media imperatives of contemporary visual culture. His work fluidly transits a range of media, and investigates the uncertain or volatile spaces between them, especially in relation to moments of social chaos and technologically focused conflict. As well as his background in performance, Mroué's history is that of a combatant; he fought as a very young teenager in the Lebanese Civil War in the early 1980s, in which members of his family were killed or injured, and relates those experiences (such as that of the ocularly focused sniper) to the ongoing Civil War in Syria. The Pixellated Revolution concerns a particular era in the Syrian Civil War, now already several years in the past, during which Mroué collected numerous sequences from YouTube and other websites: films which existed on the internet for a certain time and then, in most cases, abruptly disappeared. In a number of those films, the person filming the sniper with an iPhone (with the aim of amassing documentation for future trials, or as historical evidence) continues to track that figure for an extended duration, but then, invariably, the sniper notices that he is being filmed, and a direct eye-to-eye confrontation ensues between the filmer and the sniper. As Mroué emphasises in his vocal commentary: 'The Syrian protestors are filming their own deaths.'(3) For Mroué, the protestors appear still to possess a split-second opportunity to drop their iPhones and escape from the sniper's line of fire, but they do not, either because of the compulsion to keep on filming, or else because of the performative tension which freezes the moment. The protesters hesitate for that split-second, and are then shot, and fall to the ground, dropping their iPhones which continue to film, and are then heard crying out that they have been wounded or are dying.

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