Arabic Letter Seen س
Arabic Letter Wow و
What does it mean to exist as an image, as something seen but never comprehended?
In this talk, I presented a speculative collection of found materials and practices of 'othering' that utilise language – in this case, Arabic – as forms of imagery. Looking at the relations and encounters between language, image, and power, I consider how mechanisms of image production and distribution engineer particular forms of encounters, and as such, amount to what I call the Slow Violence of Images (after Rob Nixon’s book, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor).
This event was held at TENT Rotterdam and it organized within the framework of the long-term project Un-Making Image in which Sarmad Magazine looks critically at the processes and tools of image-making. It investigates the various forms of imagery and the role they play in relations of power, to activate a discourse on matters of local socio-political and historical relevance.