Omegle Takes on Politics / Diaspora Stories

*Participatory Project*

Part I: Omegle takes on politics

In the first part of the project, I wanted to explore how the world views socio-political matters. I chose Omegle to talk to complete strangers online, highlighting how people are prone to talk with less of a filter online, as they believe that their actions do not have consequences. I wanted to use an online chat room as the events that are occurring are highly mediatized, echoing our over-exposition to the atrocities of mankind. Following Harun Farocki’s thinking in the film “Inextinguishable Fire” (1969), it served me as a reminder of the importance of discussing wars, understanding their consequences, and not allowing the memory of their human toll to fade away. The film encourages us to remain vigilant, question the images and narratives presented to us, and actively engage in dialogue about the impact of warfare on individuals and societies.

Inspired by Rineke Dijkstra’s “I See A Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)” (2009), where she documents a group of school children who were asked to observe and describe Pablo Picasso’s portrait The Weeping Woman (1937), in the Tate Museum in London. It can be interpreted as an examination of how school children (and museum visitors in general) view works of art, relating the expressed emotions to their own experience. The viewer does not see the painting that they talk about but rather imagines it through their descriptions.

In Rineke Dijkstra’s “I See A Woman Crying (Weeping Woman)”, a reproduction of Picasso’s painting hangs outside the frame of the camera for the children to look at but is never shown in the video. The picture that I have shown the participants of my experiment is that of Gazan children looking up to the skies, where a shelling is happening. It rose to fame online as public figures, such as Jamie Lee Curtis in this case, posted the pictures mistaking it for a depiction of Israeli children. She then proceeded to delete the post without apologizing for her slip up and continued talking about Israel. It shows us how easy it is to spread misinformation and propaganda, highlighting the Westerner’s privilege of ignorance.

Part II: Diaspora Stories

In the second part of the project, I have decided to want to redirect my project to focus on the Arab diaspora living abroad, especially in Europe and North America, seeing that they have reacted mainly in support of the state of Israel. Due to recent events, it has become increasingly hard for me to collect these reactions and have to go over and over and over them during the editing process. I asked the participants to share with me, in a sentence, a full on rant, a voice message, a picture, really whatever they wanted, their experience being an Arab away from your home countries this past week, being as honest/transparent and as "politically incorrect" as possible.

After collecting a handful of responses, I put them into a software that turned words into music – the rhythm is accompanied by a voice recording response which I felt resonated with all the other responses and delivered the overall message.