GMU:Patterns/Salma Ali

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/110h-7ih-tQaWpV94eqdzg_n_By1N3yao?usp=sharing

https://canva.link/798b1kg4owjdfzv In this presentation, i didn’t get the chance to present, however i’m working further on this yet, i was yet to be thinking of this as an experiment of exploration of how cycles of behaviors of control in general take course, even in small settings.

https://canva.link/5z09yuxxsbabu9l

Concept

This project investigates colonialism not only as a series of historical events, but as part of a larger structure of power that repeats through different times, locations, and political systems. Colonization is a structure that survives by changing who operates it. The oppressor is replaced; the operation continues.

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The first trial explored this through a staged installation apparatus that echoed the logic of security checkpoints, bodily inspection, and controlled passage. Participants were not asked to act as fictional characters. Instead, they followed a sequence of instructions that assigned them positions within a system: numbered bodies, Watchers, Collaborators, Leaders, Enforcers, and those allowed or denied passage. The work examines how people can become complicit in structures they did not create, and how a system can change its actors while keeping the same rules.

Trial of a first diagnostic? :")

Eight Directives

1. Numbering Participants take a number. Their number replaces their name.
2. Division The group is divided into Watchers and Collaborators.
3. Readability The group must become readable through position, number, and role.
4. Selection A leader is chosen from within the group.
5. Exclusion The leader excludes one body from participation. The excluded person joins the Watchers and may not speak.
6. Search Selected participants are searched, and their visible belongings are temporarily transferred to others.
7. Transfer of Authority The old leader chooses a new leader. The old leader remains inside the system as an Enforcer.
8. Expansion / Repetition The new leader applies the same rules to the remaining participants. The system changes, but the rules remain.

Spatial roles:

The room is organized around separation and visibility. Collaborators stand in the active area, where they can be selected, searched, excluded, or given authority. Watchers sit separately and are asked not to contribute. Empty chairs and transferred belongings become the physical residue of the system. The screen functions as the apparent authority, delivering instructions and later shifting the participants into Phase 2, where checkpoint footage reframes what they have just performed.

Theoretical Lineage / References

• Paulo Freire: oppression, internalized authority, false generosity, and the oppressed living within the oppressor’s worldview.
• Frantz Fanon: colonial violence, dehumanization, and the psychological structure of colonization.
• Augusto Boal: theatre as a political apparatus; spectators becoming actors inside structures of power. (as reference for the word Watchers and Collaborators, however not sure if really applied)
• Harun Farocki: operational images, surveillance, and images that do not simply represent but act. (as reference for creating phase 2 a video installation and later on maybe being able to create a spatial design, but i wasn't able to have a space for this first trial)
• Rimini Protokoll: staged systems, documentary theatre, and audience movement through constructed situations.
• Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: complicity, choice, and the ethics of participation within interactive systems (without the goal of actually gamifying the experience in my apparatus)

https://canva.link/ci6zr9zgmod5f7s

Contextualizing Presentation & Archival Findings & Trial of Setups

https://canva.link/5szhgpdby9jx3hj

Multi-Channel Archival Trial

https://canva.link/dfmviuh7qaazmau

Final Installation — Cycles of Oppression

Cycles of Oppression is a three-channel archival video installation that examines recurring structures of domination, political narration, and mediated images across different historical contexts.

The installation is staged as a domestic viewing environment: an armchair, a floor lamp, headphones, and three CRT televisions place the viewer in the position of someone watching the news from home. Archival material from different times and locations is presented simultaneously across the screens — Egypt in 1917; Egypt and Hungary in 1956; and Algeria between 1955 and 1962.

Rather than presenting these histories as isolated events, the work places them within one field of view, allowing repetitions in the language and representation of power to become visible. The final installation developed from the project's earlier participatory experiments with authority, compliance, exclusion, observation, and the transfer of power, translating these questions into a spatial and archival media installation.

Screen Structure

Left screen — Egypt, 1917

Archival British footage of Egypt, examining an early use of film as a tool through which empire could construct and circulate its own narrative.

Centre screen — Egypt / Hungary, 1956

American newsreel material moves between the Suez Crisis in Egypt and the Hungarian Revolution, placing two geographically separate conflicts within the same broadcast language and visual framing.

Right screen — Algeria, 1955–1962

French archival coverage of the Algerian struggle for independence, focusing on the language and visual conventions through which the conflict was represented to audiences.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C-WQDBbiv2gtW49oxnY6s20_0GPrWrMT?usp=sharing

a person seated in the armchair wearing headphones with the three screens visible. Exhibition Text The full English/German exhibition text can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KDEl_msIRv0w_bRZ2y7lmM4zG01gKsL0?usp=sharing

Viewer experiencing the three-channel installation.