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6. from Amateur Video to New Documentary Formats : Citizen 6. From Amateur Video to New Documentary Formats : Citizen Journalism and a Reconfiguring of Historical Knowledge Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans Abstract The Arab Spring of 2011 appeared on the news in countless video testimoni- als shot by participants and bystanders. Yet the sheer amount of such visual data, combined with the untranslatability and poor quality of the footage, delivers an often opaque and ambiguous material. Peter Snowdon’s film The Uprising (2013) appropriates and reassembles this amateur footage. Compared to the 1992 film Videograms of a Revolution by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică, The Uprising raises the question of a possible knowledge shift produced and performed by the amateur video maker. In an analysis of these films, this chapter investigates the possibilities of documenting historical events through mobile video footage. Keywords: Documentary, found footage film, Syria, amateur The act of self-immolation by the fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010 triggered a wave of demonstrations throughout Tunisia, mobilizing masses of people to oppose the failing government. The spirit of protest quickly spread to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Spontaneous demonstrations emerged and expanded not only in the streets but also through an unprecedented use of social media. As a result, virtually anyone in the world could instantly see the events by means of images and mostly mobile phone camera videos, recorded and uploaded to the internet on a massive scale from various epicentres of the protests. Many citizens turned into amateur journalists in protesting against Strohmaier, A. and A. Krewani (eds.), Media and Mapping Practices in the Middle East and North Africa: Producing Space. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789462989092_ch06 140 KATARZYNA RUCHEL-STOCKMANS authoritarianism, human rights violations, and dire living conditions using methods of civil disobedience combined with internet activism. There has been an intense debate about the role of the new media and electronic social platforms in sparking, maintaining, and spreading the revolutions of 2011 (Boëx 2013a; 2013b; Khatib 2013). After initial enthusiasm about the ‘YouTube’, ‘Facebook’, or ‘Twitter revolutions’, various commentators expressed their doubts about the actual impact of new media formats and social connectivity on the political events (Downey 2014; Harkin 2013; Hawkins 2014; Werbner et al. 2014). What is clearly novel and groundbreaking in this period of upheavals is the broad and instant availability of numerous audiovisual documents on the internet, making the participant-generated visuals the main source of knowledge about the revolutions and ensuing conflicts for the public outside of the region (Robertson 2015). As Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green note in their book Spread- able Media, there is a direct journalistic value to the spontaneously created online image archive (2013, pp. 41–44). Video activists using the internet bypass the normal news channels, creating a democratic peer-to-peer communication (Jenkins, Ford, and Green 2013). Yet this vast repertory of clips, photographs, and sounds defies the more established forms of knowledge production, such as film, documentary or journalistic report (Zabunyan 2016, pp. 7–36). This chapter aims to investigate the role of online video sharing from the post-2011 MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, especially Syria, in building new models of historical knowledge production. It encompasses an analysis of three specific case studies: Peter Snowdon’s film The Uprising (2013); the short film series by the Abounad- dara collective; and the Syrian Archive launched by Hadi Al Khatib. These recent phenomena can be seen as novel forms of historical representations. Instead of a conventional film or documentary narrative, they stem from and react to the amateur video culture of sharing, tagging, commenting on, and appropriating visual material. Throughout this analysis, I trace a possible shift in knowledge production precipitated by civic resistance and alternative modes of information exchange. Mobile phone images as instruments in the hands of participants and eyewitnesses yield a form of knowledge that holds an emancipatory promise and at the same time is bound with new risks and challenges. The three case studies considered here allow to demonstrate the paradigmatic changes in visualizing dissent and conflict, while they avoid any authoritative elucidation of the events in the Middle East and North Africa. Approaching these new documentary formats through the perspective of art and media theories will allow to interrogate the ways in which these practices respond to crises (whether seen as political FROA M AM TEUR VIDEO TO NEW DOCUMENTARY FORMATS 141 upheaval or humanitarian emergency) while at the same time mobilizing and critically revising the newly emerging participatory cultures.1 Vernacular Videos by Citizen Journalists Many commentators agree that the widespread protests of 2011 were marked by an unprecedented role of media activism, yet the debate about what this role precisely is still continues. As virtually everyone has a mobile phone at hand, it has become common to record an event and upload the videos or photographs to the internet (Haskins 2007; Maier-Rothe et al. 2014). During the upheavals in the MENA region, citizen journalism emerged as an attractive alternative to professional media. Accessible and uncontrollable, it was believed to offer a democratizing and emancipatory tool in the hands of the people. Soon enough, citizen journalism was also questioned for its partisan character. As a matter of fact, citizen journalists are mostly activists who are involved in the situations they portray, unlike professional journalists who are expected to keep an emotional and ideological distance from the subjects they cover. Moreover, citizen journalists are not professionals, and therefore the material they deliver is often fragmentary and inadequately contextualized for the public. At the same time, many clips found on the internet have to remain anonymous to protect the identity of their makers and therefore cannot be fact-checked. Videos appear and disappear in the mass of images uploaded and re-uploaded every minute on different social platforms. The sheer amount of audiovisual information makes it impossible to keep an overview of what is happening in different parts of the globe. There have been many different ways in which artists, film-makers, and researchers have responded to this evolution. This chapter is centered on three projects stemming from the online sharing of citizen-journalist videos. The first one, Peter Snowdon’s The Uprising (2013) was made shortly after the eruption of protests as a found footage film consisting of various videos published online. The second, known as Abounaddara, is an anonymous video art collective operating in Syria and broadcasting online since 2011. The third, the Syrian Archive, is a researcher-led project of collecting and verifying videos of human rights violations in Syria since 2014. Each of these documentary formats activate different forms of engagement with the video material as they reassemble the unruly online visuals in distinct configurations. 1 The research presented in this chapter is part of my long term investigation of participative media and knowledge production in and as artistic practice (Ruchel-Stockmans 2012; 2015; 2017). 142 KATARZYNA RUCHEL-STOCkmans The Revolution Reimagined2 The British film-maker Peter Snowdon was one of those who followed the 2010–2011 protests in the MENA region from the outside. Working in his studio in Belgium, he compiled a selection of videos he found on the internet during the events in the Middle East and North Africa. The result is a full-length film entitled The Uprising (2013), which is based exclusively on found footage, devoid of any authorial commentary. The Uprising (2013) consists of about one hundred clips of various origins found by Peter Snowdon on YouTube and other internet sources. Almost all videos relate to protests and upheavals in six Arab countries: Bahrain, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia. Presented in sequences, the clips show various gatherings in public spaces, ranging from cheerful moments of conviviality to violent clashes between civilians and the police. They also include personal messages by vloggers or occasional speakers who address people in their countries, urging them to support the emancipatory struggle. Significantly, the film refrains from a voice-over or intrusive editing. The various clips made by different and often anonymous people are stitched together regardless of their divergent origins. As a result, images of protesters in Bahrain connect visually with those from Egypt or Syria as if they were part of the same struggle. The only editing device used by Snowdon is the insertion of intertitles dividing the sequences into seven days. The film begins with the intertitle ‘Seven Days Ago’ and ends with ‘Today’. Peter Snowdon’s The Uprising (2013) started as a project of compiling the protest videos stemming from Egypt and other countries in the region.3 As a former resident and journalist in Cairo who subsequently embarked on practice-based research in Hasselt, Snowdon was both personally and professionally connected to the region. His video selection was screened for different publics in both Europe and Egypt. Viewing large numbers of these clips for an extended period
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