"Refugee Crisis" is the experimental film from a performance art piece about the Syrian refugee crisis. I worked with a group of peers at Emerson College to create an installation that was a political commentary on our relationship to and understanding of ongoing violence in other countries. It questions and explores the role of mass media in shaping the way we react and feel towards global issues.
We often times forget that behind these depictions of violence and suffering are real people. We've grown so accustomed to viewing suffering as part of our every day intake of news or entertainment that we forget that a physical manifestation of it actually exists.
To create a feeling of urgency and anxiety, we created a single tent in the middle of a room under which we crammed our entire audience. We forced them to lay down, almost on top of one another, in uncomfortable positions. As they looked up to the ceiling of the tent, we projected this film down onto them, blasting the audio to fully immerse them in the experience.
We forget that the people we see on TV living in conflict are more than just their situations. The word "refugee" comes with many assumptions and constructs that take away from the humanity of the people we label as such.
The video ends with footage shot by one of my group members in Germany. It's from a documentary they were working on about Syrians who have arrived in Europe, and the process of regaining normalcy after experiencing extreme circumstances.
Not many of us know what it's like to be a refugee, or an undocumented person--what it's like to be displaced and driven out from your own home. Most of what we know, or what we think we know about what it's like comes from the news. The goal of "Refugee Crisis" was to explore this and challenge it.