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Warning: footage contains acts of violence.

Settler violence isn’t the latest development added to the growing list of atrocities against Palestinians living in the West Bank. But with the recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the phenomenon is gaining more attention with the frequency of incidents rising, fuelled by long-standing colonialist ideology and supported by right-wing politicians.

What is the background of these settlers, and why are they committed to savagery to realize their dogmatic goals?

Are all settlers violent?

These were some of the many questions I’ve had, and some are answered easily and others require a solid understanding of the historically complex context of the conflict.

Regardless, it remains important not to dehumanize an entire people, no matter what side you are on. Violence is hurting humanity and it occurs on all sides, but it cannot be the answer.

The installation spans over a decade of found footage of Palestinian home and small business CCTV recordings.

Materials: Found footage, media player, CCTV monitor.

Credits: Quds News Network, Eye On Palestine, B’Tselem, Palestine Pixel, Yael Sela, Issa Amro.
The installation also contains footage I couldn’t find the source of. Please get in touch with me if you want content removed or credits added.

I Made This video projection for the ‘Bring Your Own Beamer’ (BYOB http://bringyourownbeamer.com) event at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

A near-live image of the Sun is projected onto the ceiling or a wall, juxtaposed with satellite images of regions on Earth that are negatively affected by unequally harnessed solar energy, leading to social injustice, geopolitical conflicts, and violence. It’s this duality of, at least in human terms, the eternal existence of the sun versus the fleeting nature of human culture such as conflicts, war, migration, and suffering. As a form of modern colonization, communities living around the boundaries of arid and more sustainable land are sometimes displaced or discriminated against. Other climate factors further accelerate changes in landscape such as the melting of the ice caps around the Northern Hemisphere, opening up potential trade and access routes to valuable resources like oil and gas, resulting in geopolitical conflicts about ownership.

I’ve added testimonies to illustrate how these changes affect people’s lives at a personal level.

Tools used:
NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory Data : https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
(See also image below)
Sentinel-Hub : https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/
QGIS : https://qgis.org/
Processing : https://processing.org/

Credits and Sources:
Midnight Sun : https://www.midnightsunmag.ca
International Rescue Committee : https://www.rescue.org/
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum : https://www.ushmm.org/
The Guardian : https://www.theguardian.com
Al Jazeera : https://www.aljazeera.com
The Wire/ Science : https://science.thewire.in

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission, launched on February 11, 2010, aims to understand the Sun’s influence on Earth by studying the solar atmosphere across multiple spectral bands. The image of the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) seen below, provides detailed observations of the Sun’s interior and magnetic fields in visible light (617.3 nm), and is updated every 15 minutes.