Can You Breathe Under Water?
From the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century, conscription of all men for a period of military service became the norm, regardless of whether any war was actually being fought, in the states across Europe and in colonial and ex-colonical territories such as Latin American and Africa.
It is an act that violates the Geneva Treaty, but countires fly over the international consequence by having the person not taken by force from his family but if he doesn’t enlist on his own, all his civil rights are rendered invalid. An ID can’t be renewed, a person consequently can’t apply for a job and his life is basically on halt until the person submits.
That is all aside from the crisis of military desertion which usually involves immediate criminality by military court law which allows a superior to shoot a subordinate on the spot on the basis that the person is a traitor to the state and the cause.
Statement
I strive to create the aesthetics of the future from instruments of the past. Although I find comfort in analog, I use whatever tools available to immerse audiance into the visual message or aesthetic I am carefully shaping.
This exploration into the fundemntals of the synthetic inherently questions and challenges modern view of technology. (Related Works: “Binary Elegy”, “Drowning in the 80s”)
This interest mainly stems from my background in engineering, which coorelates with my upbringing in Egypt as a lens to see the world. I grew up in quite a politically corrupt setting that naturally altered my vision of the world, leading to an observational stance behind the camera to view and criticize the different visions and the double standards equally.
(Related Works: “Can You Breathe Under Water?”, “War on Terror?”)
These radically different approaches to my works have broadend my scopes and gave me freedom to explore sonic scapes and visual nostalgia as well as frame photographic narratives and question authority.
FEATURED IMAGE
Omar Zaki
Cuxhaven 2023
