Firas Shehadeh

ARTICLE: NO, IT’S NOT “JUST A GAME”

VRAL is currently showcasing Firas Shehadeh’s Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023). To contextualize his work, we are looking at some of his most significant projects. Today we examine his 2013 multimedia project Guerrilla 8-bit.

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

In a thought–provoking blend of historical narrative and video game aesthetics, Firas Shehadeh’s Guerrilla 8-bit showcases in a nuanced, perhaps counterintuitive style the parallel evolutions of two seminal yet apparently disconnected events: the formation of the Black September Organization (BSO) and the birth of 8-bit computing. Conceived in 2013, this brief yet impactful video installation – clocking at one minute and forty-seven seconds – is augmented by a series of digital prints that beckon viewers to reevaluate the intricate relationship between technological and socio-political upheavals.

The BSO, which emerged in the waning years of the 1960s, was a militant collective committed to the liberation of Palestine. Composed of an undefined number of libertarian fighters hailing from Palestine and beyond, the organization aimed not merely to free their homeland but also to protect refugees and internationalize the Palestinian cause.

Coinciding with this socio-political ferment was the advent of 8–bit computer processors, a technological milestone that would later serve as the catalyst for a worldwide digital revolution. Guerrilla 8-bit ingeniously unites these seemingly disparate timelines, employing 8-bit technology as a medium to reexamine…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti


Work cited

Firas Shehadeh

Guerrilla 8-bit, digital video (4:3), color, sound. 1' 47", series of digital prints, 2013, Palestine

All images and videos courtesy of the Artist

This is a Patreon exclusive content. For full access consider joining our growing community.

ARTICLE: LOST IN THE LOOP

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

VRAL is currently showcasing Firas Shehadeh’s Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023). To contextualize his work, we are looking at several of his most recent project. We began yesterday with There, Where You Are Not (2022), a series of performative screening on the nature of digital culture. Today, we continue our exploration of There, Where You Are Not.

We are pleased to present a second component of Firas Shehadeh’s ambitious 2022 multimedia project, There, Where You Are Not: T,WYAN_appendix, abbreviated as T,WYAN_appendix. Although the artist describes it as an improvisational sound performance, T,WYAN_appendix is something else altogether: A comprehensive auditory odyssey that delves into the multi-layered landscape of contemporary digital culture. By meticulously weaving together sonic and visual elements, this element of Shehadeh’s larger multimedia project serves as a visceral expedition into memes, video games, network spirituality, emotional landscapes, hybridity, and additional scapes that inform our online discourse. The performance was originally presented on October 15 2022 at the Singapore Art Museum as part of the Singapore Viennale 2022 Named Natasha. An excerpt is available here.

T,WYAN_appendix also exists as a 32’ machinima piece, intended as a sophisticated companion to Meme Without Irony, another machinima crafted within the environment of Grand Theft Auto V. T,WYAN_appendix serves as a revelatory exposition of the hidden mechanics of video gaming. It focuses on the “game before (under?) the game” or perhaps, one might argue, the “real game,” pulling back the curtain on the intricacies that generally remain concealed from the end-user.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

Work cited

Firas Shehadeh

There, Where You Are Not, sound performance, improvisation, various lengths, hereby presented as a digital video, color, sound, 32’ 26”, 2022, Palestine

Firas Shehadeh

The View From ‘No Man's Land’, print, edition of 300, softcover, 204 pages, 2020, 104 x 176 mm.

All images and videos courtesy of the Artist

This is a Patreon exclusive content. For full access consider joining our growing community.

ARTICLE: MEME DISPLACEMENT

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

VRAL is currently showcasing Firas Shehadeh’s Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023). To contextualize his work, we will be looking at several of his most recent project. We begin with There, Where You Are Not (2022), a series of performative screening on the nature of digital culture.

“I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy,
And my sighs always ask “where?”
In a ghostly breath it calls back to me,
“There, where you are not, there is your happiness.”

George Philip Schmidt

Firas Shehadeh, a Vienna-based Palestinian artist and researcher, fashions intricate artworks informed by digital world-building within the post-internet milieu. A distinguished alumnus of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in 2022, Shehadeh has long been preoccupied with the interplay between post-colonial narratives, technological landscapes, and historical resonances.

In his 2022 multimedia project There, Where You Are Not, a precursor to Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal, Shehadeh deconstructs the dialectic between digital spaces and physical reality, all set against a backdrop of post-colonial discourse. The work is a meticulous examination of the transformative journeys that lived experiences and concrete objects undertake as they metamorphose into their digital counterpart, only to be catapulted back into the material world, often in transmuted forms. Shehadeh’s layered narrative dissects the roles of digitality and internet memes, serving as a discerning commentary on such themes as identity, geopolitics, and cultural representation in an epoch marked by incessant digital proliferation.

The titular phrase, There, Where You Are Not, pays homage to an eponymous literary work by Kamal Boullata, a Palestinian artist and theorist of considerable renown. Boullata’s conceptual framework finds its roots in “The Wanderer,” a poem by German poet Georg Philipp Schmidt. The phrase, for Boullata, acted as a metaphorical articulation of an existential disjunction – his severed connection with his Palestinian homeland. It becomes a potent expression for unattainable realms, whether they be geographical, emotional, or conceptual.

Shehadeh augments this complex intertextuality by introducing an additional conceptual stratum: the borderless yet boundary-recreating universe of the internet. His project launches an investigation into the post-colonial ramifications of these digital realms. The work questions the ways in which the internet serves as both a liberating force that transcends traditional borders and a mechanism for the reinscription of power dynamics, cultural commodification, and appropriation. Utilizing an array of mediums – including digital art, video installations, gameplay footage, and textual exegesis – the project scrutinizes the functioning of memes as cultural touchstones within the digital ecosystem. These memes…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

Work cited

Firas Shehadeh, Meme Without Irony, digital video, color, sound, 6’ 21”, 2022, Palestine.

All images courtesy of the Artist

This is a Patreon exclusive content. For full access consider joining our growing community.

EVENT: FIRAS SHEHADEH (SEPTEMBER 8 - 21 2023, ONLINE)

Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal

Single-channel video (color, sound, narrator: Mamusu Kallon), 14’ 19”, 2023, Palestine

Created by Firas Shehadeh

Part of Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal combines found-footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013). Unpacking video game mods as a form of contemporary archive — and therefore digitizing historic and contemporary architectural sites in addition to seemingly ubiquitous objects — the artwork proposes Los Santos, a virtual replica of Los Angeles, as the biblical “land of milk and honey”.

Firas Shehadeh is a Palestinian artist and researcher exploring issues of identity, meaning, and aesthetics in the digital age. Currently based in Vienna, his interdisciplinary practice engages with post-colonial effects, technology, and history through the lens of worldbuilding and internet culture. Shehadeh holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he is currently a PhD candidate. His education also includes studies in conceptual art, video, and architecture in Vienna, Barcelona, and Amman. Investigating topics like colonial legacies, memory, and belonging, Shehadeh creates speculative narratives that reveal unseen structures and realities. His research-focused practice utilizes and subverts the visual languages of new media, examining how technology transforms society’s relationship with knowledge and power. His work, which has been exhibited internationally, offers a critical perspective on the role of the internet and digital imaging in shaping contemporary identities, histories, and ways of world-making.