Abounaddara and the global visual politics of the ‘right to the image’

Abstract

The anonymous Syrian film collective Abounaddara has posted a new short video on Vimeo and distributed it via social media every Friday since April 2011, the beginning of the Syrian popular uprising. Working with limited equipment, no regular funding, and under very dangerous conditions, Abounaddara has termed its work ‘emergency cinema’, recalling one of the group’s vital influences, Walter Benjamin, who envisioned artistic collectives as potentially effective responses to political violence. This article demonstrates how Abounaddara’s work subverts international and national media coverage of the Syrian conflict by consciously employing what Benjamin described as an artisanal form of storytelling. The author illustrates how and why Abounaddara’s concept of ‘the right to the image’ is politically vital and ethically complex, arguing for its relevance within the broader context of global digital images of state and police violence rousing debates about representation, media ethics, and the circulation of graphic images.