This Land , 2023
This Land, developed in collaboration with Osama Ennasr, is a videogame that reverses common gaming conventions of depicting trees as either a resource to be extracted or an obstacle to be cleared. Rather it celebrates trees as symbols of the natural divine and of indigenous resistance against extractive colonial capitalism, as beloved beings.
This Land exhibited as part the installation Revolution is a forest that the colonist can’t burn, exhibited at the Mosaic Rooms gallery in London.
The game was exhibited at the Mosaic Rooms in London from September 2023 till January 2024. The installation that the game was exhibited within was part of a group show of three contemporary Palestinian artists developing new language and aesthetics around Palestine.
At the beginning of the exhibition, the game displayed an exploited and depleted landscape, the inevitable result of colonial power and extractive capitalism. Over the course of the four months that the show ran, visitors played the game by growing trees and collectively planting a forest. Articulating, through play, that the opposite of colonial exaction and exploitation of land is indigenous stewardship and care.
Local Informant, 2018
Local Informant is a personal game in which notebook drawings of landscapes, memoirs, and 3D SciFi talismans come together to tell a story of immigration, colonization and queerness. Commissioned by Death by Audio and Dreamhouse in New York for DreamboxXx, a custom arcade cabinet designed to house queer games.
The game is comprised from different scenes, each a different page from the notebook accompanied by floating 3d talismans. As the player cycles through each talisman and activates it, they move from one page to another, slowly unfolding the narrative, finally landing the the poem “Blessed are the Queer” written in the aftermath of the Orlando Pulse shooting.
Nothing Old, Nothing New, 2012-2017
Nothing Old, Nothing New is a trilogy of experimental videogames that explore the relationship between real estate development, colonialism, capitalism, and history making. The project was initially inspired by the “redevelopment” of downtown Beirut by real estate company Solidere after the Lebanese civil war, and how that redevelopment destroyed more buildings than two decades of war. Different segments of the project were exhibited at Ashkal Alwan – Beirut, Brief Histories – New York, Sursock Museum -Beirut, Daegu Art Factory – Daegu, Alt Space Loop – Seoul. The project in its entirety was exhibited at Darat Al Funun – Amman.
Nothing Old, Nothing New exhibited at Darat Al Funun Gallery in Amman which featured the videogames in addition to video works, stills, and text .
Tabula Rasa, 2017
Tabula Rasa is the third and final game of the series. It contains two scenes , one in which a golden calf is situated two opposite ends of the scene. In Arabic above one of the calves is written Tiberias, above the other is written The Dead Sea, situating the player in the middle of the river Jordan. In Latin, above one of the calves is written Tabula, above the other is written Rasa, situating the player in the middle of a clean slate. Reflective spheres scattered around the scene shrink and disappear once activated by the player. Once all reflective spheres disappear, the player is taken to the second scene.
Tabula Rasa exhibited at Sursock Musem in Beirut as for the group show Fruit of Sleep – Part of Act II program of Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13.
The second scene shows a nighttime landscape littered with talismanic stars, they lead to a sentence on death and real estate development surrounded by constellation of city names that experienced an abundance of both. The player is surrounded by a composition of spheres and cubes that orbit them. Similar to the first scene, these spheres start to shrink once activated by the player, and once all the spheres disappear the player is taken back to the first scene.
The game explores colonial utilization on clean slates, including Zionist views of Palestine as a Tabula Rasa, and the violence committed against the land and its people both physically and spiritually.
New City, 2016
New City is the second part of the series, the intro scene takes place in a landscape covered in talismanic stars, and golden calves flanking the title and a begin button, which takes the player to the next scene.
New City exhibited at Daegu Art Factory for the group show Today’s Art Space Network.
The second scene takes place in a starry landscape, in which the player is surrounded by large spheres, and each of those spheres is surrounded by smaller spheres. Once the player activates a large sphere, the smaller spheres surrounding it start to orbit it, and a text overlay appears. The progression of text unfolds a narrative about capitalism, war, and real estate.
City, 2015
City is the first game of the series, and was inspired by a tour of downtown Beirut given but the real estate development company Solidere, in which the the Lebanese civil war was described as a Tabula Rasa. This in turn justified destroying more buildings for the redevelopment of the neighborhood than two decade of civil war.
The game’s name is take from an annual report by Solidere distributed at the end of the tour titeld “City in Scenes” which was distributed at the end of the tour. The annual report itself was covered in talismanic stars, and the game features a series of constellations made out of circular cutouts from the star covered annual report. Once a player starts to move the circular cutouts a golden calf appears. This is followed by a series of texts, more cutouts, and 3d models of domesticated animals, a farmer, and a wheelbarrow. This playful interaction between cutouts, text, and 3d models explores the relationship between history making / rewriting/ erasure, capitalism, and real estate development.
Emotional Labor, 2014
Emotional Labor is a personal game / interactive narrative documenting a piece of performance art about power within queer relationships and desire, and love within the context of emotional and caregiving labor. The performance piece included me documenting the days in which a thought about two men that I was in love with, then sending them that documentation both as a love letter and proof of the emotional and caregiving labor that I exercised towards them. They were asked sign that documentation and return it as acknowledgment of the labor. The game allows the player to browse through that documentation and view a video performance in which I repeatedly wore and took of the jacket of one of the men.
Shater Hassan, 2013
Shater Hassan is a personal game / nonlinear narrative commissioned by Canadian art magazine Fuse for their Palestine – Palestine Issue. Taking the form of a centerfold article, each paragraph is numbered and gives the reader a number of different options to choose from at its end. The text itself is about my grandmother, folklore, systems, and games.