During the events in Syria, I found myself constantly watching the news. This project emerged from that compulsive act of viewing—hours spent immersed in archives, testimonies, and images that kept resurfacing again and again.

The video is composed entirely of media footage: archives recorded after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, alongside older images that return to the present like fragments of a collective memory refusing to remain buried. These materials respond to one another without necessarily forming a linear narrative. Testimonies from former detainees coexist with discussions about the role of Syrian women in the revolution; cultural stereotypes appear alongside accounts from victims of war.

This tension lies at the heart of the project: the coexistence of seemingly light subjects related to aesthetics and Syrian culture with deeply painful themes of violence, detention, and loss. This contrast is not constructed artificially—it reflects the experience of engaging with these archives. Lightness and pain exist side by side, interrupting one another and overlapping.

The complexity of the subject unfolds through questions and answers that are not always directly connected, through dialogues between elements that would not normally speak to each other. I am not seeking to explain, resolve, or conclude. Instead, I attempt to convey something of the experience of looking—and of being unable to look away.