I will not find this image beautiful I will not find this image beautiful I will not find this image beautiful (An unfinished monument)

Authors

  • Omar Mismar American University of Beirut

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.14.2.4568

Abstract

Abstract

During the summer of 2014, I scrolled through the images of the Israeli bombings of Gaza, mesmerized behind the computer screen by their beauty. They were stunning and my engagement with them, so far away from the event, was based on purely flat aesthetic grounds– which is uncannily perverse. Attempting to deface the image, I insert the names of the victims of the attack into its script code. Each name typed into the script alters the photograph and leaves its mark. While trying to defile the visual, to escape from the beauty of this violence, a different aesthetic transpires, that of the glitch. With naming the dead, the notion of a monument emerges, reinforced by the sculptural quality of the smoke cloud. The resulting video is entitled I will not find this image beautiful, I will not find this image beautiful, I will not find this image beautiful (An unfinished monument) (11h 43min).

Keywords

Aesthetics, conflict, Palestine, glitch, monument

Author Biography

Omar Mismar, American University of Beirut

Omar Mismar is an interdisciplinary artist based in Beirut. He holds an MFA in Fine Arts and an MA in visual and critical studies from California College of the Arts, which he attended on a Fulbright scholarship. He participated in Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2016 and the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2017. He has participated in exhibitions in San José Museum of Art, San José (2018), Tabakalera, San Sebastian (2018), the MMAG Foundation, Amman (2018), MoMA, New York (2018), Homeworks 8, Beirut (2019) and Oakland Museum, California (2020) among others. His work explores the entanglement of art and politics and the aesthetics of disaster via a particular interest in performative obliqueness, rehearsal, and translation. Mismar is assistant professor of visual arts at the American University in Beirut. 

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Published

2021-02-23 — Updated on 2021-04-12

Versions

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 2 (2020): Issue # 27 | Autumn / Winter 2020 | Conflict Mediations

Section

Visual Essay

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Omar Mismar

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