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mixed media installation with video (13 min. loop), and olive wood and Plasticine chess board (60 x 60 cm) with 2 stands; Al Mahattah Gallery, Ramallah
This project questions the blatant processes in our lives whose aim is to programme human beings to make them more efficient, less 'troublesome', and somehow less human; the most distinctive illustration of which is soldiering and militarisation. Through training, the individual – who then becomes a recruit – undergoes a metamorphosis that turns 'him' into a mechanical system that is submissive to the commander, even against 'his' own ethical principles. Such ethical principles are suspended in order to be fully submissive, and the concepts of free will and freedom of choice become ever more dispensable. What is at stake here isn't just the lives of other people, but depriving this individual of 'his' inherent right to think and question.
The process of producing mechanical beings or 'soldiers' is a game of positioning and embedding them wherever is considered a stronghold in order to fight the 'enemy' or the opponent, who is being defined and redefined constantly and solely by the commander.
Majd Abdel Hamid
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