16 Febbraio 2020
Un archivio digitale per tenere memoria di sogni, speranze, violenze e crimini di guerra e contro l’umanità
The revolution established a space for ingenuity that has astounded us Syrians, even before making its mark on the rest of the world, and made us wonder where had all this talent in satire, art, and innovation been?
The outburst of the uprising against oppression and tyranny brought on a surge of these remarkable, latent energies, the spontaneous and the organized, in a way never before seen in all of Syria’s years marked by repression and injustice. History relays similar experiences.
Our project aims to document all forms of intellectual expression, both artistic and cultural, during the time of the revolution, by writing, recording, and collecting stories of the Syrian people, and the experiences through which they have regained meaning of their social, political, and cultural lives.
Although most of the Syrian revolution’s output is available on the internet soon after its production, this output is dense and brief, and quickly becomes difficult to find, hence the importance of developing this website to gather it all in one specific place.
The website also aims to enhance the impact of the artistic Syrian resistance, to reinforce its place in the revolution, to archive and spread the messages it expresses, and to help establish networks between the groups or the individuals who animate it, as well as links with the outside world.
Here, the artist is considered a citizen before anything else, resisting with his/her art and standing by his/her people’s fight for freedom.
The organizers thus work on writing their contemporary history, seeing the necessity of sharing the realities and the value of the revolution with their compatriots, the makers of the revolution, the coming generations, and the world.
The work on the website aims to build an archive of national intangible heritage; to protect it is essential, as it belongs to the collective memory.
Finally, it is our duty to protect this archive and to carry this memory in order to give back to the Syrian people its history and all its historical wealth, and to make it proud of this present history.