For this panel I will present an in-depth look at my recent artistic project titled Conference of the Birds. A project that fuses images of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street protests to propose new networks of cultural coexistence. By weaving imagery of these two distinct movements into one another, and digitally recombining them into entwined patterns, I propose a connection between the people in these movements. Repetition and reproducibility empowers imagery with the ability to construct and define history. Through this project I will discuss the multiple ways in which imagery of Crowds through the digital sphere can empower and mobilize.
I use vernacular images that often appear on social media networks, and the semiotics of pattern to reflect upon the strong networks of collaborative organization that is now possible digital transmission.
This project resulted from my direct involvement with Occupy Wall Street movement during the Fall of 2011 in New York City, and creates a juxtaposition between the East and the West through the use of digital technologies and Islamic patterns. In Islamic art, ornamentation is an art of transformation, with an aim to move beyond mere decoration in order to transcend and transfigure. This comes out of the Islamic preoccupation with the transitory nature of being. Daring to imagine that we can transform our world into something more beautiful, and that our current struggles are but a transitory state in our evolution towards a more egalitarian society. Through the creation of patterns intertwining my subjects, Conference of the Birds uses this idealistic outlook, and envisions a better world.
This project is named after the Persian book of poetry, The Conference of the Birds, written by Farid ud-Din Attar in the twelfth century of the Common Era. Over the past decade digital communications has enabled a brand new form of activism. But this new generation of activists has also made changes to the process of decision-making. Through actions such as the human microphone and consensus at their General Assemblies, the Occupy movement uses an open, participatory, and horizontally organized process to make decisions. Like the birds in Attar’s poem, this leaderless movement looks within and values each member as an equal voice in organizing for political change.
