ABOUT
“Against the hegemony of the present world order that passes itself off as natural and necessary, global actions are tearing a hole in knowledge. New forms emerge. They nourish our imagination, the most radical power that we humans have.”
– Susan Buck-Morss
1948/2048 will be a hybrid interactive and feature documentary co-created with visionary change-makers in Israel/Palestine that designs a transcendent future for 2048. By partnering with organizations that use technology and design to envision a post-segregation future, 1948/2048 will create and reflect on processes of decolonization, collaborative transformation, and the common space.
NARETIV Productions
"The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover; if I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see."
- James Baldwin
By establishing a co-creation methodology, we will develop the necessary tools to facilitate an effective and collaborative creation with our professional partners. In the first phase we will assemble the projects through which this exploration will take place on an interactive platform. The tools we will develop will include alternative reality games, online chat rooms, co-designed apps, collaborative blueprints, infographics and data analysis tools. The vast majority of these resources already exist, and those we intend to showcase in the platform will be designed by our partner organizations. Our role in this phase as filmmakers will be to document the partner organizations’ next projects, as they unfold.
The online platform will serve not only to display, but also to connect. We will assemble a team of international advisers from areas of the world, from regions that have already undergone transformative justice processes. Their experience will assist our partners in envisioning the potential pitfalls and possibilities of dismantling a system of domination in favor of a system of equity.
In South Africa, Northern Ireland, Argentina, and so many other global conflicts, people transformed their reality. In most cases such transformations were undertaken after decades of struggle, when the future seemed bleak. “In 1984,” says renown scholar Mahmoud Mamdani, it looked like South Africa was on the path to civil war. Ten years later, the global and local solidarity movements led to the crash of apartheid.” The Northern Irish have fought a centuries-long decolonization struggle before the Good Friday agreements of 1998 were finally signed.
The processes that led to these resolutions have been studied and continue to teach the global community about transformative justice. By envisioning in non-linear ways a collection of possibilities, we will create content ideal for an online platform, allowing our audiences to explore, connect, envision, and participate.
Specifically, it will make possible the inclusion of millions of Palestinians forced into exile by Israel’s creation and wartime expansions. Today more than half of all Palestinians live outside the borders of Israel/Palestine, yet their future continues to be debated and negotiated away in round after round of peace talks. As most Jewish people also reside outside the borders of Israel/Palestine, yet tie their spiritual and national connection to this land, they too will be able to use the platform to connect with our partners and watch as our co-creation grows.
PHASE I
Interactive Documentary
PHASE II
YOUTH CREATIONS
Following the process of creation and documentation, a number of what DAAR terms “fragments of the possible” will emerge. With the help of our global advisors we will develop a critical pedagogy with which they will take these fragments into Israeli, Palestinian, and bilingual classrooms. Youth will be invited to create in the imaginary, transformed future of 2048. Their stories, plays, screenplays, and art will give new life to what the architects and academics are envisioning, reincarnating their ideas and inspiring the youth to think beyond the reality they see out their window.
Creating a series of workshops with students in bilingual schools in refugee camps we will be building on infrastructure already laid out by visionary educators. The youth’s creations will then be displayed in an exhibition in Israel/Palestine and on the growing interactive platform, again growing its audience.
PHASE III
FEATURE DOCUMENTARY
While covering the creation of our visionary partners and the youth workshops, we will amass an archive of multimedia. We will periodically make short videos for the platform to showcase the unfolding process. At the final stage, the mass of filmed material will be edited into a feature documentary. The film will tell the story of three of the change-makers in the context of the reality in which they must today battle for the right to imagine a different tomorrow. The film will conclude with the youth groups, whose creations will also be displayed on the online platform.
Unlike Naretiv's previous films and work, which directly tackled collective assumptions and silences in our communities, 1948/2048 will challenge denials in a way we have yet to do. Not through exposing our societies to that which they refuse to see, but by simply creating with, through, and past their denials. We will be operating from the assumption that transformation, of the conflict and of silence, is not only possible but also practical.