English, Arabic with English subtitles

The right to usership should prevail over the right to ownership. This is the message underlying the film Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 4: Reverse Shot. Set primarily in a private quarry in northern Lebanon, the film seeks to reframe the meaning of property in relation to land. Arsanios explores the local community, examining an agricultural cooperative’s attempt to transform private land into a common or social waqf. As the film’s subjects reflect on the possibility of overturning the current legal system, they repeatedly reference the impact of the Ottoman Empire’s 1858 land reform, which stripped local inhabitants of their land. Here, the land itself becomes the undisputed protagonist of the work, portrayed as a living organism, rich with memory and capable of resisting the concept of property. The land thus emerges as a symbol of non-property, of the interconnection between geological, legal, and historical systems, and of an ecological perspective that rejects anthropocentrism in favour of reactivation and communalism.

• Sektion Section: Artist in Focus. Marwa Arsanios
• Programm Programme: Programme 1