Page - 178 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

178 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Charlotte Bank | Remaking a World to handle the heavy instrument, which could fall onto their naked feet at any moment and the constant sound of fighter aircraft that sometimes seem to take over control of the images serves as another reminder of the ever-present violence. By cleverly manipulating sound and image and juxtaposing footage of diverse sources as if it was closely related, Al-Beik creates a dystopian realm, where no space is safe and the border between truth and fake has become porous. Through its combination of documentary, fiction and commentary, the video is also a self-reflexive examination of the power of images. If the two videos, The Sun’s Incubator and La Dolce Siria directly address the political situation in Syria, a more recent work, @Certified Copy, is a reflection of memory and arrival. The work takes the form of an installation presented on the four walls of a room.17 Strongly autobiographical, the work offers multiple narrative lines related to Al-Beik’s artistic beginnings in Damascus, the process of developing a new life for himself in Berlin and his ongoing passion for cinema and its history. Since his arrival in the city, Al-Beik has documented the various aspects of his daily life in his new environment, taking photos and recording videos in the refu- gee shelter, when dealing with bureaucracy, but also when walking through the streets of Berlin, working in cafés or visiting the flea market. These aspects all feed into the installation. Official papers documenting the long processes of German asylum-related bureaucracy, text snippets from anti-racist posters and flyers are part of it, as are thrift-store finds and objects found on the streets of the city. Intersected with these elements are references to the artist’s films and videos and homages to his own, personal icons, such as the film directors Wim Wenders and Jean-Luc Godard and football player Diego Maradonna. The result is a net or kaleidoscope of aspects of Al-Beik’s works that allows for multiple cross-readings. @Certified Copy is a work that needs time to engage with. It invites the visitor to enter the mindscape of the artists, to find individual links and points of reference. This immersive aspect connects it to projects such as Monument, Here, There, and Other Places, Chairing, and On the Ropes, discussed above. But while those works dealt with the traumas of war and flight, Ammar Al-Beik’s installation presents a step out of such troubled states of mind and onto a new trajectory, one that still might seem over- whelming due to its many possible paths, but also one that offer new spaces to explore and test. Visibility and the politics of representation The Syrian artists discussed above have all found exhibition opportunities at different estab- lished art institutions and project spaces in Berlin. They have profited from an institutional infrastructure that has become significantly more accommodating for non-Western artists and have also pro-actively initiated new spaces, such as e.g. the project Damascus in Exile. A col- laboration between the Goethe Institute and a group of Syrian artists, it took place in a pop-up gallery in the Mitte neighbourhood in the fall of 2016 and presented a program of film screen- ings, performances, readings and talks over a period of seven weeks. 18 An earlier initiative was the project Kunststoff Syrien, initiated by a group of Berlin-based Syrians, which took place in 17 Presented in 2018 at Art-Lab Berlin, “Asphalt Jungles” exhibition views, June 15, 2018 <https://artlabberlin. wordpress.com/2018/06/15/asphalt-jungles-exhibition-views> [accessed 10th June 2018] 18 Goethe-Institut Berlin. 2016. Damaskus im Exil | Theme Space “Syria-Berlin”, <https://www.goethe.de/en/uun/ ver/dix.html> [accessed 10th June 2018].