European
Indifference

// Concept

About the work

European Indifference places the visitor between two television screens standing parallel, facing each other. One screen shows a montage of traumatic events in Gaza, the other a slow collection of images of passers-by and café terraces in Amsterdam.

The visitor stands at the centre, between the indifference and the trauma, and is asked to question their own position in it. The installation asks how far our empathy reaches when injustice is involved.

// Process

How it was made

The work began with a conversation. During a photographic investigation into activism I spoke with a Syrian boy who told me how, as a child, he was inside a community centre that was hit by a mortar shell. People around him were killed. He told me that many immigrants carry a story like that, stories that are not told often enough in the context of immigration.

That conversation led me to my colleague Malkolm, a Palestinian man, and to talking with him about his own history and experiences. He became an active co-maker of the work. The archive footage of Gaza was selected together with him, from existing material found online. For the Amsterdam part Malkolm recorded a rap acapella in Arabic, performing a text about growing up under an oppressive system. That voice plays while the images of Amsterdammers on their bikes pass by.

The two screens stand parallel, facing each other. The edit was a deliberate choice: no commentary, no explanation, only the two realities side by side, with the visitor in between.