Winner of The New School’s 2014 Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, Abounaddara is an anonymous collective that emerged at the onset of the civil uprising that led to the Syrian Civil War.

A self-styled “emergency cinema,” Abounaddara transcends mainstream war reporting by making use of both the wide reach and anonymity afforded by online video platforms. Through brief impressionistic videos often focusing on a single individual, the group’s work depicts daily life in a society wracked by ongoing atrocities sniper—whose interview is intercut with images of a shooting video game—who estimates that he has killed up to 600 people but still cries for his wife’s miscarried child; an “unknown soldier,” depicted in shadows and tortured by memories of the atrocities he has seen; an Alawite woman discussing how she became a rebel sympathizer; a young man disappeared into police custody. To Abounaddara, defending the “right to the image” as a human right drives their work. Collectively these weekly video missives fight for the freedom and dignity of all Syrians, implying that the Syrian crisis is far from “local” or “isolated,” but is a matter of global concern and global doing.