Monochromator #2 - We Refuse To Be Afraid

MONOCHROMATOR 002 deconstructs Jonathan Glazer’s 2023 film The Zone of Interest and Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary The Act of Killing under the manifesto of We Refuse to Be Afraid.

In this era of terrifying global unrest, MONOCHROMATOR refuses to be afraid. To Theodore Adorno’s statement that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, we say writing poetry after Auschwitz is a necessity.

MONOCHROMATOR 002 brings together a documentary-like fiction film and a fiction film-like documentary to examine how the realities of violence are constructed on screen, deconstructing the political powers embedded in the act of representation.

In “Refraction,” we look at wildflowers of Palestine. We talk about resistance, resilience, and courage.

In “Wavelength,” we bring forth the zones of killing that are normalized in plain sight and we stress acts of interest persist. We look at the performative, the intertextual, the non/fictional modes of representation.

In “Interference,” we talk with Joshua Oppenheimer and Dolorosa Sinaga. 3EZWA tells us about the absurdity and the brutality of repression. We say the subaltern can speak.

Table of Contents

Refraction

We Refuse to Be Afraid / Alex Heeyeon Kil

Wavelength

Static Thinking / Rehearsing the Unspeakable / Ed Luker

Let the Ghosts Out of the Machine / Savina Petkova

Zones of Killing / Bayan Abu Nahla

Acts of Interest / Anindya Anugrah

Propagandistic Image, Why Such Beauty? / Will DiGravio

Interference

We Squander Our Only Chance to Be Fully Human When We’re Afraid / Joshua Oppenheimer

From the River to the Sea, from the Courts to the Streets / 3EZWA

The Promise of Proximity: Witnessing, Memory, and the Specter of Complicity / David Duindam

Violence Is Not One Thing, It Is Many Things Working Together / Rosalia Namsai Engchuan

Between 1965 Indonesia and Gaza: Dolorosa Sinaga on Truth, Trauma, and Justice / Dolorosa Sinaga