Who Is Afraid of Ideology ? (Part. I, II, III)

Reasserting the fundamentals of life against machineries of capitalist exploitation is the core of today’s anti-colonial struggle for wider social and political change. In places such as Northern Syria and Colombia women claim the right to the land and to reconnect with nature in an unmediated way. Self-defense, eco-feminism, ownership, healing, resisting state control, autonomy, collectivity, indigenous struggle, seed protection, and land rights define the common ground of women who are resisting extractivist industries. Who is Afraid of Ideology? Part I (2017) and Part 2 (2019) are shaped around interviews the artist made with members of the Kurdish Autonomous Women’s Movement in Iraqi Kurdistan and Jinwar, a women-only commune in northern Syria, exploring the possibilities of a political praxis based on an existence close to nature and within armed struggle. While producing the films, Arsanios organized different meetings with women farmers and ecological feminists from Syria, Lebanon, Colombia, Mexico, India, Poland, Denmark, and Greece to exchange knowledge around their cooperatives and communes. Part III draws from these intense exchanges and footage partly filmed in the south of Tolima in Colombia, focusing on the ongoing systemic war waged by transnational corporations against the smallest and the most essential element of life—the seed. The last film in the trilogy connects the violent history of murder and purge to the seed guardians.

Ovul Durmusoglu (Biennale Berlin)