good evening uh everyone um I think most of you know who I am but I'll just introduce myself I'm Don Fischer the interim principal um it's my pleasure to to welcome tonight's uh panel I'm sure it's going to be really excellent for those of you that are new and maybe there is the odd folk who are um do remember that we have an active program of events that uh happens from Monday through Thursday every week and everybody's welcome it's free and public and uh more the merrier as far as we're concerned I'm going to hand over to helina who is the host for tonight and she's also going to introduce our panelists so thank you good evening everyone thank you all for being here uh my name is Helena zeri I'm an assistant professor in the anthropology department here at UBC and also an affiliate with the center for migration studies where I direct the borders research group uh which is also a co-sponsor of this event I want to First acknowledge that the UBC Vancouver campus where we're gathered here today is located on the traditional ancestral and occupied territory of the musan people and this acknowledgement invites us to think about what colonization and human Liberation could mean in a world of borders colonialism and occupation but also in a world in which our futures remain deeply interconnected which are themes that are Central to today's uh talks I first want to thank green college and specifically Heather mckart and Sarah ing for their support and helping us organize this event and for the invitation to have this event at Green college and I also want to thank the Aliah Ahmed Yan lectures at UBC for also helping to make tonight's event possible they've really been instrumental in uh helping us to bring our speakers here today I'm deeply honored and privileged to be able to welcome our speakers here tonight I first heard about uh Dr om toan's work as a PhD student when I was living in Melbourne Australia doing research on the intersection between immigration social welfare and multiculturalism at the time around 2017 Australia was making Global headlines for its offshore Detention of Asylum Seekers on the islands of Manis and nuu and its stop the boats policy targeted primarily toward Asylum Seekers who arrived to Australia by boat Australia's official policy was that no Asylum Seekers would be resettled on the mainland instead boats would either be turned back or Asylum Seekers would be detained on offshore Islands many for up to six years I started doing some more research and learned about the work being done by detained Asylum Seekers on Manis Island and Naru trying to expose the harsh realities of a system that most people in the world had no understanding of I learned about the writings and films of beus bani a Kurdish Asylum Seeker who had fled Iran for Australia and who had been detained on Manis since 2013 and saw that Dr Tuan had been collaborating with beus on a number of film and writing projects after reading more about their collaborative work I was inspired by how their collaborations sought to break the boundaries of how we come to understand the violence of detention it wasn't simply that beus bani was testifying to his suffering but it was also that he was conceptualizing how the prison Works its structure its power relations and what it means for Australia a place whose Origins as a nation state are based on Logics of displacement of indigenous peoples and carceral approaches to convicts and through Dr tuan's work I also learned about elah Z's work at the time and was incredibly inspired by her desire to seek Justice for the inhumanity that unfolded on Naru where she herself was detained for six years by the Australian government El's artwork reflects on detention as a form of gender-based violence vience and as part of a larger border industrial complex and through her work we come to understand the weaponization of Hope and time in detention so I'm really grateful to be able to be in dialogue with Omid and elah who have come from Sydney Australia and the United States respectively um I'll give you brief bios about their work I'll turn it over to them they'll each uh speak for about 25 minutes uh Omid will present and I'll have more of a conversation style format sorry thank you uh with El and then we'll pivot to a question and answer with the audience so om Tuan is an award-winning lecturer researcher and Community Advocate combining philosophy with interests in citizen media popular culture displacement and discrimination he is adjunct lecturer at the University of New South Wales and honorary research fellow at Burke Beck laww at the University of London his Publications include myth and philosophy in platonic dialogues uh the translation and collaboration with beus bani um of no friend but the mountains writings from Manis prison he is co-editor of special issues for a variety of journals including literature and Aesthetics Alphaville Journal of film and Screen media and souly um and he's also co-translator and Co editor of Freedom only Freedom the prison writings of beus bani I'll also say a bit about elah zardar elah is an award-winning Iranian artist architectural designer journalist and documentary filmmaker she currently lives in Arizona in the US where she obtained Refugee status in 2019 after fleeing Iran eloh was detained on the remote island of the Republic of Naru for attempting to seek asylum in Australia from 2013 to 2019 during her detention in Naru she was highly active in using photos and videos to document the horrific treatment and conditions endured by people seeking Asylum she's an artist who uses diverse techniques including painting photography and documentary film making and she seeks to depict and raise awareness on how Refugee stateless and migrant minorities are treated throughout the migration process especially at Borders in addition to her artwork she is active as an adviser to International Refugee Rights campaigns and organizations in Australia the UK and the US so with that please join me in giving a warm welcome to uh Dr Tan and [Music] [Applause] El so I'll turn it over to Omid first and we'll go from there yeah thank you everyone it's wonderful to be here thank you for that really generous introduction and for making this happen for inviting us to be here and thank you to all the sponsors all the supporters so I would also like to start by acknowledging that I live and work on the land of the DAR people which is uh now known as the northwest suburbs of Sydney and this is extremely important and thank you for um your beautiful acknowledgement of country because talking about border violence in in the context of settler colonialism uh is extremely important to make the connection between the displacement dispossession of First Nations peoples and what happens on the border the the violence that occurs on um you in relation to people who are trying to cross borders uh to achieve freedom and safety so much of what I talk about today is going to connect um the history of colonial violence with um contemporary well modern examples of Border violence and because the theme today is uh creative resistance you know the title narratives from Australian offshore Refugee prisons creative resistance coll collaboration and experimentation now this really sums up so much of the work that we've been doing together and one key term here is narratives so much of the work done by journalists by academics by lawyers and other people who who have taken um more legalistic more rational approaches more uh databased approaches to addressing the situation often there is something lost or something doesn't communicate or the objectives that people are trying to achieve don't end up um uh and not arrived that in the way that was hoped for however one of the the I guess the gaps maybe in these other approaches is the fact that the underlying narrative the story told the social or even the colonial imaginary associated with these particular kinds of uh border violence the way that these these examples of Border violence are Justified using a certain kind of narrative that hasn't been addressed especially in these rational approaches these logical approaches using data statistics argumentation try to try to achieve uh to arrive at change however using an aesthetic approach which is inherently political what we try to achieve is changing the narrative changing the way people imagine the border and the people who are trying to across the border I'm going to start by playing a video because the images I'm about to show you throughout this presentation address some of the issues really will give you a sense of the kind of conditions that we're talking about and the kind the examples of Border violence but I think the video is important because it will allow some of the people who experienced um uh immigration detention indefinite immigration detention will allow them to present their own accounts of course eloho will do that later on but uh it will show examples of other people and also it will give you a sense of the kinds of kind of environment we're talking about that video was from 2016 after 3 years of indefinite detention people were held on Naru until 2023 there were there were people released slowly for a variety of reasons but just last year Australia started sending more people seeking Asylum by boat tario again and the center is um being kept open as part of the the discourse part of the the regime of deterrence now I think that video was extremely important because it not only shows you the conditions gives you a sense of the kind of built environment the natural environment the isolation the location of Naru but it also gives you a sense of the kind of systematic torture that was being that was taking place the different kinds of strategies the different kinds of techniques and it also gives a sense of the kind of fluidity of uh the Border regime how things are constantly changing policies are changing approaches are changing it also conveys something about the securitization and the militarization of the island which we'll talk about a little bit in um later on now I'm going to um the examples you see up there are um examples of the creative resistance that we've been engaged in to combat the um the Border regime the what we call the Border industrial complex which isn't just um particular to Australia but it's a global phenomenon so at the bottom left you'll see uh the cover of no friend but the mountain the book that um I translated but I was also a collaborator on and uh and the book was sent to me by WhatsApp text messages so I think it's the first ever book written using Whatsapp text messages and these text messages were uh edited I guess revised Rewritten translated and became a book an award-winning book it's won many awards that was published in 2018 the image next to it is the film choker please tell us the time this was a book that was uh sorry a film that was uh the shots were taken using uh a smuggled smartphone within the detention center and the film was co-directed between uh a Kurdish Iranian Refugee beus bani in the detention center and his colleague uh an Iran a Dutch Iranian filmmaker living in the Netherlands there next to that there's an image of uh elah from her ID card uh during her time um incarcerated in Naru and a text in a very poetic way presented about her predicament about her situation next to that is one of the paintings that she um has created to represent different aspects of her experience uh above that on the on the left sorry on the right there's uh Freedom only Freedom the the latest book that I co-rated and co-edited with munis mansubi uh there are articles by beus bani but there are also articles by other people who have uh commented on the on the book on the writing and on the the resistance the creative resistance which includes Helena and elah and mean uh who wrote an article a piece for that book there's an image of uh by elah a photograph taken by elah and next to that is a render of her 3D model of the Detention Center that she's been constructing after uh going to the US these images are from my time visiting Manis Island so it's important to um identify these two locations as neocolonial experiments Naru is a former protectorate and papun guini is a former colony of Australia Manis island is one of the provinces or Manis province is one of the provinces of guini and Manis island is within Manis Province now the Detention Center in Manis is a former Naval nav Naval base and many of the constructions many of the buildings used are from uh World War II era so for instance what you see on the on the left hand side is a former airplane hanger that was converted into uh Barrack sleeping quarters and about 150 160 refugees were kept in that small space and the image in the middle as well is important it's a an image of a local manian and I think one thing that's often forgotten is the way that this kind these kinds of centers these uh kinds of forms of containment also impact on the local people and disrupt their social moral fabric their Customs their history their their economy and also importantly the natural environment detention centers are environmental hazards as well there's an image from choco pleas tell us the time the film that I mentioned now this is extremely important for understanding the way that Colonial violence works the way that uh uh the colonial logic that's employed in these particular SP sites choker is the name of a native bird on Manis Island it tells local people the time once in the morning one in the afternoon it's a symbol of manace it's a sense of Pride people always when they when they hear the term choker they know that there's there's a connection with Manis the Australian authorities created a solitary confinement cell within the Detention Center and they named that solitary confinement cell choker they abused the name the culture the history the identity the moral framework the the moral imagination of the local people and used it for Colonial purposes for systematic torture a lot to say about that but also what's important is that the name of the bird in the film title reflects the way that time is weaponized in indefinite detention and that uh connection with colonialism the the way that time is been used but also the way that identity is stripped architecture and design is also used as weapons are reflected in the film and in the book no friend but the mountains one of the terms that beus uses in no but the mountains to describe the colonial Logic the heart the soul of the system is the term the karal system now as a translator this was almost impossible to translate the term doesn't exist uh system of hm doesn't exist in Persian or Kurdish and it's a complet it's a neologism and in English you know there are different ways I could translate it like Sovereign system system of governmentality maybe dominating system ruling system controlling system oppressive system so many different ways but none of them actually capture the intersectional nature of this kind of violence the way race colonialism militarism gender disability sexuality uh class-based violence religious-based violence all of these intersect together in these particular sites the best term I could find was one from radical feminist theology the notion of karchy so here is an interesting way of creative resistance functioning in the translation context where a new term in Persian required a new term in English to be transformed modified to create a new term in itself the karal system so here is some examples of El's work which she'll talk about herself um her upcoming film architect the painting series border industrial complex and a an art exhibition that were working on weapons of slow destruction there are image one of her paintings nameless and two of the images that um uh from her uh 3D model of the Detention Center another example of uh of resistance from within the camp know one of the important things in our work in this form of creative resistance is to transform the image as I mentioned the narrative but the images associated with that narrative to transform the view that refugees are passive weak needy supplicants broken pure victims moving away from that image away from that narrative and presenting refugees for what for the like all of us in the diversity of their identities in in the kind of complexity of the their identities they're also knowledge producers creatives intellectuals and so many fighters in fact by Crossing Borders by standing up to this system they're fighting for all of our freedoms for this kind of these kinds of sites to exist all of us need to be um uh be need to be manipulated and exploited and we'll talk a little bit later about this idea that there is a deep connection between the border and the state what happens there like I said is a neocolonial experiment there is a deep connection between what is what takes place on non against non-citizens and what takes place against citizens some more images and one that's I I thought was important to include here is the one at the bottom right uh it's a again a 3D render and it shows the way that privacy is used or the lack of privacy is used to again continually erode continually strip people of their identity now when it comes to Human Rights uh privacy is considered a non-absolute right but how can the law be manipulated and turned into a weapon this allowance that is ingrained within uh the um the human rights Charter as a human rights principle this allowance for privacy to be viewed or uh to be addressed F in in a flexible terms can then become a weapon where every year every month every week every day every hour every minute every second of your life is being uh has lost all sense of privacy and that's when it becomes part of systematic torture so here are some of the ways that I've uh that I've Incorporated creative resistance into translation and writing uh one a form of experimentation to really communicate what takes place in these sites to really convey the kind of systematic torture and also the connections with Colonial legacies it was important that a form of literary or creative experimentation take place old models Frameworks theories Concepts examples didn't quite work I mean we were inspired by them we drew from them but there was something new maybe unprecedented about these particular sites um they mix in interesting ways the Border industrial complex military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex and and this is only happened in the last few decades so a new approach is necessary shared philosophical Activity The Power of collaboration Collective resistance is required for for things to change for for the system to be exposed so this sense of collaboration I think has also philosophical Dimensions that we can talk about later I call it a shared philosophical activity because a particular it's a particular form of knowledge production that's created when there's a collaboration between people who are maybe like me um formerly trained in academic disciplines for instance philosophy and people who are non-sp Specialists but in the same way that people inside the prisons incarcerated people require support from the outside I also need support in order to understand in order to engage in order to convey so there's this two-way connection there's this interdependency which also breaks the model of the victim savior uh Dynamic I'm actually learning more as a result of engaging in this shared philosophical activity anticolonialism and last point is horrific surrealism and horrific surrealism is a combination of um psychological horror and horror realism and surrealism the anti-colonial forms of surrealism so not just from uh European forms of surrealism but also the kinds of surrealism that uh evolved um were introduced and then evolved in the Caribbean in Africa parts of the Middle East um which are deeply connected with anticolonial resistance that image from Manis Island um the image from the film choka pleas us a time I think perfectly reflects horrific surrealism we can talk more about that I don't have time to go into it in too much detail but maybe later a journalist visiting Manis Island another shot from the film CH of place still this time listening to local manans talk about what took place during World War II the kinds of colonial intervention that took place and how the existence of the Detention Center is a new phase in that kind of colonial intervention I'm going to read a quote by chra uh chandron kukathas who I think really explains well this border Nation Dynamic non-citizen citizen Dynamic and how the small island Manis or the small island Naru are deeply interconnected with the large island Australia the guns face inward inwards more often than they face out and the guards are to be found not merely well within the boundaries of the state but in every part of society as we have tried to erect a fortress so have we managed to build a prison we have become used to living under surveillance just as we are also getting used to monitoring each other in a panopticon of the people whether or not we fully realize it we are no longer at ease we rely upon a policy and a system that threatens rather than secures our freedom later on he writes the elite will come to tyrannize over the majority until it brings the majority to tyrannize over itself this was important for me because my fourth attempt to visit Manis Island I was stopped at the um Port morby Airport the capital I wasn't allowed in because I'd been blacklisted after my third visit I was blacklisted denied entry and deported I had done nothing wrong and the only explanation was that the boss had given them orders one of the things that beus mentions in no friend but the mountains is that you can't confront anyone to get an explanation about why things are the way they are the only response you receive is the boss told us this has come from the boss you need to talk to the boss who that is is never clear the absurdity of that is uh reflected in so many different elements of uh this situation these are examples of some of uh text messages that um were communicated through WhatsApp more examples of uh El's uh renders of the Detention Center examples of creative resistance one of El's paintings that ended up becoming the cover of a very special Journal uh writing through fences arelo of letters is a collection of works by about 150 people who either were experiencing indefinite detention at the time of writing or were recently released it the work spans from around 9 years and from people in detention centers in Australia's Mainland Christmas Island part also a part of Australian territory Naru Manis and Port Mosby and also Australian funded detention centers in Indonesia what we call the castal Border archipelago in order to resist this archipelago this ceral border archipelago we needed an archipelago of letters we confront ugliness with beauty and suddenly The Narrative tries starts to transform to finish off I realize I've gone over a few minutes but um I'll I'll finish now um this is a you know being a philosopher we we thrive on thought experiments we're always using thought experiments to try to kind of convey uh all the different dimensions or to um to evoke intuitions from the readers and then we sort of test those principles um I created a thought experiment particularly for this situation to convey the uh kind of dynamic between the two islands and I'll read the thought experiment and this the last part of it I'll is on the next slide so uh please uh entertain the thought experiment imagine it's it is a creative act so just please imagine that uh that you're in this particular situation that the thought experiment is introducing there is an island isolated in a silent ocean where people are held prisoner the people cannot experience the world beyond the island they cannot see the immediate Society outside the prison and they certainly do not learn about what takes place in other parts of the world they only see each other and hear the stories they tell one another this is their reality they are frustrated by their isolation and incarceration but they have also been taught to accept their predicament news somehow enters the prison about another Island where the mind is free to know and create the prisoners are given a sense of what life is like on the other Island but they do not have the capacity or experience to understand fully the people on the other Island have special Insight they see things that the prisoners cannot they create things that the prisoners cannot and they certainly know things that the prisoners cannot some of the prisoners resent the people on the other Island some simply do not understand the people there and try to undermine them some are indifferent to the other Society some prisoners feel pity for them because they are confident that their own situation is changing for the better and will eventually provide greater freedoms the two islands are Polar Opposites one Island kills Vision creativity and knowledge it imprisons thought the other Island Fosters Vision creativity and knowledge it is a land where the mind is free the first island is the settler colonial state called Australia and the prisoners are the settlers the second island contains Manis or Naru prison and knowledge resides there with the incarcerated refugees raises the question who is in prison we who are living in Liberal democracy or the people who are incarcerated in uh in offshore detention centers whose freedoms are being lost in a in a sense it's all of us what I'm going to do is play one more clip that reflects the the kind of research the way research and collaboration can evolve can move into areas where creative resistance really uh culminates in something powerful something special something unique and becomes a a contribution to history a history from below this is a a video um involving people uh incarcerated in maners it's based on a lot of the research that I've done I was actually like uh one of the writers for for this particular film uh short short clip clip and it shows how some of the uh some of the philosophy behind these um these arguments behind this kind of resistance can then start to play out in in uh in collaborative initiatives that involve people who are contained people with the lived experience authorities have confirmed the death of an assum Seeker on non assignment Friends of the man who was a sanan tel say it appeared he committed suicide after a Pap new guinean court said detaining refugees was illegal illegal and unconstitutional Australia agreed to close the center over 600 refugees are still camping at the closed Center [Music] Australian B is thousands of kilometers away but it's real political boundary reaches right here we are not in Australia but every element of our life is been dictated by Australia our life is been controlled by Australia our breast our freedom of movements our freedom of speech is being controlled by Australia Australians Sing Sing themselves relaxed and Care Free not slave on it but in reality we are their slave it's not sweat from our labor that makes monetary gains our time our lives has been exchanged for a political Capital every minute every hour every day of 6 years 6 years have been safe to keep politician in power thousand of kilometers away we we are no way forward we can't stay here because we have no rights and we are not safe here we can't be taken to another Nation because Australia W allow we can't go to Australia because we are worth more to their politician here we can't go back to where we came from because we will be killed we are giving Australia our best years as a political life we could give Australia our best years as a it man as a veterinarian as a lawyer engineers and doctors we are stuck here in Australia ganama for 6 years we stopped in Australian gulak Island for experiment and experiment that whole world is watching to see how Cru the Democracy would be with people if you watching this in Western Society allow your governments to keep us in slave be prepared for your identity to be stripped for the political gains of others oh you can resist we have been trying to make our voice of Hur for years from this island but we have been ignored by the Australian media and we've been ignored by the International Community you the free people in the world you can speak for us refugees are not Prat or illegal they are just people people who just want a safe place live our life and raise our families in peace tell this to the world defend our Humanity or you may lose [Music] yours thank you [Applause] thank you so much thank you um so we're g to move on now to uh a bit of a dialogue with eloh cardar thank you so much Omid for that incredibly um Illuminating context I think you've given us um a really rich set of Frameworks through which to maybe not make sense of but explain um the structural violence of offshore detention um I feel really privileged to today to be able to speak with uh elar uh who is an artist um an architect an activist and a documentary filmmaker um and we're going to have just a bit of a dialogue about your experiences um in detention but also the way that you um conceptualize those experiences and how um you've used the medium of Art and film um to raise awareness and um and explain those experiences so Omid kind of alluded to this uh in his presentation but when we think about prisons we think about spaces that confine people's mobilities and their bodies but prisons also confine people's minds Futures and senses of self so could you tell us to the extent that you're comfortable and want to share how did the Detention Center in Naru work to do both yeah hello everyone thank you so much for having us today do I need the microphone whatever you want yeah my background is in theater and it's a kind of embarrassing to use microphon even if even if I haven't been in theater industry for years more than a decade but it still feels like a bit okay um first let's remember that when we talking about the prison um we're not talking about criminal people Naro prison wasn't just the usual prison um it was where about about more than 12200 innocent people were taken randomly by Australian government om correct me please if I'm wrong but uh just to give you some information about that in 2013 when the Australian government passed his offshore policy more than I think 4,00 people arrived by boat in a to Australia but uh about 1200 people were taken randomly and sent to Naro uh prison Island and that included uh pregnant women families children babies infants uh and uh very old people people who were dealing with serious disease regardless of their health situation were taken and sent to this prison and and in term of the struggle and confusion and Trauma that is related to places I can say that it doesn't start with the Detention Center we get there when we already have traumas that is Rel related to places by leaving our home we already have left our home the places that we had feeling for we felt safe we had memories over there we belong there and it's already missing and we are struggling with that trauma and finding ourselves in a very unfamiliar place in general regardless even of the structure and the design of the attention center now let's add to it that we were dealing with a very specific design that was meant to torture the detain um what was the second part of your question I'm sorry because it's just how prisons work yeah I'm sorry and it's not just about the the physical dimension of the prison the way that everything was controlled places that we go in each step even inside Detention Center was divided for example this area is area 9 uh designed for infant babies this area is saf area saf stands for single adult female area and these areas all are gated and even inside Detention Center isolated in a very isolated island we are still not allowed to enter different area inside detention center and a place and time both are weaponized to create that horrifying environment as omit referred to by horrific surrealism we are already in that foggy environment that don't realize what happened in our life that is been just upside down everything and we find ourselves in this weird structured prison a prison that I always say prison with no wall uh in nylon tent in tropical heat and humid on a toxic environment uh toxic radioactive environment because the the Detention Center was built on a former phosphate m and uh it was causing people serious issues health issues from osma to skin disease and even cancer and uh a right to ask for treatment was being denied over and over and I can say that even after the imprisonment even now after years of being free and resettled in the United States uh that um Prison still is alive in our mind that was highly a smart design so I think it's been working and everything that we are talking about in terms of practicing art as a form of resistance uh and all of our activism is uh I I don't want to claim that is just everything has been cheered and we solve the problem and we are just sitting here and giving advice no I personally myself I'm still struggling to walk those trauma out and turn it to something or use it to raise awareness and I know about other people depend on the the end of their stories for many people it's not yet the end of their stories they are they have been transferred to Australia for medical treatment receiving medical treatment or whatever because being under too much pressure by International Media or uh whatever very hard fight over the years but they still don't have a Visa no half to right to do anything uh and struggling with that limbo that we were living in I think that's a good segue into the next question since you brought up the issue of resistance um so as Omid mentioned you have an art series titled the Border industrial complex and I was wondering if you could explain a bit more to the audience what you mean by the border industrial complex what does it mean to you because there have been many academics who have like theorized the Border industrial complex but you given that you you have this lived experience of it what what does that mean to you and and also why is Art and painting specifically a useful means to illustrate the violence of the Border industrial complex well border industrial complex itself refer to a group of multi- National company uh who work and are contracted with government uh to build private prisons and make money from torturing innocent people so I can say this group of international company uh are working together for financial benefit and also political interests in including winning election by using refugees as a threat you know and and creating those narrative those uh racist agendas at the election times and that is not just about Australia I think that's a global issue that we'll get there I think in few minutes yeah absolutely and increasingly detention is being privatized and kind of outsourced to these priv companies yeah and also yeah about the paintings uh from my own experience because in a lot of cases my series of painting each painting refer to uh individual story and experience of my time it wasn't meant to be for the industrial complex series of painting because I started painting inside detention to move one from trauma dealing with trauma while not not receiving any treatment you don't have access to any psychologist or any services so painting was a form of resistant for me a form of therapy for me inside Detention Center because I was dealing with terrible nightmares and we were just being prescribed to sleeping tablets and this is crazy because when you get sleeping pills you will stuck in The Nightmare Before sleeping pills you can wake yourself up after you get too used to a nightmare repeat seeing a nightmare it's a kind of reaction by brain it you can realize that you're seeing a nightmare and wake yourself up but with the medicine that we were giving we were receiving uh we couldn't even do that so I prefer to not taking those pills and find another way uh and I was starting the painting and then uh it's been really educational even for myself because at the beginning of my journey I had no idea what B in industrial complexes the the um deeper I dig the more I learn and it it became uh series of painting years later through my um years of imprisonment and years of advocacy and I think art is the best way because in a lot of cases I cannot share the nightmares when your memory and your nightmares and your fears all are mixed up and and you cannot distinguish them from each other uh and add to it the time is weaponized and it's hardly difficult to keep track of time H in a very highly isolated place so even though in the painting I've been trying to use bright colors to not to torture the audiences because uh then the nightmares are horrifying and the stories are more horrifying did we want to maybe show some of your work that specifically looks at how time is weaponized right because you have a few paintings that that look at that I think we have just a few to show um this is my latest painting actually Amis um I think we have it up is this the one yeah yeah do you want to say anything about this one uh actually in terms of weapon weaponization of time I would love to read the statement for this painting because each painting has a statement to give some explanation about the story involved with the painting and actually this is very new in my latest painting I started making this hint video because it was difficult for people to see what is going on inside and they asked me would you explain about your painting and the way that you are telling a story within your painting and I said isn't that obvious I'm sorry but to me it's obvious but it's not obvious to everyone so that's the story of creating this hint video for my audiences and social media um and the statement time time time time my greatest treasure in this life and your greatest weapon against me it has been a decade since my attempt to fly to flourish and your ruthless plan to degrade me for the last 10 years my soul has been the target of your hatred each year was a poisoned spear passing through my soul but my patience and love are ancient it can transform your spear as it itches my WS my purple pain into a stunning amethyst it reverses all your attempts to destroy me and my identity then leads me to a place where I meet the truth about myself I am an Iranian woman I am Iranian and our long history has taught us resistance in the face of Cruelty and hatred I am an Iranian woman we are the waivers of the perses rocks from Tran and baharestan among the oldest masterpieces of art on Earth thousands of years old oppressors come and go decades and centuries of Shame Or Glory will pass the greatest power on Earth all disappear but it is us again women The Spinners of the spinning wheel unbreakable [Applause] Alchemist oh yes yes do you want to show another one yes okay oh I think it's there does this one yeah do you have a statement that one oh okay okay great I think that was really powerful because um you spoke to the ways in which I mean something that we often times forget when we hear about the narratives of placed people are their lives before this moment um and I think it was really powerful that you drew upon um you know your Rich literary and cultural heritage that you drew from in order to to survive and remind yourself of your identity and who you were um and as part of that identity you're also a trained architect um and during your time in detention you began to map out the space of the Detention Center um so I'm curious to hear more about what inspired you to do this and also how does your film architect expand this work of mapping detention and and what is your goal with that because I think it can be quite powerful to show um to show the violence of detention through space um and through mapping out the space yes um I start first sketches when I arrived in Christmas Island I was in Christmas Island in a quarantine Detention Center this has been a lot of move you arrive they get you to a quarantine uh detention which in that case was tent again and then you taken to another detention for a couple of months before I was transferred to Naro I was doing Christmas Island for 6 months and I did the first catches there and then again in Naru but uh again it wasn't meant to be a part of a documentary at the beginning it was just practicing or doing what I know because it just required a pen and a couple of paper to do something with uh inde definate attention you don't know what to do you have a lot of time to kill why don't you go back and do something that you're familiar with and this is so powerful in reclaiming my identity because we will forget we will forget even our family memb name after a long time isolation we didn't have access to phone or Internet it was an absolute isolation maybe 10 minutes each week uh highly controlled with a security guard that would hang up the phone push the button if it would take more than 10 minutes everything was highly weaponized even access to shower water was highly weaponized we had just 2 minutes to take shower uh and that tropical heat and the security W guards were outside of the um shower room to close the to if it would take more than 2 minute and it didn't matter if it was a three years old child whose mother is trying to wash his head and he's crying because the soap is still in their eyes and they would laugh they they had a lot of fun with torturing these people I'm sorry what was the second part of the question in terms of architecture I I really apologize I get lost with the stories uh and yeah it it wasn't supposed to be a part of documentary it was my attempt like practicing painting or even writing poems or whatever I knew to remember who I am uh and uh then it became a part of documentary and from the other hand let me let me explain that as an architect uh student architecture student u in my last year of the university in 2012 before I left Iran I was working on my final project my final studio design project for the University undergraduate program uh I was offering a facility with new function uh open to public as a place of healing where everything was designed to to serve the resistant to find themselves especially for people who are dealing with trauma or victims of war or are experiencing PTSD or other kind of stressful situation that every one of us is dealing with in this world now so uh it was interesting to me to study the dimension of prison especially our prison because there was something similar between my proposed facility and this present including a kind of isolation that was offering to uh people who are looking for peace in their mind but not that kind of isolation so it was very tricky and I was studing studying the prison every element tense the material the location with that was really mean uh I used to think that it was just because they didn't care and then I realized no even picking the location was deliberate everything was intentional to depict a hell for us and make us believe that we've done a big crime and we deserve to be punished in this hell uh or go back to your home go back to your country to force the detain to go back to their country even even when they saw nobody's coming back after the first year after the second year after third year they can't come back but it was still going on because it didn't matter at the end of the day the bank account matter that how much money they are making you know it doesn't important that what is going on so it was uh interesting for me to compare my idea of uh it was called Aram seska the facility that I was offering and uh all the spaces special spaces in that facility was a result of months uh of interviewing people from different ages that what makes you feel better when you are experiencing trauma how do you imagine such a facility and the whole design was uh was based on that research so where were we I'm sorry no I think um what you're talking about is really interesting so cre creating alternative spaces to the prison oh may I add something I just remember what I wanted to say sorry at the time I've changed a lot I was young I was young and I was such a fool uh that I was coming up with this kind of idea and then I received a lot of comment that which kind of Utopia do you think we are living in it took me all of these years to going through all of this trauma to realize that we are so behind that and I need to step back and first start fighting these places of torture the idea of pron let alone it is for innocent people and children and this kind of Border violence I need to keep fighting these kind of places so it has been a complex of emotion skills experiences and thinking over the years to use these kind of skills doesn't matter painting architecture journalism writing film making theater uh just to share this story and raise awareness because it's a kind of dangerous cancer to move expanding expanding and taking over the Earth absolutely so before we transition to Q&A I wanted to pose a question maybe you either of you could speak to or you both could speak to um we've seen in recent months um Trends toward offshore detention um being taken up by a number of of Western countries including the UK which has this proposed nationality and borders bill right so Australia is not the only country that has um outsourced the work of Border violence or externalized the work of Border violence to these offshore places um or to Resource poor countries um you know various parts of Western Europe have done that historically even the United States has used Guantanamo Bay and Guam as sites to detain Asylum Seekers but um you know the UK has proposed sending UK bound Asylum Seekers to detention centers in Rwanda um more recently so either of you or both of you what do you make of these Global Trends or how do you explain it um and and how do you situate Australia within that broader sort of system of U migrant deterrence um Omid if you want to talk or El whichever wants to go first well I did expect it to happen because I was still in detention center when a group uh of uh people from Denmark came to visit the Detention Center some Australian politician also were compan them to show their Masterpiece of work and then they can go and build a kind of similar offshore detention center for their own Asylum Seekers so it really um took the attention of European countries but I don't know it was not supposed that UK go ahead and you know beat them in in in being the first one who is actually doing this in such a scale and and that is so disappointing and for me because it's been a part of my fight for last two years at least I can say it's very complicated emotional process of every day that I hear in new news I get depressed I might cry then I get angry and then I get motivated to do something else because it's happening so fast and and it is horrifying and this is actually related to your other question one of the most important reason that I think uh our documentary is important to be made and be seen by the world abely sorry uh excellent question and I think a good way to um finish off the discussion before going to Q&A I I like to look at some of these issues um from uh by addressing first the the material conditions but then moving on to thinking about things more philosophically in terms of the colonial or the social imaginary the symbolism so first of all in terms of the material conditions the Border industrial complex is extremely profitable and I think politicians all around the world have realized that there is a lot of money to be made of course they are spending billions of dollars to um to set up these sites and uh all the bureaucracy involved and uh and all all the different aspects of it are extremely expensive however the political Capital that's gained is I think for for politicians it's it's worth it so and and there's there's really interesting examples of how many of these companies are donors to political parties so the material conditions I think are important to address that how these these um different sites not just offshore sites but onshore sites as well uh play into the um uh very right-wing racist conservative exploitative uh forms of um uh polit polit uh real politic the other issue is thinking about it philosophically in terms of the social imaginary addressing some of the historical issues in order to convince the public convince citizens that these sorts of places are okay that these sorts of places can continue you need to have a whole educational system a system of propaganda you need to perpetuate a all a whole range of different kinds of ideologies and this means cooperating with the mainstream media with the education system with research projects and this again Fosters so many different um uh benefits for people in power for authority figures and if you think about the situation culturally as well it transforms it it turns the public it turns citizens into I guess um vulnerable or or heavily manipulated voters you know by by first of all motioning people to accept these sites and accept these policies then you're able to then sell them a whole range of other things that interrelated that might not have a direct connection with border violence I think it's fascinating that the former Colonial Outpost the former penal colony is now making an impact and teaching the um the the center of Empire the colonial Metropole that connection between islands remember what I was saying before about Manis Island and Naru making an impact on Australia as the nation state as the um the Imperial power in the Pacific that connection it's interesting that this island is also impacting its original Colonial um Metropole we can even go back further and see how the British Isles did the same thing in Ireland all of these things are connected it's interesting they all there always Islands involved as this kind of almost natural prison that you know they anyway there's I think in general I think there's a the material approach addressing the material conditions but also then the um the epistemic the historical the philosophical let me add also in Rwanda case there are a lot of concern on Military confrontation between Randa and cono and this is even more more insane to send Asylum seek here to a war zone I don't know how to explain this and how it is possible but it is happening yeah and I think what you both are saying also points to the ways in which the invisibility of these places gets kind of exploited right it's no coincidence that these detention centers are on Islands as you said and that kind of cultivates this eraser um to the the mainland um about what's happening like the general public is sort of shielded from it um in this really strategic way I think I remember Peter Dutton the former immigration Minister said that there are no children in detention when clearly there was children still on the island by moving children off a particular site and they were sort of partly in the community he was able to present that lie because the island itself became the prison interesting how these these things are manipulated yeah I want to give some time to the audience for questions so we'll just pivot over to the audience and if anyone has a question please feel free to raise your hand yeah there's someone in the back I think we need a microphone can one over take a mic to the question who's going to start off I think hello thank you for speaking with us wonderful topic um as something of uh someone who enjoys studying philosophy the thought experiment especially at least the way I was listening to it um kind of building off the allegory of the cave um but it's it made me think of how here in Canada uh we very much are people who still sit in the cave still look at the Shadows on the wall and we're convinced that we're not colonizers that we're free that we love democracy and it's it's hard to understand that we've made a prison of the mind for ourselves and I'm I'm both a Canadian person and an indigenous person it's hard to see as an indigenous person to look upon these people that need to do work to decolonize their mind which is work that I need to do myself but they they don't accept this idea they're not colonized their mind isn't isn't Twisted in this way they're not looking at Shadows they're looking at the world as it is and it it's hard to see it that way and and then also um uh the son of an architect and just thinking about having just left that school and then go to this place that's designed in such an intentional way to be a prison and it these things aren't unintentional design is especially I'm guessing with the the camp it's very much of it is intentional it's it's to dehumanized it's it's to remove agency and to remove Independence and to break the soul it's hard to to think as somebody who sees architecture so distinctly but then to be brought into a prison into a camp and told you just have to stay here for an eternity and to see all those dimensions of that architecture and how that built environment I I I I don't know if I've been able to to survive the way you have and and now create so much and be able to share it with us my my heart very much goes out to you thank you thank you for picking up on the point about the Plato's allegory of the cave just just to add to that you you may be interested to follow up but uh I was inspired to write that thought experiment after reading the philosopher Charles Mills interpretation of or kind of radical reinterpretation of the allegory of the cave and he also connects his reinterpretation to W EB the boys's um uh metaphor of the veil so that very interesting thank you very much thank you um first of all thank you uh Dr zor for organ izing this talk and again to Al and Dr to for your time um it's wonderful to hear from you I guess the second time this week and is Dr Z mentioned a huge privilege um this is actually a question for I guess like primarily for well actually you know what for both elahi and uh Dr toian but I was actually interested um elah I noticed in your art um yeah the figure of the woman um is yeah constantly like featured um and I was just wondering if you could speak to what do you think is the hierarchical conception of the woman or the feminine um versus perhaps what um your art or sorry the art of um other individuals who has who have experienced um oppression specifically you know gender-based um oppression what is the anti- hierarchical configuration of women and what is the relationship you see between Womanhood femininity uh colonization and systems of Oppression and and what is your insight into that and how does that uh come into your art so of course well firstly um of course you can feel a lot of that uh feeling of or expression of gender violence in my paintings because luckily I'm a woman and uh there were and and our Detention Center even the the place that I was detained was for uh women who were single and uh were traveling alone and we had our own issues uh a lot of cases of sexual abuse uh that I witnessed and her uh I wasn't leaving my tent that much and I wasn't I was trying to uh having a lot of interaction with guards or or even visiting doctors so I was just busy with the art and poetry but maybe that's the reason that brought me some safety but I witnessed and I heard a lot uh of sexual abuse and also gender violence uh by security guards by even even healthcare workers or um even some detain in in some area where families and uh single female uh were all mixed together and also child abuse sexual abuse on child uh that's that was a prison with no privacy as I mentioned yesterday that was very tricky because having a bit of privacy it was a big nylon tent that was divided by nylon partition so if you would try to lay on the wall you would fail into your neighbor room so imagine couple uh being in this family and they have their children even even even in something private as like sexual relationship between couples would throw a fight in a whole tent that was the way the creative way of uh just not giving people privacy to to lead them to more fights and to create the actual division between people who are all in the same prison and but what you don't have that freedom you don't have privacy but you don't have freedom because the whole area uh is locked by tall fences so this is a prison but this is an open air prison with no privacy and again the painting that you see the women are referring to individual story stories of uh what women experience there including abortion I even haven't painted many of those paintings they are just here and here because haven't had the time and the energy this is hard this is so hard some of this painting has taken me a year to complete because I paint I stop I cry I go and do something else for a while and then I dare to come back and keep work on the trauma from where I left uh I'm sorry if I missed any part of your question I'm and also women were so highly active and involved in this practicing resistance uh including being the first people in line to be interviewed photographed and also attend in the protest they had this courage this womenhood was so powerful that solidarity Between Women inside prison was so powerful oh yes that is one of the photo that refers to that women solidarity inside attention being there for each other and relationship inside prison I can say are much more stronger that one we have outside we talk a lot about ugly issues let's talk about something beautiful because well I can say main reason is because there is no money or ownership in prison if people have nothing but themselves so you'll see the most beautiful friendship and relationship inside Attention Center that I loved I actually loved a lot something that I'm missing now in my free life outside you know and just just witnessing bad things in our society welome sure thank you for a really wonderful presentation and a and a real a demonstration of um the importance of collaboration um of of creativity um and of speaking truth um as you can probably hear from my accent I'm Australian originally I've lived here in Canada for 20 years and um being away I have observed the ways in which um the Pacific Solution as it's chillingly called in Australian political discourse um has become unremarkable and incontestable within mainstream politics um and so there's a there's a strong consensus between the two major political parties um that this uh that preventing the boats from reaching Australia by one means or another is the is the appropriate policy approach um I'm very interested to hear you both um think about what the possibilities uh for for changing that political consensus might be great question uh thank you for the question and um thanks for coming today uh I'm going to go back to what I was saying before about addressing the material conditions and also the uh the philosophical approach the epistemic the social imaginary the symbols so first of all I think hope for the future in terms of a Humane approach to people seeking Asylum has to coincide with attacking this border industrial complex according to its um uh supply chain cut off the opportunity to make money to profit out of this and these multinational companies will go away the only reason they're there the only reason that they they function and uh they continue to be involved um the contracts continue to be signed is because there's a lot of money to be made I think that radical activism in this space needs to look more at follow the paper trail even I'll give you one example to to illustrate what I mean until 2015 my superannuation as an academic was invested in uh immigration detention and Unis super and to be honest with you we're not really sure with have divested they say they have but we're not it's hard to to Really identify that imagine what would happen if academics many of them who are against immigration detention indefinite IM immigration detention as such in any sense imagine if there was a stance taken in terms of that that and that supply chain was cut off imagine if unions stopped um um protecting or being involved with having workers involved in these particular sites imagine what would happen if um doctors said that you know there's there's going to be a very serious um uh radical approach to stopping these particular Sensers from functioning I think that material approach is essential the other one is the more philosophical we I think education research um discourse needs to be prolif uh there needs to be a a saturation I should say of uh of voices such as ales more images more projects more Refugee Le initiatives so that the what we have is a saturation now in the media of the other side you know the the kind of um image of refugees that particular narrative that I explained before of refugees as deficit as you know infestation the these kinds of metaphors are used I think the tropes need to change and that involves a a radical approach intellectually culturally philosophically okay yeah first of all thank you for spending the precious day of nus with us uh and happy New Year to all three of you and my question is while you were in that creative mental process which is very painful and thank you for sharing it were you able to concretize it to put it down in paper or to share with your fellow other woman could you talk about it always is always sitting inside you until you found other means of expressing it thank you of course thank you uh well it's it is painful it is difficult to share and I personally am usually avoid sharing a lot of that because I know it might be in many cases it might be very tough for other people people have different capacity for example I lost my father when I was imprison in Attention Center and I was even avoiding sharing that feeling with my closest friend and I would go and find and it was really challenging to find a quiet place in in such a Detention Center where there is no privacy and everyone is suffering from serious mental health issue depression dealing with traumas different kind of traumas and and we care about each other so it was really diff difficult to manage how much to share how much to keep whom to share whom to not because you don't know your friend might leave you now and go and attempt suicide in a few seconds and we are all caring for each other and sometimes you are even hiding our pain from each other but it depends on the situation even now after the after years that I've been out this is a actually interesting because we always talk about it that it's a kind of I can't say social anxiety because this is not an anxiety but we have a a kind of feeling it might come from the lack of confidence that we think we are unable to build new friendship with people who have not been imprisoned for example in my time in Washington DC as a journalist I only could communicate with those journalists who had experiences of imprisonment and I felt like no the other people might don't understand what I'm talking about or what I'm feeling because they have never been imprisoned but overall when I think now and I go back I think After experiencing the pandemic and after everyone experienced the isolation and quarantine and and that was huge for the world it was a time that I personally was isolated too and I felt oh now that I left a prison the whole world has gone into a prison so I think there might be some connection that people can now feel and understand even even despite they were they were just qu in quarantine in their own home and they didn't have that struggle in terms of places and displacement but still that is something that separate us from the rest of the society and even now in this moment I'm still trying to figure out how to communicate with other people who don't have the experiences of of imprisonment thank you thank you um just want to say uh we run out of time but want to say thank you so much again to elah and and Omid um and I just quickly want to say that I personally feel very grateful to you both um I think your work allows us to see migration Journeys in new ways not as the end of people's stories but as ongoing experiences of struggle yes but also of Hope and future making um and I think that you all show that resistance can come out of this which is born out of the need to survive but also out of the desire to create new imaginaries rooted in equality care and healing so I thank you both so much for sharing that with us tonight thank you thank you all for being [Applause]