Transmission 1987
Qusay Awad
Betonhalle
Transmission 1987 is a multimedia installation and spatial investigation that explores the Syrian landscape as a living archive of disappearance, extraction, and buried memory. The project departs from the figure of Muhammad Faris, the first Syrian astronaut, who travelled to space aboard the Soviet mission Soyuz TM-3. During a phone call with President Hafez al-Assad at the time, Faris was asked: “What do you see from such a great height above the Earth?” From this conversation, his orbital gaze over Syria in 1987 becomes a point of temporal rupture.
Through a speculative voice-over that reimagines his perspective, the work asks what it means to look once again at a homeland whose geography has been transformed by war, mass graves, foreign military infrastructures, and systems of spatial control. Using satellite imagery, archival footage, field recordings, and digitally reconstructed landscapes, Transmission 1987 investigates the relationship between visibility, surveillance and erasure. The earth appears simultaneously as witness, evidence, and medium, recording political violence through scars, excavations, architectural repetition, and altered topographies.
Content Note: This works contains themes of violence.
Credits:
Concept, Research & Direction: Qusay Awad
Scripted Voice Text: Rasha Abbas
Sound Design: Dhia Douss
Editing: Rand Abou Fakher
Furniture Design: Lucía López García-Montejo & Qusay Awad