The fourth part of the artist’s ongoing collaborative film series Who is Afraid of Ideology? (since 2017) about mostly women- led communities fighting economic exploitation and colonial violence. This film work stages a geological, historical, legal, and agricultural discussion as well as an experiment carried out by Arsanios and her collaborators to shift the status of a private land in the north of Lebanon to a common or a social waqf. The film follows the process of advancing the right of land usership over ownership, reflecting on the way land, as a living object, can inherently resist the definitions of ‘property’. Arsanios also presents ten banners in Arabic and English that are grounded in a protocol of usership of the land, based on research Arsanios conducted on the history of collective land tenure (the practice of Mashaa).

Marwa Arsanios is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose practice tackles structural questions using different devices, forms and strategies. From architectural spaces–their transformation and adaptability throughout conflict–to artist-run spaces and temporary conventions between feminist communes and cooperatives, the practice tends to make space within (and parallel to) existing art structures allowing experimentation with different forms of assemblies. Film becomes another form and a space for connecting struggles in the way images refer to each other. Her research includes many disciplines and is deployed in numerous collective methodologies and collaborative projects.