New World Summit, Rojava – Jonas Staal (2015)

The New World Summit installation at BAK includes:

New World Summit—Rojava, Part I

October 2015, Derîk, Cezîre Canton, Rojava
Documentation of the first part of the New World Summit in Rojava that brought together representatives of the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava with representatives of other stateless and autonomist organizations from all over the world. This assembly was organized as part of an international delegation to Rojava, in celebration of the beginning of the construction of a new public parliament developed by the New World Summit with the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava.

Rojava Film Commune
Interviews with representatives of the Rojava Film Commune (Diyar Hesso, Onder Çakar, Şéro Hindé, and Khwshman Qado) a collective of filmmakers founded in 2015 with the task to represent the values and ideals of the Rojava Revolution. The wall print shows a screening organized by the Rojava Film Commune in the cultural center of the city of Qamiişlo, of the film The Kid (1921) by Charlie Chaplin.

Abdullah Abdul and Masun Hamo
Interviews with artists Abdullah Abdul and Masun Hamo, whose sculptural works reconstruct the lost and looted historical sites of Mesopotamia, considered to be the birthplace of Kurdish history, politics, and culture.

People’s Parliament Rojava
2015–2016, Derîk, Cezîre Canton, Rojava

Visual design, photo documentation, and architectural model of a new public parliament and the surrounding park, developed by the New World Summit together with the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava. The parliament takes the form of an “agora,” a public space that represents the ideals of the Rojava Revolution and its practice of stateless democracy. The fragments of flags that form the canvasses covering the parliament each belong to one of the local organizations at the heart of the project of political self-governance: the Movement for a Democratic Society (Tev-Dem); the Democratic Union Party (PYD); the Syriac Union Party (SUP); Star Union of Women (Yekiîtîiya Star); the Rojava Democratic Youth Union (YCR); and the flag of the autonomous region of Rojava itself. The public parliament will be inaugurated with a second summit in April 2016.