Join us for The Phoenix of Gaza XR Virtual Reality Exhibit and the public lecture, Seeing Gaza: Surveillance, Immersion, and Reality, on February 24 and 25 at the ILC (N340) and COMM HUB. This unique event will feature discussions with academics and creators of a virtual gateway to Gaza, highlighting its everyday life via historical monuments, cultural sites, public squares, universities, and parks since 2022.
(1) The Phoenix of Gaza XR is a virtual reality exhibit created by Naim Aburaddi and Professor Ahlam Muhtaseb, designed to connect global audiences with the people and cultures of Gaza. The exhibit features hundreds of 360-degree videos and images capturing Palestinian culture through weddings, stitching workshops, dabke (traditional dance), palm harvesting, clay and pottery making, and other artisanal professions. Through immersive documentation, the project invites audiences to critically engage with media as archival technologies and tools for witnessing.
Exhibit Details:
Learn more about the project at: https://www.gazaxr.com/
Statement on possible trauma reactions:
A virtual reality experience on the topic may trigger trauma reactions of sadness, anger, grief, and loss, particularly in those with a personal connection to the region. Some reactions may be delayed, with emotional impacts lingering for days afterward. We encourage visitors to seek on-campus and off-campus resources for support as needed.
(2) Public Lecture – Seeing Gaza: Surveillance, Immersion, and Reality
Complementing the VR exhibit, this keynote panel brings together the exhibit creators and experts to discuss the intersections of surveillance and digital media in portraying Gaza in its multitudes through immersive technologies.
Panel Details:
Speakers
Naim Aburaddi is an artist, journalist, and media instructor from Gaza, currently a Data Justice Fellow at Princeton University’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab and a PhD student in media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the co-founder and manager of the Phoenix of Gaza XR project, an interactive virtual reality experience that documents life in Gaza, highlighting its culture, history, and resilience. His research explores how immersive technologies can preserve culture, resist erasure, and reimagine futures. His work has been showcased at Princeton and Yale, where he has also spoken at a prominent event at Princeton and delivered a keynote at Yale. In 2024, he received the prestigious Graduate Student Activist Award from the National Communication Association (NCA). Aburaddi’s story and work have been featured in major media outlets, including The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, BBC, and Colorado Public Radio (CPR).
Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb is a professor of media studies at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) and a senior data justice fellow with Princeton’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the recipient of the 2024 Women Support Organization’s Distinguished Woman of the Year award and the 2024 Activism and Social Justice Scholarly Influence Award by the National Communication Association’s (NCA’s) Activism and Social Justice Division. She is also the recipient of the 2020 CSUSB Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Creative Activities Award and the 2019-20 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Faculty Mentor Award. In 2019, she won the Rebuilding Alliance “Story Teller” Award. She co-produced and co-directed the documentary 1948: Creation & Catastrophe, winner of the Jerusalem International Film Festival’s 2019 Special Jury Award in the Feature Documentary category. She is the co-founder and faculty director of the Gaza xReal project: The Phoenix of Gaza. Her research interests include digital communication, digital resistance & decolonization, social justice, and diasporic communities. She is working currently on a study of Palestinian digital resistance and decolonizing digital spaces.
Dr. Helga Tawil-Souri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU. Helga’s work deals with spatiality, technology, infrastructure, and politics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on contemporary Palestine. Much of her published academic work has been about Palestinian im/mobility and infrastructure, which has taken checkpoints, mobile phones and internet, film, and questions of borders and space as its focal points. She has also written about Arab media, identification cards, surveillance, video games, and other topics. She is co-editor of Gaza As Metaphor (Hurst, 2016) and Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media (I.B. Tauris, 2024).
The Phoenix of Gaza XR Virtual Reality Exhibit and Public Lecture are presented by the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab (GloTech) and supported by the Departments of Anthropology, Communication, Journalism, Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning, Social Thought and Political Economy, Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, and the Ethnography Collective at UMass.