life is a beautiful Zyara
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Hi Muriel, watching your beautiful and suggestive videos I think it helps to have somewhere to go, a conversation that the videos plug into. Edgeryders really started out as a massive conversation about how we are navigating the different facets of our lives, the struggles we face both external (political, economic) as well as those to do with our inner lives ( finding spiritual resilience in difficult situations, managing our learning processes etc). We sketched the backdrop, using statistics and cases…and looked at the narrative they were sketching/ the assumptions underpinning the frame of enquiry. And then we problematised - asking whether they resonated with our own personal experiences. The stories people shared were honest, deep and vulnerable. It was the first time I experienced this kind of conversation outside a small circle of long term friends. @matthias is one of the people whom I met through this and together with a growing circle of people, we have gone on to build together something which has been transformative.
I think what drove this is some kind of mission. For me it was more strong intuition of a direction in which we need to move, in order to find ways of being in the world which make us strong, happy and masters of our own destiny. Over the years we have managed to articulate it.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that you need to have a position, and a place for people who want to join you to go so they find one another and can continue together. Perhaps almost like a distributed bookclub? Your videos are beautiful and somehow similar to what we were exploring, but in text. So maybe we can experiment a bit together…
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hey @MurielAboulrouss the vid is lovely ( at least the 1st one, it makes me want to see them all, will do so and may be then have another comment )
well I agree that everything we create is a reflection of who we are, at the moment of creation, and having in mind that our creations and designs shape us back. so yes it can shape our future as well.
so as we shape our tools , they shape us back. ( since you make videos here is a video about this from another “filmmaker” )
but then again going back to this social media concept and algorithms shaping our experience leads to separated bubbles, so don’t fully agree on the ability to produce massive change through social media. or in other words, change via social media can happen but it’s limited by the actual physical power on the ground as well.
one example to this, that I usually use, is that Clay Shirky in his book “here comes everybody” published in 2008, mentioned the egyptian activists including Alaa Abdelfattah using twitter to arrange gatherings and stop arrests on the spot. but fast forward to this day, Alaa himself is in prison among a lot of other activists. so change did happen but nowadays, it is not enough I would say.
this is not to say that social media is useless, no but to know that change is incremental and takes a lot of time, also real change, change within single people not crowds may come from a process of honest discussions, rethinking, self-reevaluation, openness, admitting and acknowledging failure.
so I feel your pain of the wasted talents, I see this too but knowing that the “stream” is very powerful so swimming against it is a tough process that requires a lot of belief. back to the vid I believe that she was speaking honestly when she said “there are no coincidences” and her acceptance and trying to find her place in her own life. the honesty here is what caught me, and starting from here and being able to have honest discussions with self and others could be a starting point.
thanks for sharing again and will have a look on the other web series
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Muriel, I found myself lost in the pictures when I was watching this - the close ups give a sense of disorientation that resonate deeply with what the subject is talking about… masterful work : )
Alan Watts, had something to say about art that I am very fond of:
“The truth is rather that the images, though beautiful in themselves, come to life in the act of vanishing. The poet takes away their static solidity, and turns the beauty which would otherwise only be statuesque and architectural into music, which, no sooner than it sounded, dies away.”
I think it indicates something about your work and the points you make. When art is used for the purpose of selling something, its surface qualities are often stripped from the spirit that engendered it in the first place. In a culture that rewards stimulus, I sense a lot of artists feel lost and somehow disembodied from themselves. They have these sensitive instruments to look inside of themselves and others, but are easily overloaded and jammed with input. The internet, for better or worse, is a prime example of this problem - it can be used to reach and touch people around the globe; it can be yet another tool for desensitising, commodifying and ‘freezing’ your life experiences, turning us into the statues Watts is talking about. The responsibility of the artist today is in many ways to understand the crooked ways in which this happens and respond to it in a deeper and more sophisticated manner.
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Hello Hazem thank you for the feedback
Yes indeed Owen 
Thank you for your feedback on Zyara 