I asked a friend some questions.

-Hi Omarleen can you please introduce yourself.
-How do you feel about art school, is it helpful? and why.
-I'm interested in your work about/in "Addra". Did you publish it somewhere? and if not, can you give a small explanation about the work?
-What are you working on lately?
-Do you have a favorite work or collaboration?


Hi, this is Omarleen, I'm an artist from Syria, living, working, and studying in NL.
I study at BEAR - ArtEZ Arnhem in my third year and work with an artist collective Under The Table.
I like the art school I'm part of, it is helpful on many levels, the art theory and philosophy we get is great and the discussion and the group critic sessions we do are very helpful, mostly the feedback from the students is what helps to develop way more than the teacher's feedback.
The tutor system is great because tutors are practising artists who follow the development of the students work and they give guidance and feedback.
But I very much dislike a class that is called How To Connect, which is a class that teaches us how to apply for funding, how to do (networking) how to have a (successful business), it approaches art as a business and it makes from the students/ artists a group of people who are running behind curators and networking to achieve what they call (success), it's too specific and too narrow and fake.
I also very much dislike that in the first year there are classes based on mediums, like painting, sculpture, film and photography, while woodwork and metal are not classes but they are considered to be workshops, and that is a clear hierarchy between art mediums and this is very classical, old school and a bad way to look at art.

My artistic research Adra is about a film that was made in a small city near Damascus called Adra and it is about a group of jihadists from al-Qaida entering this city and occupying it, they made the film themselves as a documentary about the battle they had with the government army, the film included footage of them killing and captivating army fighters, but it also included interviews with 2 suicide bombers and interviews with the parents of one of the suicide bombers and it ended with 2 big explosions.
The film had the shape of a fictional movie because it had the structure of Beginning- middle-end, it had suspense building up towards the last footage of the explosions, it had slow motions footage, sound effects, and graphics, the film clearly was post-produced very well to achieve a narrative that doesn't only inform but also entertain.
I believed that this film wasn't a documentary but it was a fiction film, so I started looking for the script of it, the storyboard, the maps, the casting files, the props, costumes, etc.
I found/made these pre-production materials of this film and by that, I prove it is fiction.
In this work, I question what is real and what is not by taking the role of the director of that film.
I think of how the camera transforms the real events into imaginary dramatic and cinematic scenes.
I didn't exhibit this work yet because I didn't find a space to do so.

Lately, I'm working on making noise,I am researching spirituality
in cheesy Egyptian pop songs, by slowing them down they start to sound like the sounds of Sufi rituals.
I'm experimenting with these sounds and will be performing and singing with them in a spiritual cheesy way.

My favourite work so far is my research Addra but also an installation I made at ArtEZ where I made toilet paper curtains for the building to transform it into a big toilet.

And my favourite collaboration is swimming in toilet paper performance with VCarp at the beginning of the covid lockdown.

Omarleen 5 questions to me:


1- can you introduce yourself?
Hi my name is Amer Dakar 28y\o visual artist and tattoo artist from Syria. Living in Rotterdam and Studying second year fine arts in WdKA.

2- what is the relation between your tattooing and the noise you make?
The relation between tattooing and noise merging really good in my opinion. It's start through the coil tattoo machine and some harsh guitar padels(looks like a love story)lol. the idea of noise i make it has a structure underneath it, while I have picks of harsh and minimal approach in a raw way, specially its consider the end of the music genre, edgy point between noise and music still give a certain fillings. It's a home feeling where the city is always noisy and alive.
My tattoos specially the last year got inspired by the noise i make, where i can have a raw drawings on the skins. Has a different approach for the humans who wants tattoos, like you can't see it in a normal tattoo shop or in the traditional tattoos. Personal relation between the tattoo and the human who has it.

3- what do you think of art school? Is it helpful for your work, theory, development?
Art school is doing fine during the pandemic, I miss physical interaction and without it i feel disconnected from school. For my work sometimes it is helpful specially for the CA2, the feedback was pretty good. It was a good critical feedback.
About theory, to be honest I don't get our tutor and the way he teach.
For the development, the assignments are really good for developing your own method of working, mostly because of the freedom we get from it.

4-do you prefer chocolate or Baklava? and why?
Tricky question, I like both. If i was still smoking hash, I prefer Baklava for sure because it hit different.

5-what is your favorite work?
My favorite work for now is the research about the tattoo of my grandmother. I present it to the Ego project last semester.