A Syrious Look is an English language magazine that covers the topic(s) of culture in displacement. It was created in Berlin by Syrian-Palestine poet and screenwriter Mohammad Abou Laban, Syrian theater maker Ziad Adwan, and German publisher Mario Münster.
In November 2016, the first edition of the magazine was released with an exclusive focus on Syrian artists, thinkers and cultural activists who were in German exile. As the main focus of the magazine is culture that is uprooted from its origins, the first edition was not about refugees. It was about the art and the literature Syrian artists and writers produced after 2011 and the ideas that backed the projects. The magazine proposed questions about the shift Syrian artists made from the personal to the social, identity and its relation to the current war, and the analogues between nowadays Syria and 1940s Germany.
The international media attention encouraged us to proceed with the magazine and to widen its context. The coming edition, will be ‘The Enemy’. How is the enemy represented in art and literature? And how does this image change in time of diaspora and displacement? We all have enemies, but what to do with them? Is the enemy part of our identity? Where is the enemy in peaceful times? When do we change the status of someone, from being an enemy to becoming an opponent? The enemy, as we consider it, is a concept that does not appear in the physical reality of everyday life. It is rather imagined and installed in local cultures to construct how the enemy should be and look like. Therefore, the focus and the contributors of the magazine will move from the “Syrians only” to a more global context.
Beside the fact that it is a printed magazine, ‘A Syrious Look’ attempts to engage in the electronic world of writing and reading. Through hypertexts and the ability to use graphics and sounds, the electronic version of the magazine will not duplicate the printed one, but it will provide an extension of the printed articles. It is a step to use technology in order to enrich our reading experience(s).
