However, as with Afrofuturism, there is a persisting disparity in Arabfuturism between diasporic and“ native” futuristic expressions. In the Palestinian context, this disparity is sharper than in the rest of Arab culture. The examples of Europe-based artists, such as Sansour, Baalbaki, and Majali, demand deeper examination of such discrepancies. One possible explanation may reside in the ways that power structures in the Middle East administer collective imaginaries that foster victimhood, nationalist / religious fixation, and catastrophic( Nakba) cognitions. The effect is divergent historic revisionisms expressed through varying notions of nostalgia and longing: in a way Palestinian( and Arab) localised nostalgia remains an object of a past unreachable from the present; while diasporic nostalgia becomes a vehicle for visiting the future. It is something in the notion of loss that seems to work differently for those in the homeland and those in the diaspora.
The Palestinian-based music collective Tashweesh( Interference) also echoes some of the values put forward by futuristic expression. Their experimental short video project Intro( 2009) is a condensed, fast-paced collage of archival visuals and sounds. Beginning with black-and-white images of sunny beaches, social gatherings, and happy, playful, singing people, the footage quickly turns into doomy, blurry, and distorted images of explosions and anxiety.“ Without understanding a word, it’ s clear from the stuttered and looped clips that a catastrophe has occurred,” claimed a recent review on The National. Yet, as the trip-hop sampled music makes another radical cut, the scene changes again into fast, flashing snapshots of uprisings, masquerading Oslo politicians, and a scene from an old Hollywood film, reading:“ I don’ t know if he’ s a negro or a white
Perhaps Arabfuturism might be eager a definition and it remains unclear what can be characterized as futuristic when it comes to the peculiarities of different Arab cultures. But it is nonetheless clear that such work is heavily invested in experimenting with history, revision, technology, and the absent future. In the words of Tashweesh collective member, Basel Abbas,“ at the heart of it is a reflection on the contemporary picture across the Arab world using both old and new material … In that way we are always seeing the past and present as part of the same moment, they are very much connected when you look at it politically.”