Karim Ben Khelifa on his VR project that aims to bring fighters from combating countries to talk

To meet the enemy, you have to wear the VR gadget, which takes you to an enclosure, where you see six militants and you can chose to interact with any or all of them. Once the choice is made, you hear Khelifa asking the questions but the stereo sound is so designed that it seems the questions are being posed by the person wearing the gadget, and the fighters answer them.

Khelifa says that the project is a result of his frustration that came from 15 years as a war photojournalist without causing an iota of change in the prevailing situation. He’s taken some award-winning pictures portraying conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that wasn’t enough for him. He says he asked questions to himself, such as, “What is the point of images of war if they don’t change people’s attitudes towards armed conflicts? What is the point if they don’t help create peace?”

Karim Ben Khelifa (above)

“I can click a very powerful picture but I can’t interact with the audience. It can’t talk to them. So, it has a limited impact. With ‘The Enemy’, we are trying to arrange a virtual meeting of people who think of each other as enemies. By hearing the voices of those who carry this violence, hurt, hatred and, also, aspirations, we bring the audience face to face with these fighters. The idea is to rehumanise the other in the eyes of those who have not picked up the weapon yet so that they don’t do it. This is the answer to propaganda which dehumanises the ‘other’ making killing him or her much easier,” said Khelifa, while visiting Goa to participate in the recently concluded International Film Festival of India.

For this project, Khelifa went to Gaza and interviewed active fighters from both the sides, asking them questions such as “Who’s your enemy?” “Have you killed anyone?” “What’s violence for you?” “What’s peace to you?” “Where do see yourself in 20 years?”

“When I’m asking him ‘Who’s your enemy?’, he is talking about the other one but when I’m asking him ‘What is violence for you?’, he speaks about himself and about how he was kicked out of his house, how his kids can’t go to school. On other side too, people talk of the same thing. They are also sharing their aspiration of leading a peaceful life 20 years on,” he says.

Khelifa says the experiment has received a great response from his intended audience. His aim is not to provide an answer to the conflict or solution to violence, but to initiate a discussion about violence and peace.“The response that I received from audiences in Israel and Palestine was beyond my expectation. I met youngsters in Israel who were about to join the military, who said that they would think about the ‘enemy’ in a different light from now. I received a similar response on the other side, too,” says Khelifa.