The “New Collective Technoid Body”: Immersive Environments and the Im/mobile Refugee Subject in Gabo Arora and Chris Milk’s Virtual Reality Film Clouds Over Sidra (2015)
Résumé
Clouds Over Sidra (Arora and Milk, dir. 2015) is a virtual reality documentary film that narrates the forced displacement and subsequent resettlement of the protagonist Sidra and her family in the Za’atari refugee camp. This article first sheds light on the participatory premise of the VR machine and how it impacts the spectators’/participants’ assessment of the narrative experience. Second, it argues that rendering the im/mobility of the Za’atari refugee camp dwellers, the film falls prey to the arbitrary nature of the forced displacement and the complex character of the transient place of the refugee camp. While VR is an experiential medium that offers a deep sensory experience, the English voice-over, which attempts a ‘linear’ recounting of Sidra’s story, offsets the film’s “shooting in every direction” (Milk, 2015). Lastly, moving beyond the film’s structural failure, the article looks at the infinite versions the VR film offers its remote navigators (and on-site protagonist) and how they might serve as a metaphor for the intersection of histories in the refugee camp. Ultimately, this article seeks to reach a new understanding of the forcibly im/movable subject in the context of the refugee camp.
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- 1 UNHCR Jordan, “Jordan: Azraq and Za’atari Camps Dashboard”, Global Focus, January 17, 2022.
1Described by its producers as a ‘lyrical’ virtual reality film, Clouds Over Sidra (USA, 2015) follows its eponymous protagonist through her daily life in the Za’atari refugee camp. The Za’atari camp is currently the largest refugee camp in Jordan and one of the largest in the world, with a population of over 80,000 people. The camp was established in 2012 in response to the Syrian civil war, which forced many Syrians to flee their homes in search of safety. Almost 55 per cent of the camp’s residents are children, which highlights the urgent need for support and assistance to help them overcome the challenges of living in such difficult circumstances.1 Clouds Over Sidra is an initiative that highlights the difficulties encountered by refugees, especially children, at the Za’atari camp. The film, which was produced by the UN and the design firm VRSE.works, immerses spectators in camp life using VR technology. Clouds Over Sidra has been widely praised for its ability to provide a powerful and immersive experience that allows viewers to connect with the reality of life in a refugee camp.
2Clouds Over Sidra begins with the twelve-year-old girl Sidra introducing herself and her family and providing a tour of her dwelling place and the camp. The viewer is then taken on (or can take) a journey through the camp, where they see firsthand the difficult living conditions that refugees must endure, including overcrowding, lack of privacy, and limited access to basic necessities such as clean water and sanitation. Throughout the film, Sidra speaks about her experiences of living in the camp and the impact that displacement has had on her life. She recounts the struggles of being separated from her friends and family, and the challenges of adjusting to life in a new place. She also shares her hopes and dreams for the future, including her desire to go to school and become a doctor. By exploring the intersections of VR technology, the refugee experience, and the notion of the “new collective technoid body”, I argue in this article that while VR technology has the potential to enhance our understanding of displacement, it also underscores the challenges and limitations of representing diverse and complex experiences through this medium. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of the refugee experience as depicted in the VR film, I start with examining how VR technology can offer a unique perspective on refugee camps as spaces of transience. Secondly, I delve into the symbolic representations of the refugee experience in the film, including the use of the images of clouds, kites, and trees. Thirdly, I discuss the impact of the voice-over narration on the representation of the refugee experience, exploring the ways in which it can homogenise and create a sense of spectrality. Finally, I analyse the role of virtual worlds and the technoid body in reproducing and shaping the refugee experience within the film.
Spaces of Transience: VR Technology and Refugee Camps
- 2 Xifei Lu, “Clouds Over Sidra: Empathy and Immersion in VR Storytelling”, Medium, March 12, 2019. ht (...)
- 3 See, among others, Philippe Bertrand et al., “Learning Empathy through VR: Multiple Strategies for (...)
- 4 Konya Badsa, “Critique: Clouds Over Sidra”, The Migrant & Refugee “Crisis” (blog), November 12, 201 (...)
- 5 Mila Bujić et al., “‘Empathy Machine’: How VR Affects Human Rights Attitudes”, Internet Research, v (...)
- 6 Jeff Meyer, “How a 360 Camera Works”, Camera Jabber, July 3, 2018; Lu, “Clouds Over Sidra”.
- 7 David Pogue, “Why VR Will Not Replace Movies”, Scientific American, May 1, 2016. https://www.scient (...)
- 8 Barry Pousman qtd. in Lu, “Clouds Over Sidra”.
3Clouds Over Sidra has received much praise for its inventive use of technology and its capacity to evoke sympathy and understanding for the plight of refugees. Celebrating it as “the ultimate empathy machine,”2 almost every response to the film emphasises the potential of such artistic productions to raise awareness and eventually lead to action vis-à-vis difficult situations such as the refugee question.3 From a different perspective, Konya Badsa alludes to the relatively new concept of “immersive journalism” that stems directly from the immersive technology used to create the VR film.4 Mila Bujić et al.’s quantitative research on “immersive journalism” concludes that it has “indeed a stronger effect” than the traditional written journalism.5 The video documentary was shot with 360° cameras, which were used to capture the camp’s environment. This enables the viewer to explore this now “seamlessly stitched” and “spherical environment” from all directions.6 The creators used stereoscopic 3D technology to add depth and heighten the realistic experience of the film’s 360° format. The film was designed to be viewed with VR headsets, which allow viewers to feel as if they were present in the camp and gain a more intimate understanding of the refugee experience. The viewer/user can look around and see the various shelters, schools, and other structures that make up the camp, as well as the residents going about their daily lives. The film also makes use of spatialised audio, which emits sound from various points within the virtual setting to produce a more realistic and immersive experience. The film is also available as a 360° video playback so it can be watched without VR headsets. Viewers can freely roam the visual production by tilting their cellphones, which reveals new aspects that were not previously visible. With the use of this function, a simple two-dimensional visual production is converted into a special three-dimensional visual experience. As the result of technical and environmental limitations, Clouds Over Sidra is only eight minutes long. VR films are “difficult to shoot […]. [I]t takes enormous effort to keep lights, crew, and vehicles out of the shot. Where will you hide your equipment, lights, and crew when the camera films 360 degrees around it?”7 In the context of the refugee camp, power outages and the language barrier were additional challenges.8
- 9 J. M. Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, IEEE Potentials, vol. 17, no.2, 1998, p. 20.
- 10 Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, p. 20.
- 11 William Sherman and Alan Craig, Understanding VR: Interface, Application, and Design, San Francisco (...)
4To offer a digital history to Clouds Over Sidra, I start with J. M. Zheng et al.’s definition of virtual reality. For them, VR is an “advanced, human-computer interface that simulates a realistic environment. The participants can move around in the virtual world. They can see it from different angles, reach into it, grab it and reshape it.”9 It is of particular interest for this essay that what was considered the “ultimate VR environment” was in fact the “cyberspace” environment crafted by William Gibson in his science fiction novel Neuromancer (1984).10 Similarly, William Sherman and Alan Craig take a literary approach to their definition of VR as they inscribe it in the long tradition of human attempts to convey reality and engage with it. They even trace it back to the first cave paintings, which were “an early medium for storytelling. A virtual world could be conveyed from one person to another via the technology of pigment on stone.”11 These “literary” definitions somehow clash with the highly technical aspect of VR films. Thus, to make a VR film, 360° cameras are needed to capture footage from all angles. This footage is then stitched together to create a seamless, immersive experience for the viewer. Specialised software is needed to edit, post-produce, and distribute the final product; VR films also require specific hardware such as VR headsets and platforms like YouTube or Vimeo (where Clouds Over Sidra, for instance, can be viewed for free).
- 12 Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, p. 20.
- 13 Bernhard Riecke and Jörg Pelkum, “Perceptual and Cognitive Factors for Self-Motion Simulation in Vi (...)
5VR films offer a new level of immersion and interactivity to the viewer, allowing them to feel as if they are truly inside the world of the film (in this case, the camp) and part of the story.12 Bernhard Riecke and Jörg Pelkum argue that VR films “provide the compelling illusion of moving through simulated worlds while reducing the overall simulation effort.”13 Indeed, works like Clouds Over Sidra rely on simulation to create an immersive virtual environment (the Za’atari refugee camp), a constructed version of reality that is perceived by the viewer as real but is ultimately a second-order representation of reality. This simulation allows the viewer to experience the living conditions of refugees in a way that would have been impossible in the real world. The film is an example of how simulation can be used to create a simulacrum that is intended to evoke a specific emotional response from the viewer. Thanks to its capacity to present a more intimate and personal experience, the participants are more physically and emotionally engaged in the story, which might result in changes in their convictions and behaviours. The user who is wearing their headset, adorned with other haptic accessories, steps into an immersive experience in which they face the subject of the artistic production.
- 14 Michael Vallance and Phillip Towndrow, “Perspective: Narrative Storyliving in VR Design”, Frontiers (...)
- 15 Sherman and Craig. Understanding VR, p. 12.
- 16 According to Andrew Cochrane, “[s]torytelling is dead in VR” (emphasis in original). The medium is (...)
- 17 Sherman and Craig, Understanding VR, p. 6; emphasis in original.
6The leap from traditional storytelling to “narrative storyliving” in VR paves the way for new understandings of the refugees’ condition in Clouds Over Sidra.14 Being able to interact with different components in the film is another characteristic of VR technology. Interactivity is the degree to which users can actively participate in and interact with the virtual world and its elements. This can include activities such as exploring the environment, manipulating objects, and communicating with other users. One form of interactivity as discussed by Sherman and Craig is “the ability to change one’s viewpoint within a world. Interactive fiction can be defined in terms of the user/player’s ability to interact with a world by changing locations, picking up objects and setting them down, flipping switches and so on.”15 VR offers a unique perspective on narrative compared to traditional storytelling.16 The point of view in VR is not limited to a single narrator, but rather allows the user to physically experience the story from multiple perspectives. In Clouds Over Sidra, the user is virtually transported to the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan and can see the camp from various perspectives, including those of refugees and aid workers. Indeed, Sherman and Craig argue that “probably the most important element of any VR experience is the participant(s). All the magic of VR happens in the mind of the participants, hence, every VR experience is different for each of them.”17 The participant listens to Sidra’s spatialised voice but can also be addressed by the boys in the computer room or by the children roaming the camp. Besides, the participant can also attend Sidra’s class and feel like one of the students. Finally, the participant is also free to enter exclusively female classes or male gyms. This shift from reader to participant further solidifies the position of the latter as a free and mobile agent and makes them feel like their actions and decisions are important and impactful.
- 18 Elyas Khoury, Gate of the Sun, translated by Humphrey Davies, London, Vintage, 2005, p. 461.
7In fact, in the context of refugee camps, VR videos are even more relevant. The narrator of Elyas Khoury’s Gate of the Sun, a refugee camp dweller himself, declares: “We’re a video nation and our country’s become a video country.”18 This appellation derives its relevance from the refugees’ endeavors to preserve the memory of their past homes and their current temporary lives. Thus, they take videos of their places of origin, of their treacherous journeys, their encounters, and their transit points. Refugees also rely heavily on video calls to keep in touch with their relatives. VR technology and the refugee experience resonate with each other in other ways, too. Unlike traditional forms of media, a VR experience is typically a one-time, temporary event. The viewer is fully immersed in the virtual world, but this experience only lasts for a limited time, typically several minutes to half an hour. Additionally, the technology used to create VR experiences is constantly evolving, making it difficult to preserve VR experiences for a long time. VR equipment can become outdated quickly, and VR content may not be compatible with new hardware and software updates. This means that VR experiences, by their very nature, are subject to obsolescence and may not be available to future generations. In this sense, the VR experience can be seen as an embodiment of the themes of transience and ephemerality that are present in Clouds Over Sidra. Just as the girl’s life in the refugee camp is marked by uncertainty and change, so is the VR experience itself as it is limited in time and subject to the vagaries of technology and progress. While the VR film itself might become outdated, the story offers a timeless fragment of the human history of loss and displacement.
Of Clouds, Kites, and Trees: Poetic Figurations of the Refugee Experience
- 19 Mahmoud Darwish, Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, translated by Moḥammad Shaheen, London, Hesper (...)
8This concern with transience is not only embedded in the film’s use of VR technology but also extends to its poetic figuration of the refugee of experience; in fact, both come together in the figure of the cloud. Thus, the film’s title invokes the title of the opening poem of Mahmoud Darwish’s epic poetry book Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?: “A Cloud in my Hand.”19 In Darwish’s poem, this line highlights the idea of holding on to something that is inherently intangible and ephemeral, like a cloud that is constantly changing shape and form, and eventually dissolves into the atmosphere. Clouds Over Sidra similarly explores the theme of transience through its subject matter and the use of VR technology, showcasing the temporary and uncertain nature of Sidra’s existence and inviting the viewer to experience the world from her perspective. The VR experience itself is a fleeting one in the sense that it is limited in time and can only be experienced in the moment. Indeed, the title of the film can also refer to a different kind of cloud that is increasingly important in discussions of digital culture, as Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari note:
- 20 Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari, Digital Work in The Planetary Market, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT (...)
[T]here is a recent history of seeing digitally mediated work and production as existing in “the cloud.” The flows of information within the cloud seem to be able to transcend physical laws, geographic constraints, and regulatory points of leverage […] Clouds normally float above our heads; they are intangible yet ubiquitous. The vision of clouds (or a “cyberspace”) that is immaterial and disembedded from the “real world” or physical space has shaped much of today’s digital imaginaries.20
- 21 “What Is the Cloud”, Microsoft Azure (website). https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-c (...)
9Similarly, Microsoft defines “the cloud” as “not a physical entity, but instead [as a] vast network of remote servers around the globe which are hooked together and meant to operate as a single ecosystem […] – the information will be available anywhere you go and anytime you need it.”21 The access to Sidra’s story is indeed available anywhere anytime. This accessibility, however, is one-sided. If anything, it further calcifies a polarised and unequal world. Whereas viewers who can afford VR gadgets or simply an adequate internet connection can access the cloud, Sidra and her fellow refugees remain on the fringes because they lack proper hardware and connectivity. In the Za’atari camp, Sidra even informs the viewer that girls are not allowed to use the computers in the computer room featured in the film. Moreover, while the cloud allegedly transcends physical boundaries, in reality it further immobilises all parties in their respective geophysical and geopolitical positions.
- 22 In “A State of Siege”, Darwish writes: “A woman said to a cloud: cover my dear one.” Again, interte (...)
- 23 Giuseppe Gatti. “Inhabited Stories: An Enactive Media Archaeology of VR Storytelling”, NECSUS: Euro (...)
10Yet in the eyes of Sidra, clouds are comforting. When the sky is cloudy, Sidra feels as if she is “under a blanket” from home.22 The film ends with Sidra’s candid declarations that she “will not be twelve forever” and that she “will not be in Za’atari forever.” Sidra believes that “someday” she “will turn around” with the clouds and return to her home in Syria. With very limited movement available to Sidra as a refugee, a child, and a female, it seems that the only constantly moving bodies are the clouds above her. From this confining perspective, Sidra’s story is presented to the viewers through a massive apparatus of digital mediation which further deepens the schism between the strides of technological advancement and the reality of the refugee camps. Still, the digital mediation allows Clouds Over Sidra to “spread across media platforms.” This diffusion, Giuseppe Gatti argues, allows such productions to “assum[e] the status of proper ‘worlds.’”23
- 24 The mention of a kite in Clouds recalls Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. Certainly, the lat (...)
11As a figure of (desired) mobility, the titular clouds are also linked to another poetic figure, that of the kite. At the beginning of Clouds Over Sidra, Sidra reminisces about her kite that got stuck in a tree.24 In Darwish’s Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, the horse is left alone, and its abandonment represents the speaker’s feelings of the loss of something precious and meaningful. Conversely, the kite in Clouds Over Sidra serves as a symbol of hope and the possibility of a better future, despite the difficulties faced by the children in the film. The act of flying a kite is a simple and universal symbol of freedom, and it serves to remind the viewer of the children’s humanity and their capacity for hope and joy. Additionally, the kite also represents a connection to the past and a sense of continuity. The tradition of kite-flying is deeply rooted in the cultures of the Middle East and the children’s engagement with this tradition serves to link them to their cultural heritage and the generations that have come before them. Furthermore, the kite serves to emphasise the importance of preserving hope and optimism even in the most challenging of circumstances. “I want it [the kite] back”, declares Sidra. This straightforward statement highlights her resilience, determination, and refusal to let the difficult conditions in the camp dictate how she lives her life. This declaration is also the kind of individual resilience the Western viewer is trained to expect, which enables the film’s intended viewers to appreciate it.
- 25 Gabo Arora qtd. in John Gaudiosi, “UN Uses Virtual Reality to Raise Awareness and Money”, April 18, (...)
- 26 Michel Agier. “Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects (A Note on Camps and Humanitarian (...)
12In the quest for a meaningful story and against “the overwhelming context of the crisis”, choosing to concentrate on an individual, resilient child character imbues the film with a sense of coherence and immediacy that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.25 Sidra is a fictionalised character rather than a real person because the name is not the refugee’s real name. It is rather a fictitious name that was chosen to ensure the safety of the real-life twelve-year-old. Michel Agier asserts that “the representation of a world generally treated as a totality, with no representation of difference, is the foundation of our present as a humanitarian age, a world of nameless victims whose identities do not differ from the common humanity (a world in which one sole common identity, immediately upon injury, creates victimhood ‘regardless of sex, religion, ethnicity, political opinion’).”26 The seemingly simple gesture of naming the film after its main character, Sidra, who is the only guide for the viewer in the storyworld, refutes a humanitarian sense of totality.
- 27 The name Sidra is a given name of Latin origin meaning “Goddess of the stars” or “like a star”. It (...)
- 28 The Quran, translated by John Rodwell, London, Phoenix, 2009, p. 358.
- 29 Arora qtd. in Gaudiosi, “UN Uses Virtual Reality”.
- 30 The Quran, p. 487.
13Sidra’s name contributes to the film’s emphasis on resilience and hope by poetically countering the refugees’ state of uprootedness and imagining restorative mobilities. A common name for females, Sidra is part of the Arabic tradition and references the Sidra tree. The name symbolises resilience and hope as the tree is known for its ability to survive in harsh conditions; furthermore, it is a source of food and shade for the people in the area where it grows. It is also the name of a holy tree in the Quran. The tree’s full name is “Sidrat al-Muntaha” (“Near the Sidra tree, which marks the utmost boundary”, Surah Al-Najm,27 “The Star”, Chapter 53, verse 14).28 As a paradoxical twist to the individualist approach that the film’s directors adopted in “concentrating on the story of one girl,”29 one of the descriptions of the Sidra tree is that its “leaves are fabled to be as numerous as the members of the whole human family, and each leaf to bear the name of an individual.”30 The metaphorically condensed meanings of the name run through Clouds Over Sidra as its very raison d’être. Not only does Sidra stand in for a plurality of refugees, but the VR film also has to encompass a gigantic amount of data to render the refugee experience more fathomable, accessible, and safely relatable to its target audience. The Sidra tree is also described as a tree in heaven that marks the end of the journey of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) during the Miraj (ascension to heaven). Sidrat al-Muntaha, the Lote Tree of “the utmost boundary”, is thus interpreted as the boundary beyond which no one can travel, and it symbolises the ultimate limit of human knowledge and understanding of the universe. As the refugee camp is a distinct spatial and temporal threshold, the image of the Sidra tree is an appropriate symbol, connoting both the immobilisation experienced in the refugee camp and the possibility of transcending it. Indeed, the ascension to heaven that is centred around the Sidra tree is a miraculous round trip which connotes the hope of return for the refugees.
The Engulfing Voice-over: Homogenisation and Spectrality
- 31 Moé Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation: ‘Ideal’ Figures of the Refugee and Depoliticisation of Dis (...)
14Yet reducing the refugee experience to one “ideal figure”, encapsulated in Sidra’s name, creates its own set of shortcomings. Sidra’s voice-over, in particular, arguably absorbs the refugee subject into hegemonic discourse. Against the grain of the largely celebratory critical response to the film, Moé Suzuki claims that the humanising techniques used in Clouds Over Sidra (reproduction of ‘ideal’ figures of the refugee, overrepresentation of children, and depoliticisation of displacement) fail to examine the colonial and racial basis of “the human” and ultimately affirm racial hierarchies.31 While the VR film may create individually curated experiences for the viewer/participant, the homogenising effect of Sidra’s voice-over can be seen as a means of reducing the diversity and individuality of the refugee subject. In the alien environment of the refugee camp, the voice-over creates a sense of unity and sameness throughout the film as it is used extensively to tell her story. Because Sidra herself provides the story in her mother tongue, Arabic, the documentary is more intimate and emotional. Unphased by the many devices that surround her, Sidra delivers her script in a manner that attests to her strong communication capacities. The VR film gains credibility from Sidra’s voice, which also deepens the viewer’s connection to her experience. Thus, her voice ties the different elements of the film together and helps to create a consistent tone and atmosphere. But again, this might benefit the user but certainly not the countless silenced refugees behind this narrative. Firstly, the documentary’s official distribution is in English. The English voice-over overruns the Arabic script that can be still faintly heard in the background. The fake English accent appears unnatural and unnecessary, even questionable. Certainly, Sidra’s real voice is not as childish as the English version caricatures it. To an ear that understands the original language, the English script almost sounds insincere. Secondly, the use of a single voice to represent the experiences of refugees perpetuates the stereotype of refugees as passive and powerless victims, unable to tell their own, plural stories. In this sense, this representational strategy further silences the voices of refugees in their heterogeneity and prevents them from speaking for themselves, reinforcing the power dynamics that contribute to their displacement and marginalisation.
- 32 Liisa Malkki, “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization”, Cultural A (...)
- 33 Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation”, p. 1266. The website of the film’s production company Within (...)
15In the very act of “universalizing […] displaced people into ‘refugees’ – in abstracting their predicaments from specific political, historical, cultural contexts – humanitarian practices tend to silence refugees.”32 The use of a single female ‘infantile’ voice to narrate the experiences of multiple refugees can be seen as a way of flattening and standardising their experiences, erasing the unique challenges, perspectives, and emotions that each person faces. As Suzuki notes, the use of the child’s voice “results in a never-ending search for purity” that does not necessarily serve the refugee question.33 This systemic silencing of the refugee subject can result in a diminished understanding of the complexity of the refugees’ experience and the challenges they face. The impact of the voice-over is partially offset by the unscripted remarks of the boys in the computer room, the indistinct chatter at the bakery, the girls participating in the classroom, and the shattered cries of the children in the camp; these voices managed to find their way into the final version of the highly curated documentary, attesting to the capacity of the camp’s rhetoric to infiltrate the mainstream discourse and make it waver. Yet they exist on the fringes of the dominant voice-over, which creates a false sense of unity and universal experience among refugees, obscuring the differences and complexities of their individual lives and experiences. With this silencing epistemic violence in mind, Sidra’s account, as conveyed through the voice-over, hovers over the narrative and engulfs the users during their guided visit to the camp. It is, indeed, a spatialised audio that is accomplished using specialised audio processing algorithms that consider the user’s head position and orientation as well as the location of the audio source within the virtual environment. This means that however the participant chooses to direct their gaze, the voice-over will still be enveloping them, guiding them but also pervading the environment.
- 34 Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation”, p. 1287.
- 35 María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, “Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary / In (...)
- 36 Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation”, p. 1267.
16However, the pervasiveness of the voice-over also unwittingly undermines its own unifying impulse by causing confusion as to its own origin. This indeterminacy casts a ‘spectral’ shadow on the refugee camp and its dwellers, contributing to the production of spectral figures and spaces. As an aesthetic experience, this spectrality is present in the VR work on different planes. We hear Sidra before we can visually locate her. Her voice inaugurates the visit and although she is our guide we cannot guess where this tour is going to take us. The protagonist and her fellow refugee camp dwellers are not only haunted by their experiences (and their exclusion from the process of decision-making regarding their situation), but they also transcend such limitations and subvert their situations, shifting from being haunted subjects to a haunting force. If one views the VR film in its 360° format in a slightly lower resolution, one witnesses Sidra and the other refugees appearing to flicker, like digital ‘glitches’. The ghostly presence of the refugee subject is mirrored by the user, as is the case with Suzuki, who reports with regard to Clouds Over Sidra: “I do not have a body when I look down. The traces of the camera are erased, giving me a ghostly presence, as if I am playing ‘the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere.’”34 While the refugee subject is “ruled by ghostly terror, manifesting as the fearsome machinations of an illogical, ungraspable, system that negates all singularity and security,”35 the user of high-end productions gains a godly perspective but is haunted by a sense of unease (“I am constantly aware of the weight of the VR headset and the mild nausea”).36
Virtual Worlds, Reproduced Experiences, and the Technoid Body
- 37 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminations: Essays (...)
- 38 Benjamin, “The Work of Art”, p. 221.
- 39 Benjamin, “The Work of Art”, p. 223.
17The use of VR technology to open the discussion about the refugee experience attests to the potential of advanced technology to represent pressing social issues. In his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin discusses the consequences of technological advancements on the aura and uniqueness of art.37 He argues that mechanical reproduction, facilitated by new technologies, has changed the way we experience art and thus its cultural significance. VR technology arguably represents a new form of mechanical reproduction that further blurs the line between original and reproduced experiences. The sense of presence that users experience within VR simulations can be seen as a new form of aura, one that is created through complex algorithms, pioneering software, and advanced technology rather than through physical proximity to the original object. Benjamin further notes that “[b]y making many reproductions it [the technique of reproduction] substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence”.38 VR subverts this claim as the “many reproductions” are now curated and condensed so that every experience is again unique and original. No matter how many times one watches Clouds Over Sidra or any other immersive production, it is humanly impossible to recreate the exact same path. In this sense, VR approaches the “uniqueness and permanence” of the ‘aura’ of the work of art. Interestingly, though, the conception of refugee camps tends to align more with “transitoriness and reproducibility” as refugee camps are, by definition and purpose, temporary.39 As VR technology is suspended between uniqueness and reproducibility, it echoes the uncertainties and precariousness of the refugee experience.
18Physically and metaphorically, refugee camps are engulfed in a persistent ambiguity. They encompass conflicting polarities: every refugee camp is unique (and might become permanent), but they are also meant to be transitory and easily reproduceable. Most of the camps are not even marked on maps. As a temporary shelter that spans a desert, the Za’atari refugee camp is bluntly introduced as Sidra’s “home.” The user follows Sidra as her unfledged voice recounts one of the recent tragedies in human history. As an established and highly managed camp, Za’atari, which shelters more children than adults, becomes subject to Sidra’s subversion. She muses: “Sometimes I think we [the children] are the ones in charge.” This vision of countering exclusion by taking charge (albeit poetically) is an instance where the refugee refuses her predetermined course and seeks a change in her predicament. As such, the refugee becomes a figure of excess that does not (maybe cannot) fit in any given existing formulation. By attempting to simulate such contested environments that can be experienced as real, VR technology has the potential to change the way we think about reality itself, offering new possibilities for exploration.
- 40 Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, London, Pluto Press, 2000, p. x.
19VR technology offers these possibilities by creating a new type of body, a technoid body that is directly connected to the virtual world through the VR headset. Drawing on Benjamin’s Aktualität, Esther Leslie introduces the “notion of the technoid subject [that is] enhanced with prosthetics, wired up and plugged into inflowmation […]. What happens in this cyber-conception of material is that the distinction between machine – technology – worker – a technician producing within technical relations of production – is collapsed into a single, mythic, postnatural subject.”40 The technoid body experiences the virtual world as if it were real, and its movements and actions in the virtual world are directly linked to its movements and actions in the physical world. This creates a new type of relationship between the body and technology in which the body is no longer a passive observer but instead an active participant in the virtual world. The focus is on how technology shapes our experiences and perceptions of reality. Posthumanism as a theoretical framework explores the possibilities and implications of human beings transcending their current physical and cognitive limitations through technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and VR. Posthumanists argue that these developments have the potential to fundamentally change what it means to be human and could lead to the creation of new forms of life. From a posthumanist vantage point, VR technology raises questions about the potential for humans to merge with virtual environments and create new forms of consciousness that exist in virtual worlds. Some posthumanists argue that VR has the potential to allow humans to transcend physical limitations and experience new forms of reality. Others are more skeptical and warn against the potential for VR to be used as a tool of control and manipulation.
- 41 Zygmunt Bauman and Peter Haffner, “Zygmunt Bauman: LOVE. FEAR. And the NETWORK”, 032c Magazine, Feb (...)
- 42 Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, p. 22.
- 43 “Connectivity for Everyone”, UNHCR Innovation, 2018. https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/connectivity- (...)
20According to Zygmunt Bauman, refugee camps are “laboratories in which the new, permanently temporary mode of living of liquid modernity is tested.”41 Refugee camps, however, are the subject of these “cyberlaboratories” and not a part of them as there is little to no access to high-speed networks or large data sets.42 Indeed, refugee camps often face several challenges that limit their access to technological advancements in general. One of the main reasons is their limited infrastructure. Many refugee camps are located in remote areas with limited access to electricity, clean water, and other basic necessities, making it difficult to install and maintain modern technology. Additionally, the high cost of installing and maintaining such infrastructure is also a barrier. The absence of stable and effective government institutions in many refugee-hosting countries leads to a lack of investment in technology and infrastructure. A study by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found that “[g]lobally, refugees are 50 percent less likely than the general population to have an Internet capable phone. While 20 percent of rural refugees have no access to connectivity, urban refugees often have access but cannot afford to get online.”43 This lack of connectivity makes it difficult to use VR technology even though the use of VR technology has the potential to greatly benefit refugees in camps. VR could be used to provide refugees with improved access to education, training, and information, offer help with mental health support, and relieve boredom.
- 44 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning & the New Internatio (...)
- 45 Khoury, Gate of the Sun, p. 164.
- 46 Jansen Bram, The Accidental City: Violence, Economy and Humanitarianism in Kakuma Refugee Camp Keny (...)
- 47 Khoury, Gate of the Sun, p. 164.
21Refugees find themselves in the intolerable position of indefinite waiting. This is perhaps the most obvious theme that emerges from the reading of refugee camp literature. With the lack of purpose, the loss of destination, and the absence of means to pursue any activity or perform any work, all that is left for the refugees is to wait. Recognising the lingering ghostly presence of the past in the lives of the displaced, we can think of life in the refugee camp, after Jacques Derrida, as “a spectral moment, a moment that no longer belongs to time.”44 Depicted as unworldly, “[t]hese waiting periods breed and erase each other, push each other out of the way and interact.”45 Refugees do strive, however, to maintain different aspects of their lives despite the difficult conditions in the refugee camp. The liveliness of the otherwise inert incomprehensible waiting periods attests to the endeavours of refugee camp dwellers to place their experiences into “the realm of the normal and the possible, contrary to prevailing notions of the camp as an abnormality.”46 Despite being literally set within the timeframe of waiting, the protagonist of Clouds Over Sidra, despite her young age, displays noticeable resilience as she declares decisively: “I think it’s silly to wait. How will they remember anything [if the other kids do not go to school]?” In fact, it is the “waiting for something else”47 that constitutes the driving force allowing the protagonist to keep looking forward to different futures. Sidra states with a wisdom beyond her years, “I will not be twelve forever and I will not be in Za’atari forever.”
Conclusion: Immersed in the VR Camp
- 48 Laura Marks, Hanan Al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press,(...)
- 49 Vincenzo Mele, “The Blasé and the Flâneur. Simmel and Benjamin on Modern and Postmodern Forms of In (...)
22Clouds Over Sidra curates unique experiences for its users and indisputably offers an outlet for the refugee subject to tell her experience, yet it remains, in my understanding, a “necessarily incomplete film”;48 incomplete in the sense that the refugee experience the film tries to capture does not and cannot represent either a coherent or a plenary experience. The film falls prey to the complexity of its subject matter. Hence, the attempts at coherence fail to reflect the reality of refugee camps. However, as an art form, VR technology can be “the educative mechanism through which the crowd as ‘new collective technoid body’ can begin to appropriate its own political and technological potential.”49 The technoid body is one that continuously adjusts to emerging technologies. This body is viewed as a human-machine hybrid, a byproduct of the urban and technological age, and it differs significantly from earlier modes of human embodiment. For Benjamin, the technoid body symbolises a new way of being in which the line between man and machine is blurred and the body is changed into a new kind of organism that can accommodate various technological transformations.
- 50 Benjamin qtd. in Peter Osborne and Matthew Charles, “Walter Benjamin”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of (...)
- 51 Leslie, Walter Benjamin, p. 153.
- 52 Leslie, Walter Benjamin, p. 152.
- 53 Leslie, Walter Benjamin, p. 152; emphasis added.
23VR technology, like cinema in Benjamin’s view, can become a “potentially liberatory technology […] making possible ‘a highly productive use of the human being’s self-alienation.’”50 In the same vein, Esther Leslie, referencing Benjamin, argues that “film functions to counter the trauma of social alienation, in parts, by its actual methods of reproduction.”51 It can also be argued that VR technology has the potential to counter the “uneasy loss of presence and embodiment involved in the translation of the person into a material object for film.”52 Perhaps what interests me most in this discussion is that the “attempt to close [the] distance between self and object is interpreted as both enabled by new technologies, but also as an ideal resolution of real contradictions.”53 By virtue of its subject matter, Clouds Over Sidra presents itself as a concrete attempt towards this “ideal resolution of concrete contradictions.” Refugee camps dissolve time-space parameters as their dwellers no longer adhere to, nor believe in, a time that is linear and progressive. As their experiences are mostly defined by protracted waiting, their time is postponed or suspended altogether. In this way, VR technology can be an adequate tool, for now, to narrate the experiences of the refugees and thus engage in the task of piecing together accounts of a myriad of experiences that are systemically relegated to the fringes of human experience.
24Yet in other ways, the VR film participates in hegemonic discourse, notably by flattening the heterogeneity of camp dwellers through Sidra’s voice-over and by ultimately reinforcing the gap between a mobile and technologised viewer/participant on the one hand and an immobilised refugee subject with limited, if any, access to technology on the other. The representation of the refugee subject in Clouds Over Sidra is a complex and nuanced issue that raises important ethical and representational questions. While VR technology has the potential to be a powerful tool for empathy and understanding, it is also important to consider the potential limitations and implications of such representations. Clouds Over Sidra can generate contradictory readings and reconcile otherwise irreconcilable realities. VR technology creates the illusion that time and space have been compressed. The resulting immersive digital environment is an advanced replica of the refugee camp and resonates with it in a number of ways, suspended between the immobilisation of waiting and the impermanence of clouds. For the target audience, it is a practical way to experience a large amount of data instantly or explore an area that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to access physically. Entering the space of the refugee camp, walking in the footsteps of the ones who treaded these treacherous spaces before you, meeting Sidra and following her in her daily life without having to physically move is a complex experience that warrants candid discussion. If nothing else, the possibility of conjuring up the refugee camp and its dwellers with a VR headset attests to the urgency and proximity of the refugee experience in the planetary now.
Notes
1 UNHCR Jordan, “Jordan: Azraq and Za’atari Camps Dashboard”, Global Focus, January 17, 2022.
2 Xifei Lu, “Clouds Over Sidra: Empathy and Immersion in VR Storytelling”, Medium, March 12, 2019. https://medium.com/@irenelu728/clouds-over-sidra-empathy-and-immersion-in-vr-storytelling-fc2c107147fe, accessed 25 March 2023.
3 See, among others, Philippe Bertrand et al., “Learning Empathy through VR: Multiple Strategies for Training Empathy-Related Abilities Using Body Ownership Illusions in Embodied VR”, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, vol. 5, 2018, pp. 1-18; Erica Swallow. “United Nations’ first VR Film Pushes the Bounds of Empathy”, The Tech, May 7, 2015. https://thetech.com/2015/05/07/sidra-v135-n15, accessed 26 January 2023.
4 Konya Badsa, “Critique: Clouds Over Sidra”, The Migrant & Refugee “Crisis” (blog), November 12, 2017. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/themigrantandrefugeecrisis/2017/11/12/critique-clouds-over-sidra/, accessed 26 January 2023.
5 Mila Bujić et al., “‘Empathy Machine’: How VR Affects Human Rights Attitudes”, Internet Research, vol. 30, no.5, 2020, pp. 1407-25.
6 Jeff Meyer, “How a 360 Camera Works”, Camera Jabber, July 3, 2018; Lu, “Clouds Over Sidra”.
7 David Pogue, “Why VR Will Not Replace Movies”, Scientific American, May 1, 2016. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-vr-will-not-replace-movies, accessed 18 December 2022.
8 Barry Pousman qtd. in Lu, “Clouds Over Sidra”.
9 J. M. Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, IEEE Potentials, vol. 17, no.2, 1998, p. 20.
10 Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, p. 20.
11 William Sherman and Alan Craig, Understanding VR: Interface, Application, and Design, San Francisco, Morgan Kaufmann, 2019, p. 5.
12 Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, p. 20.
13 Bernhard Riecke and Jörg Pelkum, “Perceptual and Cognitive Factors for Self-Motion Simulation in Virtual Environments: How Can Self-Motion Illusions (‘Vection’) Be Utilized?” in Frank Steinicke et al. (eds.), Human Walking in Virtual Environments, New York, Springer, 2013, p. 27.
14 Michael Vallance and Phillip Towndrow, “Perspective: Narrative Storyliving in VR Design”, Frontiers in VR, vol. 3, 2022, pp. 1-5.
15 Sherman and Craig. Understanding VR, p. 12.
16 According to Andrew Cochrane, “[s]torytelling is dead in VR” (emphasis in original). The medium is not about “telling” the audience anything, it is about creating experiences. Cochrane asserts that “narrative”, “story architecture”, and “story worlds” are more apt. Andrew Cochrane qtd. in Megan Logan, “How VR is Going to Change Storytelling”, Inverse, April 29, 2016. https://www.inverse.com/article/14971-how-virtual-reality-could-change-storytelling, accessed 18 December 2022.
17 Sherman and Craig, Understanding VR, p. 6; emphasis in original.
18 Elyas Khoury, Gate of the Sun, translated by Humphrey Davies, London, Vintage, 2005, p. 461.
19 Mahmoud Darwish, Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, translated by Moḥammad Shaheen, London, Hesperus Press, 2014, p. 5.
20 Mark Graham and Fabian Ferrari, Digital Work in The Planetary Market, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2022, p. 8.
21 “What Is the Cloud”, Microsoft Azure (website). https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-the-cloud , accessed April 10, 2023.
22 In “A State of Siege”, Darwish writes: “A woman said to a cloud: cover my dear one.” Again, intertextual references seem to saturate the narrative and bring it closer to other narratives from and about refugee camps. Mahmoud Darwish, “A State of Siege”, translated by Ramsis Amun, Nadwah Poetry in Translation, 2002. https://www.arabicnadwah.com/arabicpoetry/darwish-siege.htm, accessed 13 September 2022.
23 Giuseppe Gatti. “Inhabited Stories: An Enactive Media Archaeology of VR Storytelling”, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, vol. 11, no.1, 2022, pp. 231-57.
24 The mention of a kite in Clouds recalls Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. Certainly, the latter’s widespread success, as a book (2003) and as a film (2007), would serve as a relevant subtext to the film but there is no explicit reference to support any possible link between the two.
25 Gabo Arora qtd. in John Gaudiosi, “UN Uses Virtual Reality to Raise Awareness and Money”, April 18, 2016, Fortune. https://fortune.com/2016/04/18/un-uses-virtual-reality-to-raise-awareness-and-money, accessed 17 August 2022.
26 Michel Agier. “Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects (A Note on Camps and Humanitarian Government)”, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, vol. 1, no.1, 2010, p. 31.
27 The name Sidra is a given name of Latin origin meaning “Goddess of the stars” or “like a star”. It also means a holy tree in many religions around the world.
28 The Quran, translated by John Rodwell, London, Phoenix, 2009, p. 358.
29 Arora qtd. in Gaudiosi, “UN Uses Virtual Reality”.
30 The Quran, p. 487.
31 Moé Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation: ‘Ideal’ Figures of the Refugee and Depoliticisation of Displacement in VR Film Clouds Over Sidra”, European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 25, no.5, 2022, pp. 1266-85.
32 Liisa Malkki, “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization”, Cultural Anthropology, vol. 11, no.3, 1996, p. 378.
33 Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation”, p. 1266. The website of the film’s production company Within explicitly invites viewers to “meet Sidra. This charming 12-year-old girl [who] will guide you through her temporary home: The Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan.”
34 Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation”, p. 1287.
35 María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren, “Spectropolitics: Ghosts of the Global Contemporary / Introduction”, in The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory, London, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 95. The quote refers to the work of Achille Mbembe.
36 Suzuki, “The Limits of Humanisation”, p. 1267.
37 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, New York, Schocken, 1968, pp. 217-51.
38 Benjamin, “The Work of Art”, p. 221.
39 Benjamin, “The Work of Art”, p. 223.
40 Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, London, Pluto Press, 2000, p. x.
41 Zygmunt Bauman and Peter Haffner, “Zygmunt Bauman: LOVE. FEAR. And the NETWORK”, 032c Magazine, February 26, 2016. https://032c.com/magazine/zygmunt-bauman-love-fear-and-the-network, accessed 10 August 2022.
42 Zheng et al., “Virtual Reality”, p. 22.
43 “Connectivity for Everyone”, UNHCR Innovation, 2018. https://www.unhcr.org/innovation/connectivity-for-everyone, accessed 26 March 2023.
44 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning & the New International, translated by Peggy Kamuf, New York, Routledge, 1994, p. xix.
45 Khoury, Gate of the Sun, p. 164.
46 Jansen Bram, The Accidental City: Violence, Economy and Humanitarianism in Kakuma Refugee Camp Kenya, doctoral dissertation, Wageningen, Wageningen University, 2011, p. 265.
47 Khoury, Gate of the Sun, p. 164.
48 Laura Marks, Hanan Al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2015, p. 2.
49 Vincenzo Mele, “The Blasé and the Flâneur. Simmel and Benjamin on Modern and Postmodern Forms of Individualization”, Simmel Studies, vol. 23, no.2, 2021, p. 54. Theorising the “new collective technoid body”, Benjamin states that “the collective is a body, too. And the physis that is being organized for it in technology can, through all its political and factual reality, only be produced in that image-space to which profane illumination initiates us. Only when in technology body and image so interpenetrate that all revolutionary tension becomes bodily collective innervation, and all the bodily innervations of the collective become revolutionary discharge, has reality transcended itself to the extent demanded by the Communist Manifesto” (Benjamin, “The Work of Art”, p. 217-218).
50 Benjamin qtd. in Peter Osborne and Matthew Charles, “Walter Benjamin”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/benjamin, accessed 20 August 2022.
51 Leslie, Walter Benjamin, p. 153.
52 Leslie, Walter Benjamin, p. 152.
53 Leslie, Walter Benjamin, p. 152; emphasis added.
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Safa Kouki, « The “New Collective Technoid Body”: Immersive Environments and the Im/mobile Refugee Subject in Gabo Arora and Chris Milk’s Virtual Reality Film Clouds Over Sidra (2015) », Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 17 | 2022, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2022, consulté le 20 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/2154 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/transtexts.2154
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