Text: Mathias, Allan, Maxime, Muslim, Galid, Karim, Thomas, Hamdoune, Loïc, Abdel Kasem, Arnaud,
Mélanie, Michael, Gabriel, Macario, Kevin, Thomas, David, Nagim, Jordan, Ibrahim, Adrien, Marie, Maureen, Arman, Dia.
Voice: Aurélie Ghilain

Do not confuse the reality of images (November 2014)
Marie Zolamian

« Do not confuse the reality of images » is a work I could have made in 1990, when I arrived in Belgium at the age of fifteen, leaving Lebanon behind.
Twenty-five years later, I wanted to understand how a group of teenagers and young European adults, who have never experienced war directly and only know it through History and the media, might react.
Based on twenty-five interviews with young people aged 14 to 24 from the Youth House of Chênée, the work was conceived within the educational framework of the First World War commemorations (2014–2018). It confronts their reflections on current wars and conflicts: What do they know about war? How are they affected by it? How do they experience the media spectacle of these events? What do notions such as commitment, resistance or heroism awaken in them? Living in a country at peace, do they feel fear or distress about the state of the world? How do they relate to media « truths », their main source of contemporary history? What forms of empathy or indifference do they develop in front of real violence? How do they position themselves in relation to reality and conflicting ideologies, and what consistency do they attribute to politics?
Installed in the former City Hall of Chênée, in the Culture-Mariage hall, the work unfolds as a polyphony of young voices performed by a single female voice. This vocal flow functions as a curent memorial, in dialogue with portraits of “Died for the fatherland” and a painted allegory after an engraving by Pieter van der Borcht, « Allegory on the difficulty of governing a diverse nation ».