The Polis Project is a humanities collective that brings together research, reportage, and resistance to produce and give visibility to bodies of work that have a direct impact on public discourse. The collective has different souls and plays multiple roles – as artists, scholars, dissidents and activists we produce and publish research, commentary, and analysis on issues of war, conflict, militarization, and transformation of occupied spaces. The collective and its members run Warscapes magazine, edits books, work as documentary photographers and curate exhibitions, and produce deeply engaged scholarship. We collaborate with computer programmers, artists, writers, curators, and filmmakers.

By making public interventions and opening a public space of debate and dissent, we hope to nurture and cultivate intellectual, artistic and political resistance. Fundamental to our work is asking simple questions. What does it mean to think, be critical, dissent, and speak truth to power in these precarious times? How do we create a stake in producing knowledge? How do we make sure that the knowledge we are producing comes from the street and benefits communities in resistance? How do we take this knowledge to communities that otherwise might not have easy access to it? Above all how do we intervene and win arguments in the public domain?

2017-09-01