The film traces the Middle Eastern landscapes in the California desert back to histories of violence and colonization through agriculture, architecture and military intervention. Shot at Fort Irwin National Training Center (The Box), Camp Pendleton, the city of Mecca and the Riverside County Fair and Date Festival in California, the footage is overlaid with testimonies by US Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Recontextualizing signifiers in architecture, language and landscape, the film offers a oneiric rendering of a site constructed of images and memories, displacing the artist’s visual memories of war-torn Shatt al-Arab (during the Iran-Iraq war) and militarized Southern California where she resides.
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