Rotem Linial (KCL) - 2025-26 Students
rotem.linial@kcl.ac.uk

Descent: Experimental Ethnography and Documentary Sculpture

“Descent” is an experimental documentary exploring SWANA Jewish-Arab identity in French-ruled Morocco. Examining the politically-charged alchemy of place and subjectivity under colonialism, it centers on my grandmother’s memories of colonial acculturation during school ski trips to Oukaïmeden, as a Darija-speaking Jewish girl from Marrakesh. Capturing a moment before her hybrid Arab-Jewish identity was ruptured, the project resists hermetic fusions of nationalism and biography. Analogizing interpretive instability and subjectivity in its forms, “Descent” hybridizes sculpture and film, embedding documentary sources in custom-built screening apparatuses designed for single viewers, which reference pre-cinematic viewing devices that delivered images of the colonies to Europe.

Principal supervisor: Dr. Daniel Mann