Indigenous Liberation Through Immersive Technologies

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Performative Format

Abstract

Historically, immersive technologies, particularly 3D design and computing, have been widely deployed in video games to portray Muslims and Arabs as “villains” and the “other.” However, with the increasing accessibility of VR and 360-degree technologies, new initiatives have emerged that leverage these tools for social change. Furthermore, immersive technologies, when integrated into innovative spaces such as planetariums, offer powerful opportunities to envision liberated futures. While many scholars have emphasized VR’s role in fostering empathy, its potential extends beyond momentary emotional responses to creating long-term structural change. These technologies can be utilized to develop interactive colonial archives that challenge historical erasure.

This same potential holds true for the Palestinian struggle: using the Phoenix of Gaza XR Project as a foundation, this performative session brings together project co-founders Dr. Ahlam Mustaseb (Professor of Media Studies at CSU San Bernadino) and Naim Aburradi (PhD Student in Media Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.) Dr. Muhtaseb and Aburaddi will run through a simulation of the Phoenix of Gaza XR Project, followed by a moderated conversation with Dr. Omar Zahzah (San Francisco State University) about the role that immersive technologies can and must play in offsetting colonial genocide, archiving Palestinian history, and imagining decolonized Palestinian futures.

The Phoenix of Gaza XR Project began in 2022 when Naim Aburaddi, an MA student in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) at the time, received the 2021 CSUSB xReal Lab fellowship, where he started working with Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb who was a faculty fellow at the lab. Out of Naim's inability to visit Gaza (6 years at that time) and his yearning to feel, touch, smell, and relive his cherished memories in Gaza, this project was born. The team decided to hire a camera operator in Gaza. It took 6 months to get a Theta 360-degree camera into Gaza.

Between July 2022 and July 2023, the videographer documented life in Gaza with two objectives in mind: First, to capture Gaza outside the realm of death and destruction and to show the multiplicity of Gaza, introducing the multi-dimensional realities there. Project creators sought to capture happy moments and mundane life activities; to show how people resist in their resilience and insistence on making life out of the brutal Israeli siege. They captured places and faces that no longer exist in the geography of Gaza.

The second goal was to imagine a liberated Gaza in virtual spaces built with the help of a team of technicians and 3-D designers from the CSUSB xReal Lab. A project that was supposed to imagine a liberated Gaza turned into a project about heritage preservation and documentary evidence of the genocide, taking into consideration that many of the places captured had been on the UNESCO heritage list.

Through a simulation and discussion of the Phoenix of Gaza XR project’s genesis, aims, and original as well as evolving functions, this session will probe the counter-hegemonic potential for immersive technologies to challenge settler-colonialism and genocide and imagine decolonized futures.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Omar Zahzah, San Francisco State University

Panelists

• Naim Aburaddi

• Ahlam Muhtaseb, California State University, San Bernard

Comment

• Omar Zahzah, San Francisco State University

Biographical Information

Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb is a professor of media studies at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) and a senior data justice fellow with Princeton's Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. She is the recipient of the 2024 Women Support Organization’s Distinguished Woman of the Year award and the 2024 Activism and Social Justice Scholarly Influence Award by the National Communication Association’s (NCA’s) Activism and Social Justice Division. She is also the recipient of the 2020 CSUSB Outstanding Scholarship, Research and Creative Activities Award and the 2019-20 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Faculty Mentor Award. In 2019, she won the Rebuilding Alliance “Story Teller” Award. She co-produced and co-directed the documentary 1948: Creation & Catastrophe (http://www.1948movie.com/), winner of the Jerusalem International Film Festival’s 2019 Special Jury Award in the Feature Documentary category (https://inside.csusb.edu/node/28706). She is the co-founder and director of the Gaza xReal project: The Phoenix of Gaza (http://www.gazaxr.com/). Her research interests include digital communication, digital resistance & decolonization, social justice, and diasporic communities. She is working
currently on a study of Palestinian digital resistance and decolonizing digital spaces.

Naim Aburaddi is an artist, journalist, and media instructor. He is currently a Data Justice Fellow at Princeton University’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab and a fellow at the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture. He is pursuing a PhD in media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he teaches in the Department of Media Studies. He is the co-founder and manager of the Phoenix of Gaza XR project, an interactive virtual reality experience that documents life in Gaza highlighting Gaza's culture, history, and resilience.
His artwork has been showcased at major institutions, including Princeton and Yale, where he has also spoken at a prominent event at Princeton and delivered a keynote at Yale on immersive storytelling, media justice, and cultural preservation. He has been featured in major media outlets such as the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, BBC, and Colorado Public Radio (CPR). In recognition of his dedication to activism and scholarship, Aburaddi was awarded the prestigious 2024 Graduate Student Activist Award by the Activism & Social Justice Division of the National Communication Association (NCA). With over seven years of experience in digital media, he has held roles as a digital content editor, social media manager, and social media specialist at international media production companies.
Aburaddi’s research explores how immersive technologies can be harnessed for cultural preservation and as tools for imagining alternative futures. He investigates how virtual and augmented reality, 360-degree storytelling, and spatial computing can serve as platforms for documenting histories, resisting erasure, and fostering new modes of engagement with displaced or marginalized communities. His work also examines the ethical and political dimensions of these technologies, particularly in the context of media justice and representation. Utilizing creative spaces such as planetariums and black box studios, he creates counter-media narratives that challenge dominant perspectives and expand the possibilities of storytelling.

Dr. Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, and Assistant Professor of Arab, Muslim, Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies in the historic College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. A scholar-organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, Omar is the author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, published by The Censored Press in partnership with Seven Stories Press in Summer 2025.