Wonderland

Filmed in Beirut in 2011, Khaled Sabsabi's work Tawla (table) (2012) focusses on six different stages of the same game of backgammon. The game is understood to be thousands of years old and considered equal parts chance and strategy. Sabsabi uses this competitive and cultural activity as a metaphor for the complex and deeply embedded relationships between countries in the Middle East. Sasabi's two-screen video Wonderland (2013-14), depicts the official supporter group of the Western Sydney Wanderers, known as the Red and Black Bloc (RBB). Sabsabi's minimally edited footage of the crowd's vociferous chanting and impassioned grandstand surveillance gives rise to a breadth of ideas—what the viewer sees and hears occupies only a superficial part of the work's whole. In this work, the RBB are the exposed aspect of a much larger project about unity, identity, power and wonderment. Wonderland suggests that the unbridled fanaticism of the RBB stems as much from a pride in its wider, largely migrant community as of its beloved team?s on-field performance. This is a triumph of a sporting team, and the triumph of self-determination. The history of the Western Sydney Wanderers Football Club is known to many as that of a fairy tale. After years of lobbying, the Wanderers entered the A-league in the 2012-13 season, and have since become something of a cultural phenomenon. They've enjoyed record breaking winning streaks, and, in their debut season, rapid ascension to the finals. For Sabsabi, the success story of the Wanderers is the success story of one of the most culturally diverse and politically significant communities in Australia—his community of Western Sydney.