Purple Code – With Leil-Zahra Mortada

Abstract

In this episode, our conversation with Leil-Zahra Mortada draws from their expertise on digital rights, online security, and open source investigations from anticolonial, feminist and queer perspectives. Their work spans across the fields of art/ filmmaking, activism and research, and includes the archival project “Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution”; the awarded “Breakup in 9 Scenes”, and the decolonial-feminist music research project Sound Frontier focusing on marginalized music and sound art. Apart from their work with different organizations Indymedia, Mozilla Foundation and Tactical Tech, Leil-Zahra has also been part of forming several political collectives and alternative media groups in Lebanon, Egypt, Spain and elsewhere. By working on the intersections of human rights and digital technologies, Leil-Zahra brings forth several pertinent questions in this episode: who produces digital technologies and whose rights are included? How do marginalized communities engage with them? And what are the alternatives to present day technologies? The interdisciplinary nature of their work further facilitates our discussions on the structural frames for studying digital technologies.