AATMA: A polymath’s vision for intersectional resistance

AATMA—the Anti-fascist Art, Techno, and Music alliance—is a Beirut-based collective founded by polymath Jessika Jamal Khazrik. Functioning as a platform for resistance and transgenerational healing, AATMA uses electronic music, public assemblies, and digital tools to address militarisation, surveillance, and environmental injustice. Hosting organised events like ‘orgaraves’ (organised raves) and assemblies, AATMA gathers together a diverse array of voices to raise awareness on issues from ecological degradation to colonial violence and radically re-envision a world beyond oppression. 

Jessika Jamal Khazrik is the driving force behind AATMA. At 33—or as she puts it, “born in the year 7291 of her grandmother’s enduring calendar”—Khazrik’s life and career reflect a commitment to resisting systemic violence. Her birth itself embedded the logic of conflict into her earliest sense of time and purpose; when the Lebanese Civil War began, her parents decided to delay having children until the war ended, not wanting their child to be born into a ‘life’ of war. “They ended up waiting and sacrificing their multi-generational desires for 16 years!” Khazrik explains to Dazed MENA. “So somehow, my raison d’etre, as retold by my closest ancestors in this physical realm, has been the false end of the war in Lebanon.”

Raised on the outskirts of Beirut near a quarry contaminated by toxic waste, her early experiences shaped her understanding of the way ecological harm and political corruption enable one another. This ignited a lifelong drive to dismantle the systems of violence that underlie economic exploitation. “Looking at my life and the growing toxicity and politics of dispossession in Lebanon, in the region, and in the world at large, I always knew that the civil war never ended,” Khazrik asserts. “How can any war end without liberation and transformation? How can wars end if we still live in a highly militarised global economy built on genocide that hasn’t even been acknowledged and where war is the most profitable industry?”

Khazrik uses sound as a vessel for collective catharsis and a strategy for resistance. Her live performances channel ancestral chants—Armenian sharakan, Levantine mawwal, and Iraqi radh—strung through techno beats and experimental rhythms. “My polyrhythmic practice in music teaches me about the multiple temporalities of resistance we need to sustain our movements, and vice versa,” Khazrik elucidates. “Writing with and for a multiplicity of voices that can respond to the urgent while retaining nurturing long-term visions of care, connection, and liberation teaches me a lot about the complexity of being in life.”

Beyond her music, Khazrik has worked as a technologist and advisor on digital security and artificial intelligence policy, advocating for the protection of vulnerable communities against the pervasive reach of surveillance capitalism. Her career includes stints as a research fellow at MIT and the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Health, alongside earning the Ada Lovelace Prize in 2017 for her contributions to science and technology. Her polymathic approach integrates disciplines as diverse as music composition, environmental science, and counter-surveillance, dedicated to addressing entrenched injustices through innovation and collaboration. 

AATMA is the living embodiment of Khazrik’s philosophies, rooted in intersectional resistance. It operates as a decentralised network, prioritising community-driven approaches to activism, creating events that merge cultural celebration with incisive critique. ‘Orgaraves’ are designed to facilitate dialogue, cultivate trust, and challenge systems of oppression. For Khazrik, collective safety is a priority in these efforts, frequently leveraging anonymity as a shield against very real threats of surveillance and state violence.  “I had to expose, probe, and deal with targeted surveillance campaigns against myself and people around me several times in my life, from several entities” Khazrik shares. “Collective safety is a priority that guides me.”

The seed for Khazrik’s activism lies in her family’s history of displacement and resilience. Her grandmother, a Chaldean astrologer, (“seer who practiced multiple forms of divination,”) and staunch anti-colonial figure, helped shape her understanding of the interconnectedness of struggles across the Middle East, particularly the liberation of Palestine. “My mother is Lebanese and my father is Chaldean Iraqi, Armenian, and Bengali, who was born and raised in Baghdad,” Khazrik tells us. “We grew up learning from a very early age about our ancestors’ experiences during the Armenian genocide, the Syefo genocide, and the genocides that the British Empire committed in Turkey. We also grew up amidst great experiences of cultural erasure, post-memory, and loopholes within our collective memory.” 

For her, resistance is an homage to ancestral knowledge and an act of reimagining futures unconstrained by milistarisation, and in light of recent atrocities in Palestine, AATMA has intensified its efforts, with Khazrik pausing other projects to focus on immediate community relief and advocacy. Her vision centres on dismantling exploitative systems by nurturing alternative economies grounded in mutual aid and shared responsibility. “I stopped in October 2023 all of my labour that doesn’t directly and immediately call for the liberation of Palestine,” Khazrik reveals. “The priority now is community relief in Lebanon and public access to knowledge, in service of a world that would become caring and loving enough to strike against air strikes…. To be able to strike to a point that can apply economic pressure and disrupt the global economy of genocide, we need to nurture each other and starve the system, giving way for an alternative economy to grow. Unlearn alienation.”

In Khazrik’s hands, AATMA invites us to imagine a world transformed, and to take part in its making. “With resistance comes dignity, even if this might not be very evident in our present,” Khazrik affirms. “I see life, knowledge, and love as multi-generational commitments.” It’s a conviction that traces back to her grandmother, who once told her that the stars foretold Palestine’s liberation within her lifetime—a vision Khazrik carries forward as both a legacy and a responsibility.