I Swear to Tell The Truth

Enter a building designed to disorient. Slip on a pair of headphones. Peer through a hospital window — and begin to question what you believe about Syria.

Commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, I Swear To Tell The Truth is an immersive exhibition exploring how media, technology, and bias shape our understanding of conflict.

Often described as the first war experienced through social media, the Syrian uprising reshaped how conflict is recorded and consumed — with more minutes of footage online than the war itself.

From questioning the role of state-run media to confronting our own biases, the project invites audiences to examine how information networks shape perception — and our place within them.

Combining an audio walk, documentary interviews, participatory exercises, and audio-visual installations, the experience unfolds as a multi-layered journey through the museum space. Visitors move between personal reflection and global context, engaging with perspectives from journalists, researchers, and activists including contributors from Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture, and The Syria Campaign.

Designed as both an experiential and critical framework, the project uses immersion to explore how narratives are constructed — and how our own assumptions shape what we understand as truth. Audiences are invited to question what they see, hear, and believe.

I Swear To Tell The Truth was presented at IWM London in September 2017, followed by IWM North in 2018, and was selected for IDFA DocLab.