Version:

For the Kamel Lazaar Foundation Projects, I propose to publish assembled notes and audio-visual material that will be part of the research for the next chapter of Under-Writing Beirut.

 

Under-Writing Beirut is an on going project, which looks at historically or personally significant locations within the city's present, finding in them access to other temporalities. By investigating the history of these locations, at times objects and stories are unearthed, and at others, the possibly of their erasure is revealed. Under-Writing Beirut creates links between the history of a place, its inscription in time as well as its timeless dimension. It is between the notion of a trace that records a place's reality and the fictions that reinvent it. Like a palimpsest, the project incorporates the various layers of time and existence that cohabit in the present.

 

lamia-joreige_7.-uw-ow-cu_web.jpg

Lamia Joreige, Object of War, 2013, concrete sculpture, images & sketch, part of the installation Under-Writing Beirut - Mathaf. View at Art Factum Gallery, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
Lamia Joreige, Object of War, 2013, concrete sculpture, images & sketch, part of the installation Under-Writing Beirut - Mathaf. View at Art Factum Gallery, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.

Mathaf, the Arabic word for museum, constituted the first chapter of this project, commissioned for the Sharjah Biennial 11 in 2013, it focused on my neighbourhood in Beirut: an area known as Mathaf. It is home to the National Museum of Beirut and located along what was once the Green Line, which divided East and West Beirut throughout the Lebanese Wars (1975-1991).

 

The project Under-Writing Beirut is also tightly related to ideas developed in my feature film And the Living is Easy (2014), in which I show Beirut as it enters a new phase in its history; one that is characterized by diffused tension and an underlying, constant danger that has come to replace the isolated moments of danger and destruction gathered in my previous installation Beirut, Autopsy of a City (2010).

 

In the film, And the Living is Easy, set in 2011, this experience is defined within the framework of tensions that have shaken the entire region, but that have left Lebanon in a state of near stagnation. It expresses a state of being in Beirut today. The film's narrative is fragmented and worked in the manner of an on going collage of the present. 

 

lamia-joreige_4.the-river_web.jpg

Lamia Joreige, Still from The River, video, 4 minutes, 2013, from on going project Under-Writing Beirut. Courtesy of the artist
Lamia Joreige, Still from The River, video, 4 minutes, 2013, from on going project Under-Writing Beirut. Courtesy of the artist

 

The next chapters of Under-Writing Beirut are installations that will be built on the various locations that I have filmed in And the Living is Easy. I was initially drawn to these places on account of either their historical significance or some arbitrary attraction to the places, and often, the protagonists' desire (mainly played by amateur actors). The action in the film emerged from these locations; the characters injected the city with their presence while the city injected its presence into them.

 

lamia-joreige_5.uw_.-photos-mosaic_web.jpg

Lamia Joreige, Object of War, 2013, images & sketch, part of the installation Under-Writing Beirut - Mathaf. Courtesy of the artist
Lamia Joreige, Object of War, 2013, images & sketch, part of the installation Under-Writing Beirut - Mathaf. Courtesy of the artist

I am interested in investigating the potential of these locations with regard to their history, their relation to the present and to the city at large, and in the multiple narratives (fictional or not) that can unfold. The research related to these places involves physical and functional descriptions of them, visual and sound documentation and interviews with inhabitants regarding their particular stories that may touch on banal or grand narratives.

 

The locations include:

 

Jisr El-Wati, an industrial area at the border of the city, right by Beirut's river, which is often dry. Formerly the location of factories, the area has recently transformed, as it has witnessed the emergence of cultural spaces and residential development.

 

Ouzaï is a neighborhood in the Southern suburb of Beirut, which has become a slum filled with illegal constructions following a massive displacement of population during the Lebanese Wars.

 

 

The 'Ring' avenue saw a lot of violence during the wars, as it was formerly part of the Green line linking East and West Beirut. It borders the central district of town and witnessed its controversial rebuilding by the private firm Solidere.

 

Charles Helou station, a large concrete structure built prior to the 1975 war, from and to which buses and taxis go to other parts of Lebanon as well as Syria and Jordan.

 

lamia-joreige_1.charles-helou-bus-station_web.jpg

Lamia Joreige, Charles Helou Station from on going project Under-Writing Beirut. Courtesy of the artist.
Lamia Joreige, Charles Helou Station from on going project Under-Writing Beirut. Courtesy of the artist.

About the artist

Born in Lebanon, Lamia Joreige is a visual artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Beirut. She uses archival documents and fictitious elements to reflect on the relation between individual stories and collective history. She explores the possibilities of representation of the Lebanese wars and their aftermath, and Beirut, a city at the centre of her imagery. Her work is essentially on time, the recordings of its trace and its effects on us.

 

Her works include, among many others, Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf (mixed media installation, 2013); One Night of Sleep (Series of photograms 2013), Beirut, autopsy of a city (mixed media installation, 2010), Tyre 1,2,3,4,5, Portrait of a housing cooperative (video installation, 2010), 3 Triptychs (interactive installation, 2009), Full Moon (video, 2007), Nights and Days (video & series of prints, 2007).

 

She has presented her works in many exhibitions and international institutions including Sharjah Biennale, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Tate Modern, London, New Museum, New York and Modern Art Oxford.

 

Lamia Joreige is a co-founder and board member of Beirut Art Center, a non-profit space dedicated to contemporary art in Lebanon. She co-directed BAC from its opening in January 2009 until March 2014.


test