“I have always dreamt of a moving and contradictory space where one would see appear, from the inside, at the very moment it takes place, the gesture of creation.” Philippe Sollers - Theory of Exceptions.
Perhaps no city is more contradictory than Beirut. 2024, post-explosion, post-revolution, post-financial crisis, Beirut is struggling to reinvent itself. In this interstitial moment, it is time to make a visceral diagnosis of the current situation before the cards are shuffled once again. To do so, I invite Julien Lanoo to Beirut to undertake the x-ray of a city in ruins, multi-layered, contradictory and still alive. Julien’s walk through the city is a contrasting surgery of its multiple faces where the fragments overlap; architecture, archaeology, fauna, flora and an uncanny human presence appear under a new light. At the image, Beirut is revealed grain by grain without make-up or veils, through black and white film photographs in which the know-how of the past composes a possible future. Despite the painful past, a space opens up, and with it a new cycle, we wanted to call it, despite everything, vision.
Scenography: In a space devoid of adjectives (white or neutral), we hang 19 large format photographs, mounted on aluminum support, without frames, without protective glass. Somewhere in the center of the space, we place a mobile installation with an uncertain or even unstable structure which doubles as a sound machine that projects soundscapes recorded in the streets of Beirut at the time of the photo capture. Visitors are invited to pull up a pulley which raises a speaker reaching the ear of a spectator sitting on a fishawy chair.
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An exhibition project by Karim Nader. Featured at wedesignbeirut in May 2024.
Art photography by Julien Lanoo in analogue black and white handprinted by the artist.
Curated by Giulia Cazzaniga and Karim Nader.
Installation by Samer Aouad.
Installation photography by Marwan Harmouche.
Project Management by Soumer Al-Kamand.