Editing New Work from Beirut (2)

Selected from previous writings :   

     Amid the tall marble towers and wide highways, lies a city full of gaps and dark actions. Running through it, is a green line broken up by brackets of amnesia where many disappeared with all their footsteps and shadows erased. There are many crosses marking oblivion on my mental map.

 

Workshop #3 : Visualising the Ottoman City : then and now

Ottoman Past, Present Cities : Cosmopolitanism and Transcultural Memories AHRC Research Network

Friday 28th March 2014 / Birkbeck, University of London 

The workshop will address some of the representational issues that arise from this pivotal historical moment in the visual culture of the empire to question the possibility of a multi-vocal cosmopolitanism emerging out of these images. Parallel to this the workshop will address the visual ‘archive fever’ that is currently sweeping the ex-Ottoman cities and the dialogue that could be initiated between the visual ottoman pasts and present conflicts in the Middle East thus highlighting the role that contemporary artistic interventions can play in transgressing present nationalisms in the area. 

Speakers :   Wendy M. K. Shaw, Vazken Khatchig Davidian, Gabriel Koureas, Laura Carderera and Yael Friedman

For a full programme with abstracts, please visit our website: http://ottomancosmopolitanism.wordpress.com/events/research-events/

Further information and updates to be found on:
twitter:     https://twitter.com/Ottoman_Cosmo
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OttomanCosmopolitanismNetwork?bookmark_t=page

Editing New Work from Beirut

I have been editing new photographs taken in Beirut last December exploring sites of violence and sites of memory to possibly add to photo-text series 'The City that Exploded Slowly'.

This work is about reading the city as being in a constant process of erosion and dissolution which renders it full of gaps and a past erased by a tide of amnesia. On many of my return trips, travelling by car, I formed new maps in my mind: black violet stains would mark the spots where extreme violence has occurred along the mouth of the river, on secluded sites by the shore..