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SCREEN’

Dossiers: Cities Under Surveillance is a three-year-long project which explores the systems of control that govern, regulate and mediate urban public space. Contemporary public space is contested as it is controlled through powers, both concealed and exposed. This illusive nature of security and surveillance detaches public space solely from the bounds of geographical location, to be read in relation to broader systems of control. Public space is now a territorial question.

Concerned with reading public space as territories under transformation, the first instalment of this studio scanned Sydney and Johannesburg as cities under surveillance, exposing and responding to the colonial legacies of control. Dossiers: Cities Unde Surveillance II will travel to Beirut, Lebanon to question the role of security and surveillance in a post-traumatic context. Stricken by a long history of conflict and consequently, a period of amnesia, Beirut is the battlefield for cultural and political action.

SPRING 2020

01_Virtual khan

[AR, MS,NB]

Site: Beirut

33.8938° N, 35.5018° E

Timeframe: 11/04/20

Methods|Evidence: Mediating Distance, Dormant Fiction, Active Fiction, Constructed Realities,
Staging, Rehearsing Memories, Desires

02_Attractive Deception

[EV, NM,CO]

Site: Nejmeh Square

33°53'47.6"N 35°30'16.0"E

Timeframe: 1914 - 1933

Methods|Evidence: Nijmeh Square, Control, Layers, Fragments, Loss, Blurred Identity,
Architecture, Rebuilt, Reconstruction, Heritage, History, Corruption, Contradiction, Strength, Colonialism, Archaeological, Historical, Ruin, Object, Building Form

03_The Spectators

[HZ,TG]

Site: Martyrs’ Square

33°53'46.9"N 35°30'25.9"E

Timeframe: 2020

Methods|Evidence: Fairuz, Concert, Women, Violence, Patriarchy, Military, Uniform,
COVID-19, Isolation, Balcony, Curtains

04_Four Modes of Sousveillance

[MK,SC,IB]

Site: Burj al Murr, Beirut

33°53'43.1"N 35°29'47.2"E

Timeframe: 2020 - FUTURE

Methods|Evidence: Embodied Memories, Abandoned, Expose, Territory, Power, Political Monopoly, Reconstructed, Presentism, Acknowledge, Substantiate, Ambiguous Explorations, Identity, Coexistences

05_Curating Decay

[EB,VH]

Site: National Museum of Beirut

33°52'42.4"N 35°30'54.3"E

Timeframe: Present, 20 years, 100 years, 200 years

Methods|Evidence: Anxiety, Dismantle, Erasure, Retake, Reconstitution, Liberate

06_Pipes of Light

[FA,CL]

Site: The Pink House

33°53'51.7"N 35°28'18.7"E

Timeframe: Four Days, 1882-2020

Methods|Evidence: Water, Light, Filtration, Decay, Exhibition

AUTUMN 2020

01_The Shoreline, A Necropolis of Waste

[MS,NB]

Site: Zaitunay Bay,The Dalieh & Ramlet Al Baida, Beirut

33°54'08.7"N 35°29'52.8"E

Timeframe: 1920 - 2020

Methods|Evidence: Limestone, Shoreline, Financialisation, Erosion, Ecology, Science,
Human vs Non Human, Anthropogenics, Colonisation, Plastiglomerate,
Waste Crisis, Formation of Rock

02_The Hidden Demarcation Lines

[BD,HW]

Site: The Hotel District, Beirut

33°53'59.0"N 35°29'42.0"E

Timeframe: October 1975 - March 1976

Methods|Evidence: Preservation, Perspective, Drawing, Optics, Panoptical, View, Image,
Line of Sight, Occupants, Power, Authority, Documentation

03_The Silent Echoes

[AR,JY,MA]

Site: Martyrs’ Square, Beirut

33°53'46.8"N 35°30'25.8"E

Timeframe: 1960 - 2020

Methods|Evidence: Ear Witnessing, Sonic, Audio, Sound, Visual, Image, Mute Witnesses, Protest, Leakage, Sonifying Evidence

04_Plot 987: Surfaced Phantoms of the Egg

[JR,JT]

Site: The Egg, Beirut

33°53'36.2"N 35°30'21.6"E

Timeframe: 1990 - 2019

Methods|Evidence: Diagram, Tools, Language, [mis]translation, [mis]reading, Discourse, Resistance, Occupation, Preservation, Trace, Receipt, Systems

05_The_____ Collection

[AZ,IW]

Site: The Barakat Building, Beirut

33°53'12.9"N 35°30'29.8"E

Timeframe: 1924 - Current

Methods|Evidence: Fiction, Ontology, Thingness, Archival, Chimera

06_This chair is not taken

[MA,LO]

Site: The Hippodrome, Beirut

33°52'39.0"N 35°30'42.3"E

Timeframe: 6 minutes from 29 May 2020

Methods|Evidence: Performance, Projection, Body, Street, Wall, Ritual, Material,
Public Space, Occupy