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Here and Perhaps Elsewhere
2003
54 minut
Video
Here and Perhaps Elsewhere. During the Lebanese civil war, thousands of people disappeared. In most cases, the bodies were not found and the circumstances of their disappearance never known. Today, I travel through Beirut, asking the inhabitants I encounter, one same question: Do you know anyone who was kidnapped here during the war? My investigation carries me through the many districts around the “Green line”, which used to divide Beirut between East and West, and where militias set up their checkpoints, the scenes of many kidnappings, and crimes. I thereby attempt to trigger the process of memory and to reveal the multiplicity of existing discourses on the war and the immensity of the drama. As I cross town and discover places laden with history, I draw a personal map of this city.
Lamia Joreige is a visual artist and film-maker who lives and works in Beirut. She earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied painting and film-making. She uses archival documents and elements of fiction to reflect on history and its possible narration, and on the relationship between individual stories and collective memory. Her practice, rooted in her country’s experience, explores the possibilities of representing the Lebanese wars and their aftermath, particularly in Beirut, a city at the center of her imagery. Her work is essentially on time, the recordings of its trace, and its effects on us. Joreige’s artworks, which include drawings, paintings, sculptures and large scale multimedia installations, were presented at various international exhibitions and venues, including: Centre Pompidou, le 104, and Musée Nicéphore Niépce in France; Liverpool Biennial, Tate Modern, Serpentine Gallery and Cardiff National Museum in the U.K.; MAXXI, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Venice Biennial in Italy; Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography, the New Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Taymour Grahne Gallery in the US; Berlin Biennial in Germany; Istanbul Biennial and Arter in Turkey; Sharjah Biennial in the UAE, Mathaf in Qatar and the NES pavilion at the National Museum and Marfa gallery in Lebanon. She has written, directed and produced various short essay-films and one feature narrative, which were presented in festivals and venues among which: Medfilm Festival, Rome (Awarded Best film); FID Marseille; Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Paris Cinema; The Mediterranean Festival of Cinema, Montpellier; Home Works I, IV & VII (Ashkal Alwan), Festival du film libanais and Beirut Cinema Days in Beirut. Lamia Joreige was a fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris (Columbia University) in 2021, and a fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Harvard University) in 2016–2017. She is a co-founder and board member of Beirut Art Center, which she co-directed from 2009 to 2014.