Together We Walk
2021
Performance, video
Together We Walk is an adapted form of a larger-scale immersive installation blending movement, film, and sound. The work turns attention back to the human and the intimate in a time of complex and unsettling realities that are often hard to acknowledge. Set in dialogue with both the city and the Beit Beirut building, it brings people face to face with one another, reflecting glimpses of life in Lebanon: moments of absurdity, resolve, care, loss, and everything in between. Projections on windows, walls, and floors cast shifting visual and physical landscapes, inviting people to recognize themselves in those they encounter on screen. Experienced both from within the building and from the street outside, this adaptation creates a shared space suspended between the city and the self, between now and then. Accompanied by an acoustic journey, the installation progresses through a sense of time and space that loops every six minutes. Built as a cyclical experience, it reflects the repetitive nature of recent times, never fully reaching resolution and remaining in a constant state of push and pull. Together We Walk extends the physical space into the digital realm through seven performers on screen. These are seven individuals living in Lebanon and coping with ongoing financial and sociopolitical crises. Drawing on content inspired by true events and situations from both the past and present, the performers collectively move within and between projection stations, inviting people to walk alongside them, follow the light across surfaces, and form personal relationships with others and with the city. In doing so, the work transforms abstract notions of coexistence into shared, lived experiences, pulsing with an intimate energy of grit and humanity.
Yaraqa is a creative house working with dance practices and thinking-in-movement methodologies to create cultural shifts across communities and industries. They consult, research, and produce concepts, methods, strategies, and collaborations, bringing unlikely people and disciplines together with dance and movement as a unifying force. Their practice is responsive and contextual, extending beyond traditional settings into alternative spaces that are digital, physical, and hybrid. Since 2014, their work has spanned geographies including Lebanon, Scotland, Montreal, the US, and the UAE, and taken forms such as installations, digital platforms, docu-series, public space performances, and creation labs.