Dreamland, 2017
Fadi Mansour
13 minutes
In the wake of a mounting trash crisis in Lebanon, garbage is being used as landfill material in the reclamation of new real estate territory along the Beirut Coast. Under the guise of coastal regeneration, forty-year-old mounds and formations of garbage are dismantled; their stratified history of toxicity unearthed into the biosphere, and their rotten innards compacted along the seafloor. By countering what will undoubtedly become a polished architectural product, the video reveals this ecological transformation by investigating the extent of this impact on marine biomass. In Arabic and English.
Fadi Mansour is an architect, artist, and filmmaker based between Paris and Beirut. His work investigates narratives of dispossession, slow violence, geo-social formations, and queer ecologies. He graduated from the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2017 and the Architectural Association Diploma Programme in 2009.
Followed by a screening of:
This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own, 2021
Panos Aprahamian
30 minutes
Through semi-fictional storytelling, Panos Aprahamian's film shows how economic growth and environmental decay are rooted in social and ecological injustice. The film addresses forms of extraction and violence inflicted on human and nonhuman bodies and the ecosystem along the shorelines of Beirut, the city’s port, and around the Karantina district, a dumping ground for the unwanted — things and bodies alike. In Armenian and Arabic with Engish subtitles.
Panos Aprahamian (1986, Lebanon) is an artist-filmmaker and writer living and working in and around Beirut, Lebanon. His work in film, text, and digital media explores the spectral presence of the past and the future in bodies, spaces, and social relations. He completed his bachelor’s degree in moving image practices at The Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, University of Balamand, and holds an MA in documentary film from The London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, where he studied as a Caspian Arts scholar.
Image: Film still from This Haunting Memory That Is Not My Own (2021), directed by Panos Aprahamian.