Event overview
Beirut, fascinating urban palimpsest, site of multiple memory cultures... join Dr Claire Launchbury (Research Fellow, SAS, University of London)
Beirut, Lebanon: Mandate era villas juxtapose enormous tower blocks, the rebuilt souks resemble a Gulf state airport while in the southern suburbs, street names are absent and navigated by a cartographic memory often of things which no longer exist.
Underlying traces are perpetually revealed on the urban surface. The city as text forms a register of indexical figures in search of some form of organisation, curation or classification. This memory machine produces, occludes, resists, dialogues with and defies discursive constructions. An often schizophrenic mixture of love and hatred.
The urban fabric produces even as it directs the city subject’s trajectory à la Baudelaire. Beirut is a complicated case - nodal, where the Occident encounters the Orient; ‘postwar’, but with an only uneasy peace.
I want to address where unclaimed experiences are located, how belated representations of the trauma of the civil war are expressed; how cultural production is staged within the city, what are the discursive constructions that emerge from urban space and which are then transmuted into an aesthetic articulation.
All welcome!
Image: Rabiem22 flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rabiem/
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Mar 2016 | 4:00pm - 5:45pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
