Lamia Joreige

Nights and Days

‘Nights and Days’ uses notes written and filmed during summer 2006 as a personal account of the experience of war. The first part, which resembles yet is not a diary of war, oscillates between day-shots and night-shots and features a soundtrack expressing the idea of time passing, awaiting, interrogations and fears experienced in such an unusual time. The second part is a journey to south Lebanon which was devastated during that war. It alternates between peaceful landscapes and ruins and destruction accompanied only by music, as no words could express this devastation. ‘Nights and Days’ questions the relation between image and sound and reflects on notions of ‘beauty’ and ‘horror through images of urban and natural landscapes, where sometimes a detail betrays the presence of war and its violence.

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.

Embrace

The video ‘Embrace’, which is part of ‘Time and the Other’ (exhibition and book), is a single shot of a couple in an urban landscape. As the camera gets closer, the shot becomes more and more abstract. The concept of ‘Embrace’ is based on the ambiguity and violence projected onto any act, at that singular instant when the real and the non-real are indiscernible. In this short video, we are never sure whether the couple is fighting or embracing. ‘Time and the Other’ is the story of love and separation of a couple, viewed from the subjective angle of one of the lovers. That experience is expressed in the absence of the other. It includes 3 chapters: Embrace, Sleep & Lost Chords.