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ظلّ معركة
A Spectacle of Privacy 2014 / 3 channel video / 9' loop / Arabic with English subtitles Video Installation by Roy Dib Co-produced by Beirut Art Center Award 19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil / Southern Panoramas' Award - Vila Sul - Goethe-Institut Residency Prize We cyclically mourn the disappearance/demolition of our cities as if it’s something new. We strive to maintain our cities. We fight for them. We revolt. We draw borders. We break them. Our entire lives become shadows of fights that are both legendary and futile: our intentions noble, and our struggles mundane. We strive to save our cities, assuming they once were shelters for our wilting dreams. We want to freeze their geographies in time, assuming smiles in picture frames will follow. We are selfish. We want to maintain our privacies by sustaining the world outside. We want to fuck in private, in a public discourse that allows for us to fuck in private. Outside shells inside, instead of inside constructing out. We strive to maintain our cities. We shout, shoot and die for them. We die for the outside so others can quietly fuck inside. As we cyclically mourn the disappearance/demolition of our cities, did we miss the possibility of the exercise of our most private moments becoming the bricks and mortar of the appearance/construction of our cities to come? Who shuts who up? What censors what? This is a story of the city mourning the disappearance/demolition of its people and the compass of their fights. Text by Raafat Majzoub |
