Immersive video installation produced by Tamara Qiblawi - Knooz Room
An immersive documentary experience through Lebanon’s underground history. Discover the micro-cities of the Bomb Shelter and contribute to an ongoing research project about creative survival during Lebanon’s wars.
The idea addresses a gap in proper documentation of human survival and to counterweight an overwhelming predominance of a blood-soaked history, which we feel, is greatly dispiriting to Lebanon's people, particularly its youth. It aims to show that even in our darkest hours, we can be beautiful and creative. This deserves to be paid tribute to. Ultimately, we hope to evoke memories from people, new testimonies that are fit for archiving in the country's libraries.
Bomb Shelters are likely the only space during the extremely cantonized Civil War that people can collectively remember. It is a testament to the shared struggles, and shared modes of survival of people even when they are worlds apart. In that way, we feel this is an extremely potent collective memory device. In addition, the Shelter, whilst always mentioned in stories, has never been revisited by the vast majority of the population, much less seriously memorialized. Nowadays they function as electricity or storage rooms, and exist mostly in memories and not tangibly. Revisiting the shelter is a literal revisiting of Lebanon's underground history.
Shelter is a winner of the Disrupt!/Design! award (April 2015)
The idea addresses a gap in proper documentation of human survival and to counterweight an overwhelming predominance of a blood-soaked history, which we feel, is greatly dispiriting to Lebanon's people, particularly its youth. It aims to show that even in our darkest hours, we can be beautiful and creative. This deserves to be paid tribute to. Ultimately, we hope to evoke memories from people, new testimonies that are fit for archiving in the country's libraries.
Bomb Shelters are likely the only space during the extremely cantonized Civil War that people can collectively remember. It is a testament to the shared struggles, and shared modes of survival of people even when they are worlds apart. In that way, we feel this is an extremely potent collective memory device. In addition, the Shelter, whilst always mentioned in stories, has never been revisited by the vast majority of the population, much less seriously memorialized. Nowadays they function as electricity or storage rooms, and exist mostly in memories and not tangibly. Revisiting the shelter is a literal revisiting of Lebanon's underground history.
Shelter is a winner of the Disrupt!/Design! award (April 2015)
