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Beirut Exploded Views

Akram Zaatari

2014 00:28:00 LebanonEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
City, Technology, War

Description

In a city post-apocalypse, young men communicate only through smart devices. They make home out of urban debris. They can’t speak to each other, but are still able to dream.

"Akraam Zaatari’s Beirut Exploded Views shatters the stillness of daily life. Tracking shots follow a number of young men toying with their mobile phones around construction sites. The final shot finds the camera taking on the perspective of a fighter jet, subjecting us to the ways in which disruption can occur without warning thanks to the current instability of the region."

— Tess Jaspers, Film Comment

This work was commissioned by the Gwangju Biennial 2014 and produced with the support of ACE-Saradar Group.

Director of Photography: Bassem Fayad

Editing: Ali E-Darsa 

1:1.85 letterboxed in 16:9

About Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari is an artist who lives and works in Beirut. He has been exploring Lebanon's postwar condition through collecting testimonies and various documents, notably on the mediation of territorial conflicts and wars through television, and the logic of Resistance in the context of the current geographical division of the Middle East.

Co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation (Beirut), he based his recent work on collecting, studying, and archiving a particular collection on the Middle East, notably studying the work of Lebanese photographer Hashem el Madani (1928-) as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.

In addition to his work as an artist, Zaatari is also the curator of the Radical Closure box set, which includes his work In This House.

Grand winner of the 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil.

Represented in the Lebanese Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.