In 1962, Oscar Niemeyer was invited to conceive an international fairground in the city of Tripoli, Lebanon, which was never completed. The documentary كیف لا نغرق في السراب / To Remain in the No Longer(CCA, 2023, 38min) directed by Joyce Joumaa, 2021–2022 Emerging Curator, looks at how architecture operates in this failed state. By examining the precarity of the project site that remains to this day, the film reflects on the country’s current socio-economic crisis. Employing archival materials, interviews, and 16mm and digital film, the experimental documentary explores the political and cultural forces that have come to bear on the site—from its halted construction to its imposed abandonment and attempted reappropriations.

Joyce Joumaa will present كیف لا نغرق في السراب / To Remain in the No Longer as part of the international research day The politics of ruin, featuring lectures, debates and films, organised by mudac - Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts within the framework of the exhibition Beirut. The Eras of Design.

The program will be moderated by Hasni Abidi, political scientist and co-founder of the Centre d’études et de recherche sur le monde arabe et méditerranéen (CERMAM) in Geneva, and includes the participation of Camille Ammoun, writer and political scientist, Maison Internationale des Écrivains in Beirut; Shereen Doummar and Edouard Souhaid, members of Collective for Architecture, Beirut; Gregory Buchakjian, Director of the School of Visual Arts, Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, University of Balamand; and Didier Fiúza Faustino, Franco-Portuguese artist-architect.

Saturday 10 June, at 10am
mudac Plateforme 10
Place de la Gare 17
1003 Lausanne
Switzerland

Purchase tickets here.