Rami El Sabbagh

Combining music and film, this work is based on archival footage from the 1920s captured in Lebanon by Pathé and Gaumont. “Topology of an Absence” proposes a new way to look at this archive, a hundred years after unnamed camera operators filmed the city of Beirut and captured bodies, faces, and eyes.

A new devised work combining music and film based on extraordinary archive footage from the 1920s captured in Lebanon by Pathé and Gaumont. The piece takes us back in time, or rather brings the past back to life, a hundred years after these bodies, faces and eyes were caught by the camera, and the city of Beirut, tinged with its rich Ottoman history, was filmed by unnamed cameramen - anonymous figures behind and in front of the camera. Arsmondo wanted to give these images a fresh life, a presence among us, and asked musician Sharif Sehnaoui to gather a group of Lebanese artists to create a musical backdrop.

A free adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's short story "A Hero in a Cell." Kanafani's original text explores the difficulties of constructing a political narrative while examining the nuanced relationship between political discourse and storytelling. The adaptation presents a political narrative that prioritizes visual and auditory elements over conventional dramatic techniques.