LET US STOP AND WEEP




LET US STOP AND WEEP (ongoing since 2000)

LET US STOP AND WEEP is a narrative-based participatory performance and installation. It is a body of work, divided in short tales, based on the experience of uprooting and inspired by the poetry and life of Imru’l Qais – امرؤ القيس, a nomad Arab tribal king and author of one of seven famous “suspended poems” from the time of Jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic era. It's composed by images, documents, archives, texts, audio-visual materials and objects that do not participate in History, they do not have causes or effects; They’re just locked in their own reality and decaying in time. They are also a meditation on origins; its ruins and wanderings. Along the way, a sedimentation of narrations forms and one's self starts to be defined by what identity has essentially lost and by a sense of amnesia and loss.





Installation/Performance



  


LET US STOP AND WEEP - Eglise (Palermo, Sicily Feb.2020)






  


LET US STOP AND WEEP - Scafolding (Athens, Greece May 2023)





Since my escape from Lebanon on a high-speed ferry, toward the end of the civil war, the visits to the country of my birth are rare. After several failed attempts to document these few "returns", I ended up discovering locations, real or metaphysical, of unexplored territories and forgotten traumascapes*, extending my travel towards "home". Instead of approaching destination, the journey has become endless, as if returning was impossible and self-exile had metamorphosed into a state of spirit.

Awaiting oblivion, these findings were molded into short narrations, visual or written. Some elements were rescued out of the Treasure Island's box called 'childhood' and some were lost forever. Since the beginning of this endeavor, I also harbored some objects and items, 'survivors' from my own and other relatives' migrations. They became the only witnesses to my narrative footprints.

Those short narrations** are achieved through a disposition of meanings, a detailed description and a creative comparison of reality. At times, they long to the obscene and to laceration, and others to the noble and to the sovereign.

I’ve been standing before ruins and sediments, recent and ancient, for more then two decades, watching myself age. I try to write mostly with images since I can’t do it with any of the five languages I speak. These remains, traces, trails, gapping became the beginning and the end of all my wandering. I created out of that heirloom debris some sparse chapters. New forms of interactions come out of these unfinished tales but they remain mostly questions and questions of identity yet hasn’t stopped from re-morphing in a continuous flux.

In the last years I have also been trying to understand the function of forgetting, which is not for me the opposite of remembering, but rather its lining. I believe that we do not actually forget. We rewrite oblivion with a profound suppressed need to forgive.

*Traumascapes are sites associated with the painful past (not necessarily related to the Lebanese civil war). Remembering and representing this bitter past plays a crucial role in shaping the future through learning and experiencing.

**This body of work is divided in several narrated chapters. Some are also autonomous.





وقوف على الأطلال 

... No other memory remains for the time of my childhood, and I have even forgot my father's features. Of my mother, a floating figure, I only remember the smile that covered her face and a gold ring, set with a pearl, which she wore on her ring finger.

But I have not forgotten the last chapter of my life there, the one that led me so far, under the sparkling sky of this "White Middle Sea", the Mediterranean. No matter what distance I travel on rough waves, nothing changes here. I can never escape this shore. I have not forgotten that chapter, but I have rejected it, fearful for my sanity.

Now, I know that the day I walked on that sand, my memory, everything I once experienced, has become a book that forgets its pages. No sooner does a precise memory emerge on the surface of a page, it vanishes into an abyss. My life is written on sheets, that no binding can assemble, and the wind disperses when I brush them.

The poems and prayers I repeated once, in recitation, or with my grandmother, those that all the elders of my tribe knew by heart, I have forgotten! And since I am now deserted by all memories, crawling like a black crab on the glowing sand, what can I do but remember that one chapter of my life, so long avoided, led me so far? 

Perhaps the solitude and the tears break me apart. Perhaps my soul that dwells in this labyrinth of sand will finally find a bit of peace. Perhaps the darkness of the well of my childhood will close in on me. Perhaps I will finally find, among the wrecks and their sedimentations at the bottom of the sea, a trail to walk through the human world and finish performing this poem.







* CLICK ON IMAGES TO SEE LARGER & MORE

Claw Machine



















Oliver



















the eighth day


















holy visits



















swing




















Imru' al qais



















map



















slide



















Deir El-Qala'a's view



















Corniche




















Georges + Toufic



















ceader

















blood stream


















intersections



















naked roots



















Vassiliki
















border
















Burj El Murr



















 
six columns




















my room



















Constantin


















arch of defeat


















scafold
















concealed house

















cursed castle




















Samer

















stone house



















Nahr el Kalb



















Kalilah wa Demnah


















Tripoli

















buildings


















martyrs' square


















 
Nabil & Corni

















 
wrestling



















 
abandoned painting & Abu Ali river flood
















pier
















 
building entrance


















Karl


















Beirut



















striped parasol




















the rock and the tree



















blue towel



















Tatra




















 
Asaad




















mule



















  
piece of the puzzel




















collage




















cinemascope




















scraps




















 
balcony view


















Oliver




















palisade & neon





















electricity company





















the bank and the puddle




















sweeper



















 
snow scene





















power station




















goat feet




















Red Poker




















lovers' spot



















house



















Roy



















cabaret




















chandeliers





















taxi





















bus




















Holiday Inn


















air pump



















smile



















monk




















concrete & rubble





















Asnam



















bouquet




















Suha



















Achrafieh





















secret





















mosaic






















  

my father's house



















traces



















farewell



















golden pen


















for sale




















Hafez




















olive sacks





















cypress



















red geranium





















stamps collection


















 
tribe fathers















Danny, Ingrid, Tarek & Julian




















Samir

















Immigrant


















Roni




















slogans























Rouba




















soldier


















Nabil




















Mounir, Rosi & Camille



















Grandpa Georges



















faces and footsteps





















El Atlal



















demolition site




















tripes



















spear




















tailor




















white clothes




















Wissam




















camel



















parking caretaker


















public park





















Joseph

















street vendors' parking



















Karim




















night club




















 
Cosette



















shoes & shoemakers


















tannery


















bananas




















Elias




















Tobacco



















bagels



















 
backgammon




















blue sheep




















score





















castle of the sea

















swing

















Tel al-Zaatar



















mines

















Tania


















fuel station
















terminus

















tresaures





















 
backstage




















Saint Charbel's monastery




















Jerusalem



















Yousif


















plastic bags

















ciment church


















  
Jeita Grotto

















Deir el Qalaa


















labor & idleness


















mother & infant

















Maameltein

















Nader

















canon

















outpost



















sharpnel





















building & destruction



















blue shroud





















Ramlet al-Baida




















pinkish




















document

















concierge



















Jisr el Basha



















lamp




















neighbours




















valet
















floral dress


















purple veil



















Éros & Thanatos




















Ferris wheel




















dusk




















Nabil & Vasso



















after the revolution






Interview

ASNAM - Loupe Magazine (UK 2021)





Publication

SACRED - ASNAM - Urbanautica Institute (Italy 2020)





exhibition

Hafez from Anfeh - Antonopoulou Art Gallery Third Nature (Athens, Greece June 2010)

Red Poker - Détours Santorini S8mm Film Festival (Oia, Greece August 2010)

Red Poker - super8FF (Milano, Italy November 2010)

LET US STOP AND WEEP Origini - Dimora OZ (Palermo, Italy March 2015)

NABIL & CORNI - Depression Era - Biennale 5 (Thessaloniki, Greece July-Sept 2015)

NABIL & CORNI - Origini - Museo Riso (Palermo, Sicily, March 2016)

NABIL & CORNI - TOURISTS - Culturescapes (Basel, Switzerland, Oct. 2017 - Jan. 2018)

NABIL & CORNI - Depression Era - SLOUGHT (Philadelphia, USA Jan-Feb. 2019)

LET US STOP AND WEEP - Eglise (Palermo, Sicily Feb.2020)

LET US STOP AND WEEP - Scafolding (Athens, Greece May 2023)

THE WAY WE WERE: A PHOTO ALBUM FROM CARLOVASSIA & BEYOND - Schwarz foundation (Samos, Greece July-Aug. 2023)