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Elydagher.com

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Ely

Showreel 2010

Orient 499 Shoot 2010

The "Holiday Inn Apologue" Audio-video installation

The installation is presented as a series of found images reminiscing the “Holiday Inn Hotel’s” history. A recreation of an episode in the Hotel’s past. The installation consists of two parallel slide projections, an audio soundtrack narration in a comfortable living room-like setting.

The Holiday inn exists today as one of the few remaining ruins of the civil war, a monument in Downtown Beirut that carries with it many memories and images of the war. There is no official recorded history of the war and of the hotel due to the contested nature of the recent Lebanese history. The archive that controls the Holiday Inn’s and other similar structure’s history and memory is scattered in distant memories, stories and fabrications. One of the only public physical proofs of its existence is the building itself, which in the case of the Holiday Inn might soon seize to exist and disappear into another sphere. This is why the project started out as a reaction when I first learnt about the demolition of the hotel which was scheduled for September 2009 but did not occur. I am not ready to forget. Based on interviews with militia fighters, and other sources this installation recreates a series of events that have or might have occurred in the hotel during the war; creating a substite and/or complemetary element in memory's documentation/archive. My intervention on the topic comes in to tackle the issues of the hotel's history and memory through the use and construction of the archive and the archival content.

The semi-fictitious uncanny narrative questions the authorizing power of the elements that constitute the historical archive of the hotel; Due to the lack of a single authority in the case of the Lebanese contemporary history, the power of consignation is shattered leaving space for alternative notions and elements constituting and (re)constructing the archive and as a result reconstructing our present memory. The installation tries to act as one of these constructing elements.



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Here to read the complementary essay

A selection of Pictures from 2008-2009

The incompetents Album Cover 2009

Raksit Leila-Mashrou3 leila video

Orient 499 Fashion shoot summer 2009

Some old illustrations

Lost in the future

"Beirut"

"Beirut"is a short animated film where the main focus is not
Beirut the city itself, but unfolds in it, as the main character
finds herself an outsider in her own environment.

The movie plays with the visual representation of the city.
Beirut as a ruin; in a mixed media collage of today’s city
in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic time, or simply a
deviated truth of everyday Beirut, where the water
resources happen to have run completely dry.

First prize in the fix mix category at the Bitfilm festival 2008
Stuttgart festival for animated film 2008
Ne a Beyrouth, Lebanese film festival 2007

"Bitfilm festival 2008. Thank you, message"

this short was created to be screened at the bitfilm award show, in acceptance of the first prize that my short "beirut" won.

"Duckpond"

"Stopal"

"Penguin-s"

"Lourdleger"

"sheftou mn biid"

commissioned video for the song " sheftou mn biid" featuring Yara part of the compilation dvd belaaks by jean marie riachi.

On archiving Identity

This essay discusses, history, identity, memory and the intricate correlation between them. 2008

On archiving Identity.PDF