(Un)Archiving the City: The Case of Beirut - Closed Workshop
As part of the Beirut Investigative Lab, a closed workshop was curated, entitled “(Un)Archiving the City: the Case of Beirut” and held on February 8th, 2024. The workshop invited scholars from the Imagining Futures project including: the principal investigator Elena Isayev, co-investigator Kodzo Gavua, and advisor Jala Makhzoumi. Howayda Al-Harithy commenced the workshop by setting the theoretical framing, where she presented the two strands of investigation: ‘city as archives’ and ‘archiving the city’ leading to a hypothesis on ‘recovery as unarchiving’. The workshop included two panels each expanding on these concepts while reflecting on case studies from Beirut.
About the Beirut Investigative Lab
Taking Beirut as a case study, the Beirut Investigative Lab aims to investigate two strands at the intersection of city and archives: city as archives and archiving the city, leading to a hypothesis on ‘unarchiving the city.’ Beirut has a contested history of complex challenges marked by war, erasure, sectarian politics, and collective amnesia. This contestation reflects a fear of confronting the past, a conscious neglect of national archives, and the absence of a shared narrative at the national scale. Archival practices are decentralized and mostly associated with private institutions with limited accessibility to the public.
Given this context, we intend to interrogate ‘city as archives’ as discussed in the literature, however through a Lefebvrian lens, and ask the following question: how does the ongoing production of space shape the city as an archive? We then focus on the city as an object of archiving by questioning archival authorship and power as articulated by Derrida and Foucault and adapted to an urban agglomeration. Against the main question of how the city is archived, adopting the Barthan theoretical framework leads us to the following question: how do modalities of archiving the city differ, and how do their readings facilitate a plurality of city narratives? When considering the context of conflict, displacement, and collective trauma, these investigations lead to a working hypothesis that argues for recovery as a process of unarchiving; a process that disrupts both city as archives and archiving the city. It further argues that a ‘participatory’ recovery process is best positioned to facilitate a more egalitarian model of multiple narratives and future imaginaries.
Given this context, we intend to interrogate ‘city as archives’ as discussed in the literature, however through a Lefebvrian lens, and ask the following question: how does the ongoing production of space shape the city as an archive? We then focus on the city as an object of archiving by questioning archival authorship and power as articulated by Derrida and Foucault and adapted to an urban agglomeration. Against the main question of how the city is archived, adopting the Barthan theoretical framework leads us to the following question: how do modalities of archiving the city differ, and how do their readings facilitate a plurality of city narratives? When considering the context of conflict, displacement, and collective trauma, these investigations lead to a working hypothesis that argues for recovery as a process of unarchiving; a process that disrupts both city as archives and archiving the city. It further argues that a ‘participatory’ recovery process is best positioned to facilitate a more egalitarian model of multiple narratives and future imaginaries.
Howayda Al-Harithy presenting the theoretical framing of the workshop (Photo: Batoul Yassine)
Ali Khodr presenting "A Planned City That Never Was" (Photo: Batoul Yassine)
Elena Isayev giving closing reflections with discussants: Howayda Al-Harithy, Jala Makhzoumi, and Kodzo Gavua (Photo: Batoul Yassine)
Workshop Program
Panel 1 - Beirut as Archives
o The Use of “City as Archives” in Reconstruction Projects: The Case of Downtown Beirut by Rana Khachab
o Heritage as a Framework for Reading City as Archives by Mariam Bazzi
o (Un)Archiving Urban Nature by Jala Makhzoumi
Discussant: Kodzo Gavua
Panel 2 - Archiving Beirut
o Imaginations as Archives: A Planned City That Never Was by Ali Khodr
o Constructing an Urban Historical Narrative of Karantina by Wiaam Haddad
o Digital Archiving of Oral Narratives in Post-Blast Karantina by Leyla El Sayed Hussein
o Recovery as Unarchiving: The Case of Karantina following the Beirut Blast by Batoul Yassine
Discussant: Najmeh Viki
Closing Reflections: Elena Isayev
Discussion: Howayda Al-Harithy, Kodzo Gavua, and Jala Makhzoumi
Participants in the workshop, from right to left: Rana Khachab, Batoul Yassine, Najmeh Viki, Jala Makhzoumi, Howayda Al-Harithy, Leyla El-Sayyed Hussein, Kodzo Gavua, Wiaam Haddad, Mariam Bazzi