Under the Cold River Bed, 2020

The Nahr el Bared refugee camp is approximately 100 km away from Beirut lying on the north Lebanese coastal road leading to Syria. It accommodated Palestinian refugees in 1949 before it became, in 1969, an extraterritoriality with its own military and political autonomy. In 2007, the Lebanese Army had to fight against the extremist group Fatah al-Islam which had established itself in the camp less than a year earlier. During the 100 days of conflict, approximately 95 percent of all buildings and infrastructure in the camp were destroyed, leaving more than 30,000 homeless.

As digging and reconstruction work started, major archaeological ;discoveries were made. The rubble removing process uncovered deep stratified layers going down to as early as the Neolithic period and up to the great Roman city of Orthosia. How to deal with these important archaeological findings when so many people are waiting to return to their homes?

Archaeologists are running out of time; the city only rises to be buried again. A decision is taken, with a lot of controversy, to backfill the entire camp and seal it as a sarcophagus. A gigantic concrete screed will cover the camp with thicknesses varying between 50 cm and 4 meters.

The sculpture presented by the artists shows the thin membrane between the past and the future, an imprint of the sarcophagus of the camp, while documents tell its archeological, human and military history, its destruction, and its reconstruction. It is a place of geopolitical madness within the Critical Zone: archaeology will have to remain latent and dormant, waiting for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be solved so that the destiny of Naher El Bared refugees can be figured out. (Dis)continuities,

During the August 4th explosion, the model of the sculpture was in our studio and was blown away like everything there. It changed our perspective and the representation of the sculpture in a vertical way as our upside down world.

In collaboration with Maissa Maatouk, Hadi Choueri and Karim Chaya