"Durrafourd, Mon Amour" - a film
Some things, in the all-so-happy Beirut city, are taken for granted: the nescafe at uncle deek, a barbar snack, the military tanks on the sidewalks and the abrupt tearing down of abandoned once-inhabited sculptures, some call buildings. It has become so mainstream, that we seem to be blinded away from the roaring Komatsus
munching chunks of our once beloved concrete, and deafened by the industrial beat-boxing of these public murders. It has become clear, that most of us do not care anymore - at least by how we tend to eyes-wide-shut. But, what if walls could talk?
Durrafourd 2008-2009
The durrafourd buildings on the Beirut sea-side corniche have been adopted by the American University of Beirut campus and planned to be demolished, making room for yet another addition to the AUB campus new building family. It has been a while since the demolition was pending - the buildings frozen - restricted access. The random greenery has made it clear for all the corniche goers that this is where they do not belong,the buildings look creepy to the uninterested and a 'whopper' to whomever relates to the city as personal property.
So i suppose it was one warm night in her achrafieh apartment, munching dried fruits and sipping an almaza, that she would seriously consider that Durrafourd would say something - if we ever asked; thus mission GRDS 045: If Walls Could Talk, a stop motion animation endeavor - an initiation of a conversation with Durrafourd, by Lina
Ghaibeh.
It all started when fifteen students jungled up the dusty stairs, decayed walls and wide open doors of this bold structure, once inhabited by the syrian troops in lebanon thus saturated with wall doodles of bored armed men, melancholies and reminces of lovers and the homeland. the place smelled like it was hungry for something, eager to talk and this is exactly what it got. the building was opened
for the students all week for about one semester to create stop motion animations via wall graffiti mainly, and anything that would tickle an artsy fartsy fantasy. the floors transformed from naked empty spaces to paint ridden, tripod mined lunchbreak picnic zones, in between shooting - painting - shooting - moving - shooting - panting.
The walls decayed of abdelhalim hafez, spoke of mushrooms, spiders, and hunting fish. The floors flirted with rolling ponies, black angels and oranges. the shelves held sets for sliding midgets, and closets as platforms for shouting doubles. durrafourd was having the time of her life.
You would think this is meaningless, just by considering the fact that this is not going to change the fact that Durrafourd is still going to be demolished - but take that: this playful spatial rummaging of the durrafour ended with an-as-close-to-improptu screening as legally possible on the fourth floor of Durrafourd. the little opening with broken cmu blocks made the perfect projection hole, and the corridor niche became the backstage. the broken window shutters fed the surprisingly functioning fireplace, much needed with the storming weather outside.
From the balcony, the waves splashed white bubbles high above the corniche, to the south, the AUB campus twinkling lights - inside an almost sufficed bunch of artists and friends sitting on the ground sipping some drinks and eating 'bizir' listening to some music, then watching the projected compilation on the cracked skin of Durrafourd.
It makes you think, it has never been the black and the white - we just need to look at it differently. Durrafourd never wanted salvation from it demolition, it knows it has to die - it just needed a little love - and it got it, "Durrafourd, mon amour"
Raafat's blog is: www.leit-mo-tif.blogspot.com
"Durrafourd, Mon Amour" - a film
Some things, in the all-so-happy Beirut city, are taken for granted: the nescafe at uncle deek, a barbar snack, the military tanks on the sidewalks and the abrupt tearing down of abandoned once-inhabited sculptures, some call buildings. It has become so mainstream, that we seem to be blinded away from the roaring Komatsus
munching chunks of our once beloved concrete, and deafened by the industrial beat-boxing of these public murders. It has become clear, that most of us do not care anymore - at least by how we tend to eyes-wide-shut. But, what if walls could talk?
Durrafourd 2008-2009
The durrafourd buildings on the Beirut sea-side corniche have been adopted by the American University of Beirut campus and planned to be demolished, making room for yet another addition to the AUB campus new building family. It has been a while since the demolition was pending - the buildings frozen - restricted access. The random greenery has made it clear for all the corniche goers that this is where they do not belong,the buildings look creepy to the uninterested and a 'whopper' to whomever relates to the city as personal property.
So i suppose it was one warm night in her achrafieh apartment, munching dried fruits and sipping an almaza, that she would seriously consider that Durrafourd would say something - if we ever asked; thus mission GRDS 045: If Walls Could Talk, a stop motion animation endeavor - an initiation of a conversation with Durrafourd, by Lina
Ghaibeh.
It all started when fifteen students jungled up the dusty stairs, decayed walls and wide open doors of this bold structure, once inhabited by the syrian troops in lebanon thus saturated with wall doodles of bored armed men, melancholies and reminces of lovers and the homeland. the place smelled like it was hungry for something, eager to talk and this is exactly what it got. the building was opened
for the students all week for about one semester to create stop motion animations via wall graffiti mainly, and anything that would tickle an artsy fartsy fantasy. the floors transformed from naked empty spaces to paint ridden, tripod mined lunchbreak picnic zones, in between shooting - painting - shooting - moving - shooting - panting.
The walls decayed of abdelhalim hafez, spoke of mushrooms, spiders, and hunting fish. The floors flirted with rolling ponies, black angels and oranges. the shelves held sets for sliding midgets, and closets as platforms for shouting doubles. durrafourd was having the time of her life.
You would think this is meaningless, just by considering the fact that this is not going to change the fact that Durrafourd is still going to be demolished - but take that: this playful spatial rummaging of the durrafour ended with an-as-close-to-improptu screening as legally possible on the fourth floor of Durrafourd. the little opening with broken cmu blocks made the perfect projection hole, and the corridor niche became the backstage. the broken window shutters fed the surprisingly functioning fireplace, much needed with the storming weather outside.
From the balcony, the waves splashed white bubbles high above the corniche, to the south, the AUB campus twinkling lights - inside an almost sufficed bunch of artists and friends sitting on the ground sipping some drinks and eating 'bizir' listening to some music, then watching the projected compilation on the cracked skin of Durrafourd.
It makes you think, it has never been the black and the white - we just need to look at it differently. Durrafourd never wanted salvation from it demolition, it knows it has to die - it just needed a little love - and it got it, "Durrafourd, mon amour"
Raafat's blog is: www.leit-mo-tif.blogspot.com
4 comments:
In 1975-1976, I lived on the top floor of the New Durrafourd building. It was a great place to live, with beautiful views of the sea and the city. We saw some terrible things as well -- the rocket attack on the Holiday Inn, the explosion of the Malev Hungarian airliner and the recovery of the bodies. But for the inhabitants of the buildings, that formed a protective courtyard, it was our home and our playground.
THE DURAFFOURD BUILDINGS AND I – PART I
I have a long history with the Duraffourd Buildings of Beirut. From 1954 to 1956, my dad worked at the US Embassy, and I lived with my parents and brother and our German housekeeper/cook and son on the ground floor of the New Duraffourd Building built in 1948.
I could tell many a tale about life there in those years, but my favorite was how my mother dealt with the kitchen trash that the residents of the upper floors threw down the air shaft onto our kitchen patio. After sending gentle appeals to stop through our concierge, Elias, to no effect, she had me bag up the trash for several days and then deposit it at the front door of each upstairs apartment. That stopped the trash rain overnight! Lighter moments included youngsters’ sleepouts on the penthouse roof of the New Duraffourd Building.
My brother, who slept in the back bedroom adjacent to an alley on which a large Shi`ite family lived, was frequently "visited" by the family's children, some of whom were skinny enough to climb through the window bars into his room. Our guest room was also adjacent to this alley, and the kids -- Su`ad, Ilham, Nabil, and Haqiqi -- spied our visiting grandmother undressing for bed one night. From that came the bilingual chant "You are donkey, you are ass. Your sittak [grandmother] bi-laa-libaas [has no clothes]."
I next visited the Duraffourd buildings in 1973, when I was assigned to the US Embassy as Press Attaché, and my family and I were looking for an apartment. Mme Gallina Duraffourd -- the widow of Camille Duraffourd, one of the senior urban planners of cities in the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon (d. 1941) -- had built the Old and New Duraffourd Buildings after World War II and insisted on personally interviewing prospective tenants on the veranda of her penthouse in the Old Duraffourd Building. My then wife and I passed muster but, unfortunately, no apartments were immediately available, and we ended up living elsewhere.
THE DURAFFOURD BUILDINGS AND I – PART II
A year and a half into my assignment, the Lebanese civil war broke out. We were then living in upper Ras Beirut far from the Embassy Chancery. As the war heated up, my family was evacuated to Jordan, and I was told to move to a 1st floor apartment in the old Duraffourd Building two blocks from the Chancery. The apartment was familiar to me because from 1954 to 1956 my brother and I had played with the Moranda children who lived in that apartment. I accomplished the move by myself, transporting all our effects in our AMC Hornet Sportabout. Each trip required a last dash on the Corniche in plain sight of the snipers in the gutted Holiday Inn. Slouching down as far as visibility would permit, I managed to complete the move without a shot. Relief from the tension of those times was afforded by the poker games that Mme Duraffourd’s son-in-law, Al Buckley, hosted in his New Duraffourd penthouse. Six months later, I myself was evacuated to Athens. Miraculously, the Embassy packed and shipped my effects and vehicle out through Damascus, and my only loss was my car’s radio!
The final chapter of my life in the Duraffourd Buildings came in 1982-84. I arrived in Beirut in September 1982 as a member of the US team sent to negotiate an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The Embassy housed most of the team on the ground floor of the New Duraffourd Building, and I occupied the very bedroom I used in 1954-56! In April 1983, the Department of State commandeered both Duraffourd Buildings to house the essential operations of the Embassy Chancery after it suffered a terrorist attack. I managed to hang on until I left Beirut for good in February 1984.
I had imagined that apartments of the quality and location of those in the Duraffourd Buildings would last forever. But I was wrong. The American University of Beirut, whose campus adjoined the property on two sides, bought the buildings from the Buckley family and began debating what to do about them. Eventually, they were judged too impractical to serve as faculty housing because of problems with their layout and maintenance, and they were torn down in 2008-09. Yet one more aspect of the Beirut I knew and loved gone forever.
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