This is my contronution to the competition on ‘Memory, Place, Heritage, Displacement’. My proposal was awarded the Second prize of the competition.
‘Memory, Place, Heritage, Displacement’ is an art-research initiative that explores urban issues related to Syrian cities and its heritage before and after the war. It perceives displacements and destruction as ruptures through which new opportunities and challenges arise. At this stage, and in the lack of proper documentation of the Syrian cities and their urban dynamics, the initiative relies on the travelling memories of displaced Syrians to narrate its stories. The nature of this project is experimental, using artistic means, participatory methods, visualization techniques, mapping and story-telling to communicate and articulate the different connotations and relationships between memory, place, heritage and displacement.
The jury’s comments on my proposal:
The jury praised this entry for its ability to balance between the visual qualities of the map and the ability to shed light on an important and contested site in Damascus, which is part of an important transition from what is considered heritage and modernity. The entry gives hints on the story of a controversial historical quarter, weaving different periods of time in one drawing, and the people who live/lived there. It acknowledges the historical value of the quarter, pushing the boundaries of what is defined as heritage and suggesting new ways of narrating history. The visual language of the map, from a technical cartographic point of view, is successful in the choice of signs, the legibility, choosing the social history behind the official naming, sequence and order, the color codes and lines, collages happening all around the canvas itself, and the scale.
The jury, however, wished the map to be more personal and bringing in the voices of the people, by putting more effort into inscribing (weaving) the normative and the lived social history together.