Ansar
- AboutAnsar, 2007
Part 5 of Khiam project
Video and photo installation
Photographic timeline, lambda print, Dibond finish (300 x 15cm)
Super 8 film, dating from 1985 and filmed in 2007, converted to DVD During the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, several camps were opened to incarcerate thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians. - Other Installations
One of them, Ansar, opened in 1982 and closed in 1985. The Khiam camp that inspired our installation and film titled “Khiam 2000-2007” opened shortly after. In the second half of our film, “Khiam 2000-2007,” a number of ex-prisoners evoke the Ansar camp. When we asked them how to maintain a trace of the Khiam camp after its destruction, they allude to the absence of traces and outright oblivion.
Now, in place of the camp stand a restaurant, a theme park, a football field, a women’s pool, and even a zoo. Nothing to the right, nor to the left of these confines, as if these sites had been firmly implanted by Lebanese in lieu of the camp.
Beyond this façade is a scout camp, with tents set up among the remains of the Israeli army. We went on site to film the surviving traces, the physical ones linked to this history, all the while using material dating back to the camp’s existence… These super 8 images are odd, blurring documentary and timeframe notions, so as to create strange intervals. The result is a video and photography installation titled “Ansar recto/verso,” that questions the making of history when traces have vanished. What is a monument? What is an archive, a document, an image, an imagination?
Watch Ansar Panoramic Image
