Another Life

One thing that I love and hate about living outside the country of my birth, youth, and upbringing is that I'm constantly aware of it.

I love this because it is illuminating. It gives me an awareness of my ideas, assumptions, my expectations and allows me space to examine them in a context in which they do not fit.

I hate it because so often, my ideas, assumptions, and expectation don't fit. I'm a misfit.

Take this:

It's a goldmine, right? Brilliant! Hardwood doors, looks like craftsman era, not in the best shape but definitely a DIY dream come true! I even have a car that's good for hauling stuff like this, and I could so totally drive right over and load it up and take it back to my place and do something amazing with it!

What would I do with these fabulous doors?

Do you really have to ask? Why, just about anything, actually.   The possibilities are endless.

But that's me thinking like an American.  Even as it was happening I knew it. And so I left that garbage right where it was. Because that was the Lebanese thing to do.

Our Daily Bread

It's early.

Outside shops that aren't open and won't be for another few hours, bread is waiting. Bags and bags of flat and fluffy yeast bread too are delivered early to this little sandwich shop.  By closing time the bread in the bags will have fed most of the street. The construction workers, the guys in the pharmacy as well as the barber shop, the ones in the little hardware shop, the produce sellers and the guys next door who have all kinds of cheese.

Faux Designation

In Beirut, there are signs that designate buildings, sections of town, monuments, etc. that have special cultural or historic significance. They're brown rectangles with a white border and white lettering. They're part of the visual vocabulary of the city.

Consider this post from nearly half a year ago, featuring an artist's clever twist on the brown culture signs.

And here's another that I like just as much. The other day in Hamra, I noticed this creative take on the culture signs:

This faux sign designates the wall as a street art mural. Here's a context photo.

Art, Bright Colors, New, Important

It's theme day for City Daily Photo. The theme was chosen by a vote by CDP participants. Fun options this time: Art, Important Places, New, Bright Colors

I admit, when I saw the choices I wondered if I could get them all in a single shot.

This fluorescent orange construction is in the Beirut Souks, a new shopping mall in the heart of downtown.

Without a doubt, the thing is bright an the shopping mall is new. One could argue all day about it's artistic merit and the relative importance of luxury consumer centers like this one. Anyway, this is my best attempt to capture all four options in one. I wonder if anyone else in CDP did it too . . . .

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Casualty

Please indulge me in another foray into street art, or art on the street.

That's a letter of the Arabic alphabet, surrounded by crime scene tape. I'm guessing someone murdered it. The only thing missing is the chalk outline, which I guess will be drawn once the detectives arrive to gather evidence.

Here's another:

I've seen others elsewhere in town, even a stunning one in red. That was the first one I saw, and at first I didn't get it. I thought maybe the paint on the letter was wet, maybe that explained the caution tape. But after coming across a few more examples I recognized that someone was trying to tell me something with these letters, these causalities of unnamed, undisclosed violence.

What do you think of it?

Enjoy

Saturday afternoon while wandering around Hamra, we passed this:

I'll go ahead and call it site-specific art. The site is an urban sidewalk in Hamra. The art consists of a piece of sod and an identifying sign (intentionally referential to Beirut's signs denoting sites of cultural interest) which reads "Enjoy your green space". My kid's in the shot to provide scale.

There is a sense among Beirut's residents that green spaces are too rare, concrete too prevalent, and what parks there are should be better maintained. I'm inclined to agree, mostly because of my personal desire for parks and grass for my kids.

But, if I had to choose one critique to make of Beirut, or if I had the opportunity to channel my creativity and artistic energy into challenging a single aspect of life here--promoting the importance of green space would not be that single thing. It wouldn't even make the top ten. And that's all I'm saying about that.

I don't want to be too critical or hard on this specific piece of social commentary. It's well executed, direct, and laced with just the right amount of wit and snark.

Beirut Art Center

When you live in a place like Beirut, reading international news can feel surreal especially when your city is the subject. It can also feel really redundant. Take this NYT food-blog article about new restaurants in Beirut. I've seen this same outline a hundred times: civil war, Paris of the middle east, opportunities, risks, live for today!

Although I find these reports tiresome and formulaic, occasionally I learn something new.

NYT, again, but this time with a schedule of what to do if you have 36 hours in Beirut. #6 on their list was the Beirut Art Center. They're located along this graffiti-enlivened alleyway. Their facility is visible from the Emile Lahoud highway, and I'd seen it while driving past. But I was in a hurry and forgot to follow up. NYT jogged my memory. Cool, I thought, contemporary art in Beirut. I called and made an appointment for a tour--a tour for kids. I invited a friend and her kids to join us.

The tour was very good. Our guide did a great job of interacting with the kids and helping them understand what they could of the art on display. Every piece was political, about war, negotiation, and all the shades of gray in between. I'm very glad we went and I'm sure we'll go again. If you're interested in going, visit their website. They have great information, a map, and *grin* it's free.