Abir Saksouk (Public Works): Mapping and Documentation as Tools Against Erasure

Register to join via Zoom

Abir Saksouk from Public Works narrates cities and towns targeted by the ongoing Israeli aggressions on Lebanon as sites of contestation between conceived plans and lived realities. It underscores the power of documentation, material evidence, and mapping in deconstructing dominant discourses around places and their reconstruction. This talk is based on In Search for Justice Among the Rubble, an exhibition by Public Works that took place in Tunis as part of Evidence, an international festival by Fisher Center LAB, in association with the Center for Human Rights and the Arts.

This talk is produced in collaboration with Fen Live Lab (فل/F’LL), an incubator for innovations in live art and performance practices. It is moderated by Tania El Khoury.

Abir Saksouk is an architect and urbanist. She is the co-founder and co-director of Public Works Studio and a founding member of Dictaphone Group live art and research collective. Her research interests include the social production of urban space, property, and the right to the city of marginalized communities. Public Works Studio is a multidisciplinary research and design studio that critically and creatively engages with various urban and public issues in Lebanon. Through collaboration with historians, journalists, artists and others, the studio initiates research projects to study, shape, and implement counter-strategies to urban planning and policy-making.