Thinking Through Crisis: Heritage, Mediation, and Translation TBA21 on st_age

This podcast episode invites us to think through and with crisis and how this engenders a series of reconsiderations and adjustments. Inspired by the questions driving Omar Mismar’s work, particularly his Studies in Mosaics Series, Syria, we ask what is the importance and significance of cultural heritage in moments of total collapse, and what becomes of representation and witnessing in these particular contexts? These issues are explored from the vantage point of Lebanon, where the perpetual crises and violences that have plagued this nation since its inception are today being experienced viscerally amid a crippling economic crisis and in the aftermath of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosion. Turning first to architect Yasmine Dagher, we learn more about the work of the Beirut Heritage Initiative, an organization that safeguards urban heritage in the wake of the Beirut Blast. Next we reflect generally on how the relationship between images and violence has been traditionally conceived and how developments in technology have added new dimensions to these considerations. Finally, we engage with Lina Mounzer to think about how translation can serve as a framework or metaphor for the ethical mediation of violence.

Contributors: Yasmine Dagher, Beirut Heritage Initiative, and Lina Mounzer, journalist and translator
Conducted by Zeina Tarraf