Manolis Manousakis - Beirut Art Residency

Manolis Manousakis is one of the first Οnassis AiR Exchange Residents (2019), conducting a two-month research at BAR (Beirut Art Residency) in Lebanon.

Behind the visual reality of a city before you, another dimension lies concealed rich in sounds that transforms a city into an auditory experience. Beirut, along with Αthens, has a special intensity. Both cities have been a living, meaningful space since antiquity: cosmopolitanism and localism, multiculturalism, the development and gentrification of the area, pockets of resistance, tradition and modernity, a working-class neighbourhood, immigrants, artists, night venues and clubs, alternative cultural spaces, tourists, and monuments of both the ancient and modern times. On top of that, these two cities share now the same world-wide refugee issue. On one hand Greece serves as an entry point to the EU, on the other hand Lebanon served traditionally as a destination for refugees since the 1920s.

Nevertheless, the refugee crisis remains a highly politicized issue. Manousakis will record the city of Beirut and its peοple. He will visit the refugee camps and use the material from the workshops creating both an ‘anthology’ of experiences presented and interconnected with the history of the city and a series of sound compositions inspired by them. The final presentation will be a sound installation and a sound walk (using the My City My Sounds app) with interviews, soundscapes and sound compositions, revealing a part of the town and the stories of its peοple, which have been hidden behind the immersive visual elements of both the refugee crisis and the build-up of Beirut.

The sound walk / installation will be part of a larger sound map composition which has started in 2014 in Neos Kosmos, Αthens (Rhizome I), and has expanded with the neighbourhoods of Keramikos, Gazi and Metaxourgio (Rhizome II), as well as the village of Sellasia, in Lakonia (Rhizome III). Manousakis's project, titled “The West Between Us,” will expand with the soundscapes of Αthens and Beirut (Rhizome IV), “binding and uniting the two cities.”