“Do a good deed and throw in the sea.”
In one of her letters to Fawwaz Traboulsi, published in Of Cities and Women, Lebanese artist and poet Etel Adnan wrote that if it weren’t for the sea, Beirut would not have survived devastation. “But there is salt on the ground, in our mouths, on our clothes, in our hands; something that resists putrefaction,” she told him.
In Arabic, there is a saying that goes: “Do a good deed and throw in the sea.” The sea here is a metaphor for what we leave behind us in order to move on. It speaks of our capacity to let go and to transform. Throw in the sea is about releasing what stands in our way, what we no longer need, what is not in flow. It is an invitation to be like the sea: always in motion, ever changing, and yet perpetually harmonious.
For this project, this saying was the harbor from where we set out to sail. The sea became a space of transmutation and imagination; as well as a space that transcends differences and brings together diverse communities that are geographically, historically and culturally connected to the Mediterranean. This unifying mass of water carries the dreams and myths of those who live next to it, stroll by it, jump in it, are captured by it, write and sing about it… The project is an attempt to decode and record these narratives. By doing so, it aims to create a space for the collective unconscious to be heard and for alternative histories to be revealed.
The project consists of two parts in dialogue with each other. One part will take place in Sardinia, the other in Lebanon.
In Sardinia, the project will move across the Sulcis, reaching out to different communities from the region and inviting them to participate to multidisciplinary workshops and activities.
As the project moves from one place to another, it becomes a record of the unheard: of voices that have been stung by revelation; of voices that are in constant search of the sea within and outside of them. It is a record of our collective imagination and one that ultimately finds its way back to the sea.
In parallel to the activity in Sardinia, Ibrahim will collect soundscapes and conduct short interviews with different groups of people who live close to or have a specific relationship with the sea in Lebanon.
The idea is to create a weaving of the sounds from both sides, Lebanon and Sardinia, to tell the story of journeying towards the sea collectively and individually, what happens along the way, and how we will in the end, irrespective of our different paths, all meet at the sea.
Project commissioned by TBA21-Academy as part of The Current III: “Mediterraneans: ’Thus waves come in pairs’ (after Etel Adnan)”, curated by Barbara Casavecchia
