[From 19th of Sep to 3rd of Oct in the Haber family's house] - Aley, Lebanon, 2005
This installation is based on the idea of setting up a private space in a place that was used years ago as a house for a family called Haber. Haber family left this house during the Lebanese war to be transformed for a long time into a public space. The challenge of creating my own private space in a place firstly used as a public area at the moment and that secondly hasn't the minimum of privacy and security (which are the basic conditions of private places) offered me a large area of ideas, rethinking potential and investigations, all based on the question of what private space is. The process of cleaning and installing the place was a very important part of the experiment, for it was a kind of a hard and serious interaction with the whole natural, historical and social environment surrounding the house. It developed the relationship between me and the people who live around this space, something that was like a channel for me to expand my background of the history of this house. On September, 30th the place started to be accommodated: now it has curtains, a bed, a mirror, a cupboard and a carpet and is surely clean enough to be slept in. From this day on I had a full accommodation in the house till the night of October, 3rd. It is a contradictory place that visually seems to be a private space, but logically seems not to be one: it has no material windows, no door and no keys. All the materials including clothes, underwear, books, music records, etc. are my real own private stuff.
This installation is based on the idea of setting up a private space in a place that was used years ago as a house for a family called Haber. Haber family left this house during the Lebanese war to be transformed for a long time into a public space. The challenge of creating my own private space in a place firstly used as a public area at the moment and that secondly hasn't the minimum of privacy and security (which are the basic conditions of private places) offered me a large area of ideas, rethinking potential and investigations, all based on the question of what private space is. The process of cleaning and installing the place was a very important part of the experiment, for it was a kind of a hard and serious interaction with the whole natural, historical and social environment surrounding the house. It developed the relationship between me and the people who live around this space, something that was like a channel for me to expand my background of the history of this house. On September, 30th the place started to be accommodated: now it has curtains, a bed, a mirror, a cupboard and a carpet and is surely clean enough to be slept in. From this day on I had a full accommodation in the house till the night of October, 3rd. It is a contradictory place that visually seems to be a private space, but logically seems not to be one: it has no material windows, no door and no keys. All the materials including clothes, underwear, books, music records, etc. are my real own private stuff.
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