Plans formed
Today it became necessary to really form some plans about what we would like to do with the site in Roombeek. Kamila was unfortunately not in well enough to join us today, and so it was just myself, Aşkın, and Julien. We discussed a number of proposals, such as altering street signs, having things lifted by one of the many cranes working on nearby construction projects, and building a little scene with balsa models around the pond formed in the crater left by the explosion.
Our ideas were neither much more developed nor agreed upon by everyone by the evening, but I did get the feeling that some progress at least had been made. This is probably more than can be said for the last few days, at least.
Before dinner, once again at Villa de Bank and prepared to perfection by Kristiina and Mei-yu, there was a lecture by Tony Chakar, our group leader. He is from Lebanon, a country of course much in people’s thoughts due to the immense distruction wrought there by the recent war between Hezbollah and Israel. He talked about the poetics of catastrophe, a theme of course linked to what happened in Roombeek although in the case of Beirut much more immediate and vast in its level of calamity; no-one has a monopoly here on suffering. Apologies if I have stolen that last phrase from somewhere…
