The Sea as a Witness: An Archaeological Memory

Description

Curated by Cindy Chehab

Emergency fundraiser in aid of displaced families in Beirut

Saturday 28th Mar 2025 | 6:00pm – 9:00pm
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‘The Mediterranean is wilder than we think, it’s geological, it’s planetary.’

-Etel Adnan

The Sea as a Witness: An Archaeological Memory is a curated film programme by Cindy Chehab that explores the sea as a site of memory, displacement, ecological crisis, and violent histories. Drawing from cinema across the Mediterranean, the programme positions the sea as both archive and witness, where sound, image, and motion carry stories that resist erasure.

In a moment marked by aggression and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli Government  in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran, this programme responds with urgency and political clarity. Across these regions, the sea has been militarized, to waters that have borne the weight of forced migration, fatalities, and ecological harm. The violence enacted upon bodies, human and nonhuman, along these shores and across maritime borders underscores a form of slow, systemic erasure that cinema can confront, contest, and document. The films gathered here insist that the sea must be understood as witness and as an active site of political meaning, where histories of violence are confronted.

The programme’s presentation in Dublin, a coastal city in Ireland, adds an urgent layer of reflection. Surrounded by the sea, Dublin’s geographical and historical positionality evokes questions of mobility, borders, exile, and the environmental and political forces that shape islands and coasts.

We come together to think collectively about the ties between the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, and reflect about our own closeness to the sea, our position, as witness and participant. We invite the audience to imagine how memory, care, and solidarity can flow across waters and oceanic borders.

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Donations

100% of income* received from the purchase of tickets will go directly to vetted relief efforts in relief efforts in Beirut..

In addition to ticket sales we encourage everyone who can to make an additional donation at the time of booking or on the night of the event to help raise as much funds as possible.

Can’t attend but would love to support? Please purchase a solidarity ticket and/or make a donation

*All artists involved will be paid appropriate fees via WOWTE programme funding

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Full Information

Event: https://a4sounds.org/uncertain-ethnographers/
Accessibility: https://a4sounds.org/the-sea-as-a-witness/

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