Twice

Detroit-based artists, Julia Yezbick and Ben Gaydos, shot Super8 footage for a film about two cities: Detroit and Beirut. It is

a film about place, belonging, diasporas, and the refracted memories of places known through other lifetimes. Julia's family migrated from Beirut to Detroit in the 1920s. Detroit was once called the "Paris of the Midwest.” Beirut was once called the “Paris of the Middle East.” These cities that stake their claims to glory in relation to this other (Paris-- a paragon of urban beauty, class, and romanticism), today conjure images of the ruin of postindustrial decay and civil war, respectively. Yet, their sense of themselves as a “former glory” is not a simple nostalgia; it is a complicated palimpsest that spans across generations and continents. Taking up the doubling implied by the marra.tein residency itself, this film will be structured like a palindrome of imagery and affect that weaves Detroit and Beirut into an indistinguishable structure of feeling. The film will be shot entirely on Super8mm film, which will evoke the feeling of home movies.

This film is itself an exploration of the uncertainty of returning to a place that one has never actually been to. It is a puzzle of affect and inherited trauma that rather than unravel, seeks to linger in this fruitful space of uncertainty and unease. This film will formally play with one’s sense of time as well. Being shot on Super8 film will give it the feel of an old family travel film, but it will be unclear when it was shot and which place — Detroit or Beirut — was the one traveled to or traveled from. We are interested in putting these two places in a productive tension that does not set them up in comparison to each other, but rather melds them in a way that questions the very distinctiveness and specificity of not only place but our memories and experiences of it.

Furthermore, through the use of some of Etel Adnan’s poetry, which will be read by a native Arabic speaker as well as Julia, we will be commenting on the performance of tradition and the struggle of finding or creating one’s own sense of identity and cultural belonging at a time when such things have taken on renewed political and social significance.

This film has been supported by the University of Michigan, Kresge Arts in Detroit (Kresge Foundation), and Creative Many, Michigan's AXD initiative.