Love Letter to a Union: The Falling Comrades

This lecture performance is a letter exchange between distanced lovers who write about their daily lives while conflating several love stories and historical events. These include the brief formation and fall of the United Arab Republic and the first Intifada – events that are interpreted through the disruptive act of love. During the lecture performance they exchange archival footage, listen to songs, and watch two films together with the audience: The first film, Jumana Emil Abboud’s The Diver is a video narrative that tells the story of a Diver whose gender, name, and nationality is ambiguous, and who is on an endless search to find ‘heart’. The second film, The Story of Milk and Honey by Basma Alsharif, is a video that weaves together images, letters, and songs that detail the failed writing of a love story in Beirut, Lebanon.