Seeing Southern Lebanon through landscape
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By Ramsay Short Daily Star 27 March, 2004
Ask young people in Lebanon today about the South of the country and most will say they have never been there.
At least, this is what Imran Riza, senior adviser at the Office of the Personal Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Southern Lebanon (OPRSG) and his colleagues have found often when they meet people in Beirut.
"It is surprising in such a small country how many people we meet who are very curious about the South, but haven't really gone down and had a look," Riza said. "Apart from the months immediately after the Israeli withdrawal in the fall of 2000."
"Many people, especially the youth, in the rest of the country have a very limited perception of the South as a no -go zone, a war scarred area that is dangerous," he added.
Although the OPRSG is mainly involved in peace and security work in southern Lebanon, Riza and Staffan de Mistura, the UN Secretary-General's personal representative for South Lebanon, decided at the end of last year that part of their role must be to spread awareness of the former occupied zone in the rest of the country, especially if the region is to develop.
As a result, the OPRSG launched a competition open to all university students in Lebanon entitled Shouf al-Jnoub, or Seeing the South. The initiative, which has been promoted in all Lebanese universities since January, is a national competition to design landscape related projects for South Lebanon. Part of the aim is to promote interdisciplinary collaboration among students of different professions (landscape designers, artists, architects, historians, planners and so on), while the projects themselves will be designed to encourage people to explore and connect with the environmental, cultural and historical aspects of the South, thereby increasing familiarity with the area.
"Our intent in this thing is to try and get people to have an idea of what the contemporary situation is like in the South now, and to think creatively about it," Riza explained.
George Nasr, also an adviser at the OPRSG who has been working on the initiative,
said: "We've been deliberately vague in terms of defining projects so we can see how creative people can be."
"We hope this will encourage not just a greater familiarization of the South, but (also) a deeper 'seeing,' or 'reading,' of the area," De Mistura said about the project.
"The competition places the concept of 'landscape,' at its center, thereby encouraging project proposals to explore the conceptual and the physical, as well as the historical, cultural, environmental and societal aspects of Southern Lebanon," De Mistura added.
The notion of landscape is a fascinating one. Landscape in the Mediterranean embodies centuries, even millennia, of co-existence between people and nature, and by focusing the competition in this way, it may certainly succeed in promoting greater awareness and understanding of the natural and cultural diversity of the landscape in South Lebanon.
As the Web site (www.seeingthesouth.com) for the competition explains, there is no equivalent term for 'landscape' in Arabic. The origin of the word in the Dutch or English languages signifies the natural scenery of the surface of the earth or a country region.
To quote from the Web site, the definitions for landscape are numerous. The geographical sciences consider it the embodiment of the concept of "place" as the result of topographical, geological, climatic, plant and human components. The social sciences and cultural studies see "landscape" as something that embodies the interaction of human society and its environment in specific times and places. The environmental and ecological sciences are concerned with the way ecosystems and humans interact and complement each other to produce a natural or synthetic "landscape."
The potential created by placing landscape at the center of these projects is massive. Competitors can chart a path through history by linking sacred sites and archaeological monuments. They can construct narratives along water courses, connect towns and villages, build environments and natural resources, historical sites and surrounding environments, natural enclaves and so on.
So far, Riza has received a positive response from students. He and Nasr have been visiting Lebanese universities and holding sessions with students alongside academics, who are on the competition's advisory group.
"We have had the most feedback from the Lebanese University, and also from the American University of Beirut, but there is also interest from Balamand, Saint Joseph and Kaslik universities," Riza said.
"And there will be groups participating from southern Lebanon itself too," he added.
The advisory group is made up of prominent people in the governmental, non-governmental, public, private and media sectors, and they are available to students for advice.
The winning proposals will receive cash prizes, but perhaps most importantly, an amount of up to $50,000 will be made available from donor countries to actually implement the top three projects, which is a massive incentive to participate.
"Cash prizes of $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 will be awarded to the three winners, and the fact that they will have the opportunity to be implemented is particularly relevant," Riza said.
"In order to make sure implementation is appropriate, however, our only stipulation is that the groups that reach the second phase have to get the okay from the municipalities, or private land owners in the South where they propose to do their projects," he added. "The government is fully behind Seeing the South."
There is no limit to the number of proposals that get accepted, Riza explained, but it is up to the competition jury of four people to decide the merits of each proposal.
After many weeks, Riza and his colleagues announced this week that the jury would be made up of Francis Carr, founder and life president of the Landscape and Arts Network; Doha Chams, journalist and reporter with As-Safir newspaper; Bernard Khoury, architect and designer; and Akram Zaatari, video artist and curator.
"All these people have established reputations in their respective fields and their collective expertise reflects the various disciplines of the competition," Riza explained.
Even though all proposals have not yet been received, Seeing the South has already been a success, for already it has gotten the youth in this country thinking about southern Lebanon.
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Amman Office / Agents
Mr. Motaz Othman
P.O. Box 841113 Amman 111180
Amman – Jordan
Mobile : +962 785 557 778,
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السيد معتز عثمان
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عمان – المملكة الأردنية الهاشمية
لتغطية الدول التالية: سوريا، الأردن،
لبنان، السعودية والعرا ق |
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