Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige

This story takes place in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, hastily erected in order to accommodate Palestinian families fleeing the Nakba of 1948. Years later, in 2007, a war broke out between the Lebanese army and an Islamist group which had recently infiltrated the camp, resulting in the latter’s destruction. It was at this time that the initial remains of Orthosia appeared, an ancient Roman city buried by a tsunami in 551 AD. Since its disappearance, efforts to find remains of it had proved fruitless for fifteen centuries. What is to be done in the face of this major discovery, given that any excavation work done there would imply a second displacement of refugee families? In this performance, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige take us into a palimpsest of constant cycles of construction and destruction. They guide us along possible narratives leading to the unveiling of invisible cities and the remains of underground worlds. This vertiginous performance, overflowing with (dis)continuities, upheavals and regenerations, rapidly plunges us into a past that is particularly close to the present.