THE DURABLE EPHEMERAL

Jordan has long been a land of string relevance to the question of refugees. It is the host of so many people fleeing the regions’ conflicts, old and new. Refugees and their impact on the country is a recurrent topic in people’s everyday discussions. Both media and art in the region has been bustling with the theme and with how different artists are portraying the issue. Ifpo researchers and their different collaborators have been working on different Syrian and Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan since many years now. The researchers’ core disciplines vary between humanities, social science, politics and architecture. The power of the collaboration lies in the multidisciplinary background of the team, a rich approach to investigate both of the conflicting rationalities revolving around home-making and place-making in refugee camps and the interaction with the host society towards negotiating a place inside informal settlements within the host country.

The exhibition aims at opening a window for the audience to imagine, and get in touch with the complexity of place-making and home-making beyond the context of the city. The visitor is invited to problematize the meaning of the cities in contrast to camps and informal settlements and to observe the progressive transformation of the camps into cities as it was done for the Palestinian settlements which can be considered as a ‘model’, or an analytical tool. The exhibited works hope to raise awareness about ‘solidarity’ and ‘agency’ throughout architecture as a narrative tool. The works involve a wide range of mixed media: print outs of digitalized and appropriately rescaled hand drawings; architectural graphic elements redrawn in the visitor-friendly layout of choice; analogue photography displaying the human scape; anthropological monographs drawing on the delicate bridge between research and writing arts; audio visual works purposefully designed to narrate stories of place-making; and interactive installations.

The Curatorial Team: Ayham Dalal (TU Berlin), Kamel Doraï (Ifpo Lebanon), Rand El Haj Hasan (EHESS France) and Pauline Piraud-Fournet (Ifpo Jordan)