It is a miracle that the vast Rachid Karami International Fair complex in Tripoli, Lebanon, has survived. Construction on this modernist exhibition venue, designed in the 1960s by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, was halted in 1975 by the civil war, and it was never officially put into use. Various militias did, however, use the site as a base; to local people, it remained strictly off-limits.
Artist Firas El Hallak was particularly drawn to the Dome, a huge concrete structure he could see from his home and about which all kinds of stories circulated. Wassim Naghi recounts these stories in voice-over as 11 acts take center stage, engaging in a dialogue with the architecture and its multifaceted history. Their compositions are shaped by the raw acoustics of the unfinished dome. As the camera moves slowly through the imposing interior, sound, space, and history converge. Through layers of decay and ghosts of memory, the quiet spirit of this troubled building occasionally breaks through.
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