Summing up Backwards

My initial idea with this  book was to create something of a travel journal. the leftovers from this approach can be seen in the black covered concertina sketch book and also in this research journal. I soon realised that what I actually wanted to create, in reflection to my lebanon trip, was something more akin to my first project utilising a poetic song-like back and forth between the text and imagery. This time however the events I was dealing with were contemporary, this together with the primary nature of the research brought me towards a simpler more straightforward, less graphic visual side of things. These events are still going on, the civil war in syria could see yet more complications with a more active participation of the west, we will see.  

This book is about Lebanon, but Lebanon is barely mentioned. This is intentional, this is book about syria, about the west's relationship with the east, the ellipsis of all this is Lebanon. -"If there is no Syria what will happen to Lebanon?" It is what is implied by all these conflicting physical and theoretical realities but left out in the political reasoning about these things. A state which exists because of an accident of history, which now some may say operates as a laundry room for all the dirty money of the middle east and to others as a model of tolerance and balance in a sea of problems. It may also be the place where free market has proven how, if implemented without constraint, can make even the most hardened enemies partners in the quest for acumltive personal welath, thus peace. The flip side to this is the side effect; weird and excessive corruption together with soul destroying homogeneity.  

This is the homogeneity I was talking about in my final essay, it is a process of maybe sub-liminal but most probably liminal fatalism, which as its first victim, takes the arts and turns its possibilities for creative advancement into wet shiny wallpaper. The way through this is impossible to see clearly, i'm clutching at straws, I can only imagine the willingness to see through this will come from the margins, almost as an accident, like lebanon itself.

SO! The way through? It will seem desperate and mad, It will come from the unexpected, at the edge of the center to the middle, to the east? The lebanese bank manager and his visions, thats the idea...

Anyway this is turning into more of a rant than a summary, I'm running out of time....