Objects in Mirror Are Closer than They Appear

"When I made this video, I was interested in producing an image of Beirut – a city I had gotten to know through television, as a child. I moved to Beirut in 2001 to pursue my university degree. The live city of that time was different from the televised city of my childhood. So I decided to document my existence in Beirut, to create my personal footage in order to grasp it.

My first comprehension of the city was through interior spaces, in studios or nightlife venues on television, so I decided to start this journey of rediscovery with outdoor takes. I later realized that I was more naturally inclined to document the city through my own interiors, parties and micro-scale conversations with and within confined spaces. In doing so, the archival footage from my childhood became relevant again. But I wanted all the material used in the production of my contemporary image of Beirut to be shot in the ‘present’, so I re-shot my archival footage with an iPhone, while the videos were played on a TV screen.

Since I was living in Beirut, I was able to produce my own image of it, but what is the image of Beirut to those who can’t access it first-hand? In order to harvest this information, I held audio conversations with friends from Palestine to talk about their idea of Beirut. These recordings became new layers in the construction of a multidimensional contemporary image of the city portrayed in the installation. 

The process of shooting the footage of Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than they Appear was not planned, and my daily existence in the city became more conscious while I was producing this work. Mundane events became iconic. Simple gestures became worthy of recording and filming. While doing so, this shift of the notion of 'understanding the city' became the foreground of my thinking, distancing myself from the events I shoot. This distance became a gap, which allowed me to think about being in this place, as opposed to my usual, 'regular' existence.

The fact that the footage was shot with an iPhone camera limited the interference of security restrictions. I was just a man shooting videos of his everyday life, not an artist having a critical conversation with his city. This created an opportunity to discuss socio-cultural and identity-related topics on a human scale. Society became a dance-floor in a wedding. Sexuality became an underground theatre. Psychogeography became a mission to find the Casino du Liban. The city was turned into an object in the mirror, closer than it appears."

Roy Dib​ in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)