www.state-theatre.de Daniel Kötter/Constanze Fischbeck state-theatre #5 BEIRUT 2014, HD, 65’ with Rani al Raji, Amira Soleh, Antoine Moultaka, Karim Makarem, Nesrine Khoder, Maxime Hourani The architecture of Beirut Downtown represents a segregated society with no commonly shared public space: Civil War Ruins besides unused theaters and cinemas, reconstructions besides wasteland, designer shops next to vacancy, military barriers next to religious buildings. And at the heart of all this, the "Martyrs' Square" as allegorical space, an impossible National Theatre for Lebanon. Six Beirutis accompany the camera on its one-hour walk through downtown Beirut and declare the space in-between the built environment, in-between the transformed and the demolished, their very personal theatrical stage. state-theatre is a series of six experimental documentaries that explore urban conditions for performance based on six case studies in Lagos, Tehran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut and Mönchengladbach. state-theatre departs from places that have shed their apparent societal functions: deserted areas, construction sites, unused or reinterpreted buildings – empty spaces in the urban fabric, places that were originally meant as allegoric gathering places: theaters.

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