February Stream
Part of SOUNDSCAPES.
Listening to Riad Al Solh, you can tell it's sparsely populated but you can also hear an excitement in the air that hangs among the voices of the thouwwar. Laughter, joking, people greeting each other who've just arrived. This is the first night I'd been to a protest in Riad Al Solh since the concrete wall had been erected through its center and there is this energy that's present. Despite people having gathered there so many times before, there is this energy that comes from the square's new boundaries. The space has been changed and feels new, defiance felt new that evening, celebratory, and you can hear it as people respond to the music getting cranked louder and louder.
Walking from Riad Al Solh to Martyr's Square, you hear how much the soundscape is changing, what parts are empty, how crowds of different sizes sound from afar. Yaaa Thouwwarrrrrrrrrr! blares out of the speakers in Riad Al Solh and gradually the noise of that square recedes and new voices reach the listener. The space between the squares isn't empty, but its far from full and you hear the movement of distant protesters moving as the recorder does. The distant protesters you hear aren't in Riad Al Solh but moving between Le Grand Theatre Beyrouth and Martyr's Square as they have fun chanting, throwing rocks at barricades, and teasing the guards. The sound of this group never grows too loud because as we walked toward them, they were travelled further away.
Finally reaching Martyr's Square that evening, the azan sounded and swallowed up all those noises I'd been chasing.
The clanking of rocks against the highways' metal railing is all encompassing. As we overlook a battle between thouwwar and riot police taking place next to the Khalil Gebran Garden, the highway is packed with people, below us is another highway overlooking the same scene. Together we form an interesting kind of gallery, spectators of one revolutionary battle and participants of our own. As military try to clear the highway we're blocking and riot police confront those below, we cannot join forces physically but through the sound of rock against metal we unify these spaces.