Residency from November 14th 2023 to January 18th 2024
At Ada X
The maritime boundary conflict between Lebanon and Israel arose in 2006 during Cyprus’s attempt to define its borders for oil and gas resource exploitation. Discrepancies in mapping, discovered later by Lebanon, led to the loss of 1,430 km² of maritime area. Seeking to create a docu-fiction video about this issue, the project will explore the intangibility of maritime borders, where the documentary part focuses on observing the sea from various Lebanese vantage points, emphasizing the invisible nature of these boundaries. The video will symbolically feature fish as representatives in conversations, drawing from political assemblies, emphasizing the continuous negotiation failures and colonial legacy, employing 3D animation to visualize the underwater world and fish species found in Lebanese waters. Throughout her residency, Joyce Joumaa will be experimenting with new media technique ahead of producing a video work that investigates the Maritime border conflict between Lebanon and Israel. The piece will translate a fictional political congress of fish that happens underwater as an attempt to look at how diplomatic relations are mediated under contexts of geopolitical conflicts.