Palimpsests
0/10
Rating
13 min
Runtime
2017
Release Year
Khalil Joreige
Director
Cast
Quick Synopsis
Palimpsests is a film that is part of the Unconformities project, which features artworks created from core samples taken at construction sites in Paris, Athens, and Beirut. These geological cores reveal disruptions in the earth's layers caused by events like natural disasters and tectonic shifts, showing a continuous cycle of building and destruction that has shaped civilizations over time. Rather than presenting history as simple layers, the film portrays it as overlapping actions and influences from different eras and cultures, much like a palimpsest where old writings are overwritten but still visible. Through this approach, the film challenges traditional ways of telling and representing history and also engages with discussions about human impact on the planet during the Anthropocene era.
Detailed Synopsis of Palimpsests
This film is from the project Unconformities, comprised of artworks made up from the material of surveyed land, extracted from coring construction sites in Paris, Athens and Beirut. These cores bare their "unconformities"—temporal ruptures, natural disasters, geological movements—in full view, revealing a constant cycle of construction and deconstruction that is the defining feature of civilisations past and present, with each using the stones of the last. History appears not as layers but as actions, a kind of palimpsest mixing epochs and civilizations. These poetic recompositions question the dominant forms of narrating and representing history, but also address debates around the Anthropocene.
