ALL DAY DESIGN OPEN HOUSE, Thursday June 4, 2015

First floor:

- zumra workshopas part of Beirut Design Week 2015: an experimentation through zumra’s 5X process.

- Lilly Keen open studio
artisan & occasional furniture.

Second floor:

- urbacraft The City Crafting System open studio

toy design startup (http://facebook.com/urbacraft).

- Silk-screen open studio by Siwar Kraytem & Soraya Ghezelbash : short presentation of the studio and the silkscreen process at Mansion, live printing/exposing and open questions.

JUNE 2015

News of the Dalieh Campain, elsewhere:

- On Thursday June 4, 

continue the day from 7pm at ALTCity Montreal Center, Hamra street, 

Discover the selected projets of the "Revisiting Dalieh" Competitition (the display will remain at ALT City till Friday June 12, 2015).

- On Friday June 5, 

at Ashkal Alwan, Jisr el Wati, 7-9pm, 

Come together with the Civil campain to protect Dalieh

We will look at campaigning as a tool of organizing civil society, and at different strategies used to activate the discussion about collective rights to the city in the face of neoliberal policy and private investment ventures.

Tuesday 2 June, 7.30pm.


A workshop/presentation by the ongoing project,
composed of Chris Herzog, Lisa Schwalb, Alma Wellner Bou, Jasmin Jerat, Alexander Bauer, Triada Kovalenko and Ferdinand Klüsener, for a workshop/presentation :

a gesture of a collective will not abolish heterogeneity.

(1) We talk about us as a collective, our artistic practice and our approach or interaction with institutions, as well as former art- and schooltheaterprojects. It will be a open presentation with some speaking, some videos and it will be open for questions. (60 Min)

(2) break

(3) We talk about our audiowalk project My Imaginary Cities, about our realization of the audiowalk in Beirut and Frankfurt as well as the questions of art and funding. It will be a open presentation with some speaking, some pictures and it will be open for questions. (60 Min)

The Committee and the Right to know Campaign are launching "40th of the War," a 40 days-long campaign starting on the 10th of April, to commemorate 40 years on the beginning of the civil war.

The aim from the campaign:
In the year 2000, The Committee and the Campaign "حقنا نعرف" commemorated for the first time the 13th of April under the slogan      "تنذكر تَـ ما تنعاد". The Committee's focus was to gather allies and friends from citizens, NGO's, Media and Associations working in the social field in Lebanon.
Today, after fifteen years of important achievements with the support of these allies, The Committee and the Campaign are seeking more partners: Lebanese citizens, Universities, Institutions, Associations, Municipalities, Syndicates, private organizations and companies in all fields to adopt and support the Right to know - not only the families' right to know the fate of their loved ones, but the Right to Know as a Civil Right and a Law, to which all Lebanese citizens and organizations are entitled.

Dear all,

After its first two years of existence, Mansion now wants to extend its raison d’être by launching an « urban club ».

The Inquisitive Citizens Urban Club would like to be a context where we can collectively redefine and activate our rights to the city and our needs to develop spaces where the notion of “public” can thrive: a club where we can build up a common say and practice on matters of urbanism and politics of space.

As an initiation to the club, Mansion has devised an introductive «course» of three months that will focus on the area of and around Zoqaq el Blat, the neighbourhood in which Mansion is located and which presents a particularly interesting case study of urban complexity through its proximity to Downtown’s new developments, the gentrification of Khandaq el Ghamiq, as well as its long bourgeois history and current sociological diversity and contestation. The course plan is inspired by the rhythmanalysis approach developed by Henri Lefebvre, as well as in using urban anthropology and alternative forms of cartography, used by the Situationists. It will be divided into workshops, seminar sessions, presentations by guest speakers/participants, public actions and individual/group sessions for producing own work.

While the initial course will last three months, it is our hope that the spirit of the course will develop into a dynamic, self-organised club (ICUC) continuing to meet at Mansion to debate and act on current urban issues.

Both the introductive course and the club are meant for the urban curious professional and non-professional: architects, urbanists, artists, designers, concerned citizens, activists, film makers, students and locals etc. The only condition for the time is that participants are actually Beirut city users.

Please find attached a small brochure with more info, including an outline of the course sessions with dates, topics and guest participants.

How to apply / get more information: Please send us an email with your name, outlining a bit about your background and why you are interested in joining this course, via email to mansionblatt@gmail.com before 15 December 2014.