The artist discusses the relationship between interdiction and imagery featured in his piece Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, shown at the 18th Festival. The video installation is composed of two videos shown on both sides of a screen, forcing the viewer to take a stand when faced with the images. He also talks about the television footage recorded throughout his childhood by his father, through which he had his first contact with the city of Beirut. These VHS tapes were part of the raw material for his work, combined with more recent footage of the Lebanese capital. He explains how the idea came up of creating the second video, which portrays the Israeli city of Haifa, which adjoins Beirut, but whose borders are blocked due to political turbulence in the region. He discusses the discovery of a past of intense interchange between Beirut and Haifa, which was interrupted by the war. Dib draws a parallel between the alienation typical of childhood and the situation of residents in the two cities, for whom imagination fills the gaps of an incomplete reality. Thus, fantasy appears as the ultimate form of interest in the other.
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