(Set in stone) How long is the coast of Lebanon?

(Set in stone) How long is the coast of Lebanon? imagines the discovery, documentation and interpretation of a series of underwater sites that could have been the coast of present-day Lebanon. Circulating as a leaked research report and lecture-performance, it borrows from the field of maritime archeology to examine entanglements between the geological and the architectural, and between land and sea, by looking at how artifacts and landscapes are encountered, decoded and preserved in relation to recording technologies, historical narratives, and imaginaries of linear progress. The project operates in the space of discrepancy and disagreement that was born out of the post-colonial encounter between local divers’ practices and the establishment of the field of maritime archeology in Lebanon. It draws on accounts of sunken cities and floating islands, of tectonic uplifts and coastal reconfigurations, of shipwrecks and other catastrophes, and reflects on ongoing controversies surrounding the origins and meanings of submerged sites.cartography.