To Remain in the No Longer

كیف لا نغرق في السراب

Employing archival materials, interviews, and 16mm and digital film, the experimental documentary explores the political and cultural forces that have come to bear on the site—from its halted construction to its imposed abandonment and attempted reappropriations. How has architecture been instrumentalized in the ongoing construction of a national narrative? What is the role of architects in shaping society within corrupt ecologies of power and failed financial engineering? Film becomes a plastic medium to reframe the positivism of urban masterplans and architectural monuments and formulate a social critique. Modern structures under threat of collapse stand in as protagonists to tell the story of a promised metropolis that never came to be, while the fairground acts as a lens to look at implicit collapse beyond the perimeter of the site.