NAZVR

This part-memoir, part-immersive archive invites audiences inside a digital reconstruction of the creator’s childhood home on an intimate journey that follows the complexities of her relationship with her mother across three decades marked by regional conflicts and her eventual migration.

Nazar unfolds as experiential poetry within evil eye protection sessions, shared regularly over the years by mother and daughter and communicated primarily through touch.

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Fumigation Practice

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Liminal Space

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Interactive Objects

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Fumigation

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Salam interview

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Slowly moving past personal narratives, embodied experiences prompt audiences to consider these practices and their virtual extensions not only as methodologies of care but as ritualistic acts of soft resistance.

The experience is informed by an ongoing research that delves into the constellation of protection practices, passed-down from mother-to-daughter for generations across the Levant.

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“This has been an unmatched experience that far exceeded what I thought could be accomplished in relation to performance and rooted sensorial knowledge”

Audience member at Sursock Museum User-testing
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level 1: living Room

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level 2: Bedroom

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level 3: liminal space

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level 4: Fumigation

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Offboarding

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It delivers exciting, new ways of archiving intangible cultural heritage, at risk of being erased while pushing the boundaries of what is achievable in terms of immersive performance and embodied sensory experience.

XR artist Lara Kobeissi prototyping live performance in VR in Sursock Museum's Salon Arabe
XR Artist Lara Kobeissi and theatre practitionner Hanane Hajj Ali at Brixton House Theatre in London, prototyping Nazar a multi-sensory performance in VR where touch is the central mode of communication.

Nazar culminates in a magical choreography of the senses, complete with audio-recordings of surveillance drones, motion-capture of unarchived gestures and chants that seal a covenant between a people and their land, moon, clouds, stars and vines.

photograph showing user-testing of Nazar live Perfromance at Aspex Gallery 2023 friday late futurescape XR artist Lara Kobeissi
Nazar | User-testing session at Aspex, UK [2024]
Photograph showing XR Artist Lara Kobeissi performing Nazar a live performance incorporating VR at Sursock Museum March 2024
Nazar | User-testing session at Sursock Museum, Beirut [2024]
XR artist Lara Kobeissi performing VR experience Nazar at Guildhall during Past Makes Future micro-conference in 2024
Nazar | User-testing session at Guildhall, UK [2024]


Created by Lara Kobeissi
Creative Technology and XR Development Pete Roobol
Music and Sound Design Lead Sarmad Louis
Sound Design Rawane Khater
XR Art Lara Kobeissi
Performance Design Consultancy Hanane Hajj Ali and Sarmad Louis

Contributors:
Salam Ali Sbeity
Soad Jrady
Lina and Itaf Karaki
Sahar and Yusra Kobeissi

Funded by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC)
R&D was supported by Arts Council England (ACE) and B3 Media