NAZVR

A tender, intimate encounter in virtual reality between participant and performer.

Liminal Space Touch Inetraction Close-up

2025 – Shubbak Festival x LADA [London, UK]

Multisensory Performance Touch Interaction

2025 – Shubbak Festival x LADA [London, UK]

Nazar Offboarding

2025 – Shubbak Festival x LADA [London, UK]

Nazar Object-based Worldbuilding

2025 – Shubbak Festival x LADA [London, UK]

Nazar Object-based Worldbuilding

2025 – Embodied Realms Festival [Poznan, Poland]

Nazar Object-based Worldbuilding

2025 – Embodied Realms Festival [Poznan, Poland]

Nazar Object-based Worldbuilding

2025 – Embodied Realms Festival [Poznan, Poland]

Nazar Object-based Worldbuilding

2025 – Beirut Art Center [Beirut, Lebanon]

Nazar Object-based Worldbuilding

2025 – Beirut Art Center [Beirut, Lebanon]

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

Nazar unfolds as experiential poetry within evil eye protection sessions, shared over the years by mother and daughter, 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 performances invite audiences to experience these practices, extended virtually into a speculative future, as methodolgies of deeply enduring care.

Nazar culminates in a sensorial choreography sealing a covenant between a people and land, moon, clouds, stars and vines.

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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”

Sursock Museum User-Testing [2024]
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Scene 1: living Room

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Scene 2: Bedroom

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Scene 3: liminal space

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Scene 4: Fumigation

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Offboarding

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

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.

To learn more about our research, click here ……………………………………….. ↓↓↓↓↓↓

Nazar Performance in VR at D-CAF Festival Kodak
2025 | Prototype Showcase at D-CAF [Cairo, Egypt]
XR artist Lara Kobeissi performing VR experience Nazar at Guildhall during Past Makes Future micro-conference in 2024
2024 | User-Testing at Guildhall [Portsmouth, UK]
Photograph showing XR Artist Lara Kobeissi performing Nazar a live performance incorporating VR at Sursock Museum March 2024
2024 | User-Testing at Sursock Museum [Beirut, Lebanon]
photograph showing user-testing of Nazar live Perfromance at Aspex Gallery 2023 friday late futurescape XR artist Lara Kobeissi
2023 | User-Testing at Aspex Gallery [Portsmouth, UK]


Created and performed by Lara Habib Kobeissi
Lead Collaborator and Associate Producer Thomas Buckley
XR Development Pete Roobol
Sound Design Sarmad Louis and Rawane Khater
XR Art Lara Habib Kobeissi
Performance Design Consultancy Hanane Hajj Ali and Sarmad Louis

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

Special Thanks to: Elsa • Mariam • Sara Sally • Aida & Hussein Sbeity • Rola & Salah Zeidan • Alia Alzougbi • Wanda Hu Marc Boothe • Rob Morgan • Ben Carlin
With additional thanks to: Thomas Buckley and Hanane Hajj Ali


Nazar//Runthrough in VR [Arabic]

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