rePLACE
a collection of everyday routes and series of workshops in Berlin, Beirut, Beijing and Thessaloniki, 2007-ongoing

The rituals of everyday life trace regular paths along streets and through buildings, organising the solids and voids of the built environment into narratives and patterns of association. Complicated by memory and social rituals, our experience of the city is of a dynamic place, a stage for public performances and private tragedies, of significant moments and the incredibly mundane. The habits, rituals, and actions of its population, the lived experiences within the city define it as something that is always current, always in constant, random movement.

rePLACE is an urban project that aims to reveal and celebrate the everyday rituals of the city’s inhabitants. Launched in Berlin in 2007, rePLACE later on traveled to Beirut, Beijing and Thessaloniki, inviting the residents of each city to map out frequent routes from their day-to-day lives, recording the regular patterns and particular moments associated with their journeys.

The collected routes were archived online. Using these maps as source material, two workshops were organised in Beirut (March 2011) and Berlin (May 2011) inviting visual artists, urban researchers and other interested individuals to retrace the submitted routes, recording a city under transformation with photography, video and sound. A rePLACE Beirut and rePLACE Berlin joint publication was produced in 2011.

rePLACE was initiated in 2007 by PROGRAM and Transit Lounge. rePLACE BERLIN and rePLACE BEIRUT were supported in 2011 by the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures, Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, the Arab Image Foundation and PROGRAM. rePLACE BEIJING was supported by HomeShop. For more information please visit www.re-place.info