Writing

Carine Doumit writes short essays published in forums, in online magazines and showcased in exhibitions.  She feeds from haphazard findings, invaluable readings and decisive encounters which she later describes, transcribes and translates into various fictional forms. 

Les épargnés | The Spared Ones

fiction | written in French, English and Arabic | 2014

A sequence of texts compose the unfinished script of a film to come. Both connected and disconnected, the texts criss-cross fragments from the story of encounters I made in Beirut: a fearless pathologist called L., an ageless child called N., a couple of inseparable stray dogs, and a woman-insect. The Syrian poetess Liwaa Yajzi was invited to write two short texts which were presented [deliberately untranslated] in their original Arabic version. The book was published by Ashkal Alwan for Homeworks IV.

Mädchen: A Letter to Helga Fanderl

short essay | written in French, translated to English and Spanish | 2019

Filmmaker Helga Fanderl makes beautiful personal short 8mm films. Each screening of her films is a unique composition of various films, a singular poetic moment. Helga invites me to a special screening in her former Raüm fur Film (Room for Film) in Berlin, and after returning to Beirut, where I am thrown into the momentum of a social and political uprising, I write her a letter. The text is published by Punto De Vista Festival as part of a homage to the filmmaker.  

The Dancing Rift | الثغرة الراقصة

short essay | written in Arabic, translated to English by Lina Mounzer | 2020 

A few months after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also marks the slow exhaustion of the 2019 uprising in Lebanon, I am invited to write on the theme of perpetual postponement. I write to my friend Liwaa Yazji who now lives in Berlin. I want to tell her about a peculiar dancing rift on a film strip. I also want to know how she could bear the loss of images and texts, a loss she had experienced twice in the past year. But first and foremost, I want to share with her my personal interpretation of Mohamed Soueid’s enigmatic title: I am in Camelia | أنا في الكاميليا. 

?Have you Written Anything Lately | صمت الأخضر

short essay | co-written with Nour Ouayda in Arabic, translated to English by Suneela Mubayi | 2020 

The text is a conversation between N. and C., the fictional characters of the film one sea, 10 seas by Nour Ouayda. Months after the violent blast which hit the silos of the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, N. and C. walk side by side again towards the sea. The two friends break multiple layers of silence as they talk about the vibrations generated by the sudden occurrence of certain events, reverberations which penetrate the body, meandering through it, never fading away completely. 

At the Edge of the Forest, a Garden | على مشارف الغابة حديقة

collective exhibition | The Camelia Committee | 2021 

This exhibition marks the first collaboration of the Camelia Commettee as a collective. We combine our three individual endeavors into one tridementionnal space recreated in the Mezzanine floor of the Beirut Art Center. I write in Arabic portraits of Camelia spread out on the walls of the space. The short texts include the following titles:
قراءات كاميليا،  كاميليا في المسبح،  ثلاث رسائل الى كاميليا. They are drafts for ongoing writing projects and are composed around a constellation of words which belong to the Camelia Committee’s world in-the-making.

Vers le rouge ou la rétraction de l‘univers selon Jeanne Dielman

short essay | written in Arabic and in French | 2021 

Following a residency at the Arsenal film archives during the summer of 2019, I make an usual encounter: a copy of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by Chantal Akermann which had turned completely red, apparently for “chemical reasons”. However, I have multiple other explanations for the dramatic redshift. I was also invited to publish a French version of the text as part of a special issue on the circulation in (the) film archives, co-edited by Nour Ouayda and Ghada Sayegh in the online film magazine Hors Champ. 

In the Core of the City, at the Exact Midpoint of the Night

short essay | written in English | 2022 

I was invited to write a short essay as part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Beirut» curated and edited by Rayya Badran. Here, fictional entries of a personal diary introduce characters of the upcoming film The Night Came About by Mira Adoumier.

The Book of Children | كتاب الأطفال 

illustrated book | Arabic, French, English & German | ongoing 

The Book of Children is an illustrated tale based on the journal of an anonymous child. She writes stories and sketches portraits of other children which appear to her as she stands at her window at night. She has never met them, yet they all seem connected through a magical fog which reveals their thoughts to the little diarist.