Nazar

Immerse yourself in a 1:1 VR performance that engages all your senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—in a transformative ritual based on protective practices from Southern Lebanon. 

Created by socially-engaged creative practitioner Lara Habib Kobeissi, Nazar takes you on an intimate journey into a digital reconstruction of the creator’s childhood home, exploring the complexities of her relationship with her mother over three decades of regional conflicts and migration.

Part memoir, part immersive archive, Nazar delves into evil eye protection rituals passed down through generations, communicated primarily through touch. The experience unfolds as experiential poetry, culminating in a multi-sensory choreography with audio-recordings of surveillance drones, motion-captured gestures, and chants that seal a covenant between a people and their land, moon, stars, and vines.

Rooted in research into Southern Lebanon’s protection practices, Nazar explores innovative ways to digitally archive intangible cultural heritage in an act of soft resistance aimed at restoring the body, collective memory, and intangible heritage. As you engage with this immersive experience, you’ll encounter a strange gaze symbolizing slow violence, prompting deep reflection on the preservation of cultural practices and the role of tactility in a world growing increasingly digital and isolated.