The movement and circulation of publications along parts of the Hijaz Railway can still be perceived from the train station in Damascus, which was built in 1907. Even after construction of the railway stopped following the First World War, the station was still operating, until it was transformed into a library and book museum in recent years. The act of transformation and shift of meaning turned the station into a mobile space for knowledge. This transformation also encompasses the station’s surroundings, where streets of book- and paper traders, publishers, and printers are intersecting. Today the area reflects the history of modern publishing in the region, and the mechanisms of the circulation, appearances, and disappearances of books.
Waiting Trajectory, lecture Performance, HKW, Berlin, 2017
book vendors in the Hijaz Neighborhood in Damascus, Photo by Omar Nicolas, Damascus, Syria, 2017
