fi albi amman

The affective geography of a city that becomes a non geographical space over time.

Position:
Amman, Jordan

Date:
2022-2025

The ethnography of emotions

In my heart is Amman

The place-making of a location, when it transcends the physical topography, happens when you internalize a place through specific sensations (often very individual) that you unconsciously connect with each other:
the brightness you see radiating off white stone houses under the sun, the slowness of time in the afternoon stillness, the smell of cardamom when a coffee is served to you.

So you keep returning to a place-non-place, most likely the experience that lives in your body.
And this place starts having a well defined emotional landscape.

My landscape has this shape:

– Seven hills folding into each other.
– Pink Majnounas (or Bouganvillea) absorbing the sun to become the brightest and biggest
– A cat asleep during the call for prayer
– The comfortable consistency of Medjool Dates
– The taste of homemade Maamoul
– The smell of coffee, the one you take on the street and slowly sip in the car

These are fragments of my return, which many time coincides with my arrival.