The image of President Al-Assad appeared on billboards and facades all over the city. The projects’ idea was to establish a counterweight to this one-sided expression by presenting a video animation of the street vendors of Damascus that focused on their individuality. By incorporating the buildings of Damascus, Working Class Heroes was visible for everyone and at the same time added a spatial dimension to the places it appeared.
The idea was to show fifty intimate portraits of street sellers in a humoristic and understated form. The names of the vendors were implemented in the animation and an interaction submerges, a tale of labyrintic proportions, where salesmen and streetmonglers in Damascus were the cast leaders in a modern 1001 night adventure.
In other words, the project was based on a series of portraits of the street sellers of Damascus that were video-projected onto a number of building facades in the city’s’ center close to the Citadel and the main souk, Al Hamidiyeh.
Damascus, with its’ approximately five million inhabitants, is the capital of Syria and believed to be the oldest city in the world. It is a multi-cultural melting pot with a lively and intense street trade. The area near the main souk, Al Hamidiyeh, has a lot of pedestrian traffic and was therefore an ideal choice for the video projection.
(The video projection was blocked by the Security Police.)