HOME WORKS 6
Tinkerings on the Instable Present Tense
The Remains, Seo Min Jeong.
Photo by Joe Namy.
The Arab world is going
through a transitional period that has been dubbed as the 'Arab Spring 'by
some, and the 'Arab Fall' by others, both arguably outdated terminologies.
Nevertheless, they remain significant idioms of the time, where individuals and
societies are trying to make sense of an unsettling present tense.
As questions of this
transition and its subsequent labels and representations arise, citizens are
revolting, régimes are crumbling, and the relationships between religion and
the state are being redefined by countless bodies on the ground. It is on that
ground that artists and intellectuals in the region are reassessing their
roles, repositioning themselves from being passive observers to active members
of a participatory society.
Given that the 'Home
Works' forum, in its previous iterations, employed the medium of contemporary
art in Lebanon and the Arab world to tackle genuine cultural and societal
issues, the stakes were high for its sixth round (14th to 26th
of May 2013), especially since the last forum ended in 2010, before the Bou
Azizi times.
Home Works 6, in all its
constituent parts, was consequently plunged into the harsh tide of this
transitional moment. The legitimacy of the Lebanese Association for Plastic
Arts, Ashkal Alwan, the relevance of the participating artists, lecturers and
curators, the vitality of the attending audience, and the fertility of the
ground of the host city Beirut, were all put to an unsympathetic but very
crucial test.
In its 6th
edition, the forum claims, 'tinkerings heard on side-streets, rooftops,
hallways, and in stadiums, living rooms, classrooms and storage spaces' are its
main sources of inspiration. With the volatile status of the region at hand,
the forum's curator, Christine Tohme, decided to broaden the scope of
discussion by inviting curators from Egypt, Palestine and Turkey to
co-programme different segments of Home Works 6. This included, in addition to
mature local and international artists, a group of young artists to be part of
it. By doing so, Home Works 6 opened itself up to new geographies, languages
and dimensions, buttressing the two main headlines of the forum, Tinkerings
and The Trial.
At first glance, one can
notice direct referencing of contemporary political events in the region in a
few of the forum's offerings. For example, this was evidenced in the published
pamphlet by the Lebanese thinker Waddah Sharara, The Islam of Sacred Law
& The Islam of State, which retraces the history of the relationship of
Islam with the Ottoman Empire; a video interview with Syrian writer Samar
Yazbeck about her impressions on the Syrian revolution conducted by Rania
Stephan; a theatre performance titled Intimacy by Omar Abou Saada and
Mohamad Al Attar about the struggles of a Sudanese actor between Khartoum and
Damascus; a lecture performance, One Hundred Thousand Solitudes by Tony
Chakarand the book release of The Dialogue That is Us predicting
forthcoming Messianic time, which utilized collected a visual survey of
the recent Arab Uprisings, as shared on social media.
The remaining curated
material, encompassing over a hundred pit stops at exhibition spaces, theatre
performances, lectures, film and video screenings and roundtable discussions,
was spread out into different locations of Beirut. These seemed more actively
distant from the audience and the present.
As opposed to directly
reacting to what is going on in the region, the forum's programme borrowed from
historic events in the region and beyond to create a panoramic and thematic
reading of history that would enable the audience to discuss the present. The
theme of The Trial was not tackled through Mubarak, Gaddafi, Bin Ali,
Saleh or even Saddam Hussein. Rather, it developed vis-à-vis similar regional
and international examples leaving the audience to formulate their own
apparatus to observe and discuss the subject in context. This was echoed
in one of the screenings, The Last Days of the Ceaușescus, a film that
reenacts the former Romanian dictator and his wife's trial in 1989. Likewise, The
Act of Killing, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, was also screened, a film
portraying the brutality of Indonesian gangs that were appointed
security-keepers after the military coup in 1965. In parallel to these events
was a lecture series, which included talks by Catarina Simão, Kader Attia,
Paola Yacoub and Huda Barakat in addition to Love Letters to a Union, a
lecture-performance by Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili, staging a
romance-by-correspondence in the light of the failure of the union between
Egypt and Syria.
The invitation of
Palestinian guest curators suggested that there was an explicit political
decision to include Palestine in this round's happenings, as the Palestinian
condition seems to have recently been overshadowed in popular media by the
obsessive notion of the 'Arab Spring'. Home Works 6 included screenings of
films produced since the 1970s to the present day by international artists in
support of the Palestinian cause such as Pacific Newsreel (USA) and Groupe
Cinema Vincennes (France), in addition to Infiltrators a film by Khaled
Jarrar about the contemporary adventures of people sneaking through the
apartheid wall, and Mahdi Fleifel's A World Not Ours, a portrait of
three generations of Palestinian refugees in Ein el Helwe camp in Lebanon.
Plastic Veins, a group of events organised by Turkish guest
curator Zeynep Öz, gave an overview of the institutional transition of cultural
production from Ottoman times to present day Turkey, offering an example by
which the future of the mechanisms of local and regional cultural productions
could be read.
Our Lines Are
Now Open: A Radio Series, organized by 98weeks in partnership
with Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Nora Razian was a project that discussed the
'erotics, poetics and politics of reading'. The set-up allowed the audience to
participate live in the discussion. One of the most interesting literary genres
tackled during the broadcast was science fiction in Arabic literature,
backed-up by a guided tour titled After the Future: Heritage Redux by
Ghalya Saadawi in what is known as 'Solidere', the Beirut downtown district
that was privately acquired and rebuilt after the Lebanese Civil War.
Egyptian curator, Tarek
Abou el Fetouh's curated the forum's main exhibition, which was structured
around three historic 'moments' that took place in intermediary periods in
history: the first Arab Art Biennale in Baghdad in 1974, the first Alexandria
Biennale in 1955, and the China/Avant-Garde exhibition staged in Beijing
in 1989. By re-enacting key junction points in the history of cultural
production, Abou el Fetouh's exhibition showcases the decisive role of art in
dealing with time and space, posing the reoccurring question of the
responsibility of artists and intellectuals of the region in actively
participating in discussing and constructing their contexts.
Through this mix of
conversations about the past and the present, both in works delving directly
into the issues and themes in question or indirectly through historic examples
revolving around similar subjects, Home Works 6 was able to create a framework
for a conversation about relevant contextual topics without falling into the
trap of presenting brittle reactionary works and over-the-counter idea
production. But what was observably missing in this Home Works was the intense
discussions, especially after the lectures; something previous iterations of
the forum were known for.
In addition to that,
there were no clear discussions on the active role of artists and intellectuals
in the definition of the future of the region and its identity within the scope
of the transitional time in question. This could probably be linked to the
historic scope of most of the curated works and the lack of seminars and
roundtables dedicated to liaise these works with the present. The lack of
focused debate could also be a reflection of the possible anxiety, fear and
hesitation of the participants, be it the artists or attendees, in aggressively
countering the posed and instable present tense.
Published in Ibraaz
Published in Ibraaz
