Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices

A book by Christine Tohme

October 31 – November 6, 2003 Beirut, Lebanon

Curated by: Christine Tohme Guest Curator: Rasha Salti Produced by: The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts - Ashkal Alwan Supported by: The Ford Foundation and the Ousseimi Foundation Partnered with: The Lebanese Ministry of Culture, the British Council, Espace SD, Videobrasil, and Mission Culturelle Française

This book is published by the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts - Ashkal Alwan, Saab Building No. 5, Block B, Floor 6, Phoenicia Street, Ain al-Mreisseh, Beirut, Lebanon E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ashkalalwan.org

Copyright © 2005 The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts - Ashkal Alwan Copyright © 2005 Christine Tohme Texts copyright © 2005 the authors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informa- tion storage retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 9953-0-0542-7 Tohme, Christine Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices Cultural Studies/Art Practices/Middle Eastern Studies/Graphic Arts/Performance Art

Photographic documentation and reproduction: Agop Kanledjian Images were provided by presenters, performers, and artists

Design and artwork: Mind the gap Scanning and repro: Mind the gap Typography: Monotype Gill Sans Printing and binding: Dar al-Kotob Printing House, Lebanon, February 2005

This book was published with the support of the Ford Foundation and the Ousseimi Foundation

Ford Foundation

Partners:

The Lebanese Ministry of Culture

2005,16.5 x 22 cm cm 22 x 2005,16.5

Walid Sadek Walid Ideology

Plate 21 TITIAN Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570-76) Oil on canvas, 831/2 x 811/2 inches State Museum, Kromeriz, Czechoslovakia We travel to evade our obsessions, obsessively Christine Tohme Courtesy Maher Ammar From Minor Art: Conceptual Film and Video Posters, Jalal Toufic (2000-2005), © 2005 by Jalal Toufic Acknowledgments

The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan, would like to express its gratitude to all those who participated in the Home Works II Forum, and to all those who contributed to the making of this book. The participants to the Forum were: Samer Abou Hawach, Adonis, Tony Chakar, Sherif El Azma, Samar Kanafani, Amal Kenawy, Fouad Elkoury, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Peyman Hooshmandzadeh, Rita Ibrahim, Guven Incirlioglu, Emily Jacir, Lamia Joreige, Bilal Khbeiz, Moukhtar Kocache, Mohammad Mazlum, Rabih Mroué, Sina Najafi, Marwan Rechmaoui, Hazem Saghieh, Ghassan Salhab, Roy Samaha, Lina Saneh, Anton Shammas, Elia Suleiman, Salim Tamari, Hakan Topal, Jalal Toufic, Sharif Waked, Stephen Wright, and Akram Zaatari. The contributors to the making of this book include as editors: Samar Abou Zeid, Youssef Bazzi, Bilal Khbeiz, Zeina Osman, Masha Refka, Walid Sadek, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie; as translators: Samer Abou Hawach, Bilal Khbeiz, Walid Sadek, Nisreen Salti, and Rasha Salti. We would like to thank Karl Bassil of Mind the Gap, Mohamad El Hout of Middle East Airlines, Wael Jamaleddine of Dar al-Kotob, and Ghassan Zein of GEO Vision. Other persons whose support was vital to the making of this entire project were: Pierre Abi Saab, Tarek Abou El Fetouh, Mona Abou Samra, Irene Bourse, Sandra Dagher, Hassan Daoud, Nidal El Ashkar, Rawya El Chab, Basma El Husseiny, Youssef El Khalil, Solange Farakas, Raseel Hadjian, Moukhtar Kocache, Beral Madra, Ghassan Mukheiber, Houssam Mushaimish, Maria Ousseimi, the former Minister of Culture, Dr. Ghassan Salameh, Marwan Salameh, Talal Salman, Roy Samaha, Lina Saneh, Nada Sehnaoui, Lyne Sneige-Keyrouz, Roberta Uno, Samar Wahab, and Zico House. Contents

Introduction...... 11 Lectures Beirut: A Veritable City or a Mere Historical Name? Adonis ...... 14 Between Abdel Halim and Amr Diab: Singing and Politics in Contemporary Arab Culture, Hazem Saghieh ...... 24 Returning to Beirut, Anton Shammas...... 38 Toward Extraterritoriality: The Dilemmas of Situatedness, Stephen Wright...... 48 The Archaeology of the Catastrophic, Guven Incirlioglu ...... 60 Jerusalem Walls: Real and Imagined, Salim Tamari ...... 64 Baghdad: A Metonymy for a Capital, Mohammad Mazlum...... 74 Of the Theatrical Act: A Matter of Speech and Distance, Lina Saneh ...... 84 Panel Panel: Three New York Projects, Emily Jacir, Moukhtar Kocache, and Sina Najafi, Rasha Salti ...... 100 Transcription of a Lecture Given at Home Works II, Emily Jacir...... 102 Up in the Air, Moukhtar Kocache...... 110 An Apology for Curiosity: An Imaginary Conversation Between Two Editors at Cabinet Magazine, Sina Najafi...... 120 Performances The Room, Amal Kenawy ...... 130 Looking for a Missing Employee, Rabih Mroué ...... 132 Exhibitions The Containment Re-Contained: A Xurban Collective Project, Guven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal ...... 140 Lasting Images, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige ...... 142 Zoorkhaneh, Peyman Hooshmandzadeh...... 144 Beirut Caoutchouc, Marwan Rechmaoui ...... 146 Films Chronicle of a Disappearance, Elia Suleiman...... 150 Of Conversations, Elia Suleiman...... 151 Videos This Day, Akram Zaatari ...... 162 Here and Perhaps Elsewhere, Lamia Joreige ...... 174 Mounzer, Samar Kanafani ...... 178 Chic Point, Sharif Waked ...... 179 Letters to Francine, Fouad Elkoury ...... 180 The Lost Film, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige ...... 181 Untitled for Several Reasons, Roy Samaha ...... 182 Paradox: A Story About Phobia, Rita Ibrahim ...... 183 Mon Corps Vivant, Mon Corps Mort, Ghassan Salhab ...... 184 Saving Face, Jalal Toufic ...... 185 Pilot for an Egyptian Air Hostess Soap Opera, Sherif El Azma ...... 186

The Home Works Forum is a multidisciplinary project that brings together artists, writers, and intellectuals to present their work.

Organised by Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, the forum takes place every eighteen months in exhibition and performance venues throughout Beirut. It unfolds over the course of a week in a series of lectures, screenings, debates, publication launches, and artistic interventions. All events associated with the forum are free and open to the public.

Each edition of the forum presents the work of established artists and supports the production of new projects by emerging artists. Each forum also launches publications, including artists’ books and a full catalogue documenting the previ- ous edition of the forum. The purpose of these publications is to archive the forum’s work and allow us to look back on it critically.

Originally conceived as a regional platform for cultural practices in the Arab world, the Home Works Forum has since shed its geographic/geopolitical focus to concentrate on kindred artistic and intellectual concerns that are operative all over the world.

What links the forum’s participants together is their approach to a common set of urgent, timely questions. Their work endeavours to create methods of critical inquiry and aesthetic form capable of conveying those questions meaningfully and proposing possible solutions.

As a title, the term “Home Works” suggests an intertwining of public and private spheres, the outside world of work and the inside space of home. It refers to the exercises, lessons, and research problems that are worked out by students repetitively and in solitude. More broadly, “Home Works,” itself an impossible plural, implies a process of internal excavation, of digging and burrowing deeper while simultaneously constructing and accumulating new practices.

On a logistical level, the Home Works Forum is in a constant state of excavation and construction. The first edition of the Home Works Forum opened in early April 2002 and coincided with the outbreak of the second intifada in Palestine. The second edition of the Home Works Forum opened in late October 2003, after a six-month delay due to the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003. The third edition of the Home Works Forum is taking place in mid November 2005, again after a six-month delay due to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. At this point, the Home Works Forum has (we think) settled into a regular schedule of regular disruption.

This unpredictable dynamic has become a rhythm, a paradoxical routine. Because the practical and political circumstances around our work are always breaking and shifting, relevant questions about dislocation and disruption have imposed themselves repeatedly.

From the experience of organising three editions of the Home Works Forum, it is no longer self-evident for us to assume that such a platform makes true dialogue and cultural exchange possible. What the Home Works Forum allows for, rather, is a productive space in which political, social, economic, and cultural realities can be explored, reflected, and made manifest as visual and verbal articulations that occur with some consistency. These articulations have become our obsession. Christine Tohme Ashkal Alwan, 2005

Lectures

Beirut Today: A Veritable City or a Mere Historical Name? Adonis Between Abdel Halim and Amr Diab: Singing and Politics in Contemporary Arab Culture, Hazem Saghieh Returning to Beirut, Anton Shammas Toward Extraterritoriality: The Dilemmas of Situatedness, Stephen Wright The Archaeology of the Catastrophic, Guven Incirlioglu Jerusalem Walls: Real and Imagined, Salim Tamari Baghdad: A Metonymy for a Capital, Mohammad Mazlum Of the Theatrical Act: A Matter of Speech and Distance, Lina Saneh Beirut Today: A Veritable City or a Mere Historical Name?

Adonis

Odd as it is, let us first dally with named it the “City of Tombs”. language. As you all probably know, The second vision, that of Saint one meaning of the word medina Augustine, tells that the true city, (city) in lisan al-arab (the lexicon the one he named the “City of of the Arabic language) is al-ama, God”, does not arise on murder or the kept woman. And of a man and sacrifice but on the resurrec- is said: He is a son of a medina, tion of Christ. In other words, it is meaning that he is the son of an not on death that a city is built but ama. Thus a male slave is a medine on resurrection, on life. as a female slave is a medina. Also, Finally, it is perhaps useful if one uses medani to refer only to not illuminating to indicate that the illumined city, al-Medina, the the Aztecs were known to sacri- prophet’s city. As for all other cities fice their virgins on the pinnacle the term medini is used instead and of pyramids for the sun to shine so to differentiate them from the again. They believed that a new illumined city. day would not dawn unless virgins To this linguistic dally let me add sank in blood. It is then crime that two foundational visions for cities insures an ever-renewed sun, as it as discussed by Michel Serres in his is also crime which founds history. book The Origins of Geometry (Paris, Allow me now to raise a few 1993), which shed much light on questions inspired by these visions: my talk today of Beirut: The pre- Where does the ingenuity of the Christian Roman vision and that of Lebanese and Arabs generally Saint Augustine. manifest itself? In enlivening or in According to legend, the first deadening? In celebrating living or vision tells that Rome was founded digging graves, funerary orations, and on the severed head of Romus celebrating death? In the construc- killed by his twin brother Romulus tion of lives or in edifying death? (753 BC); a legend which posits Is there in each one of us Arabs blood, murder, and sacrifice as an Aztec vowing to wrench the the foundation for Rome. It is no heart of another for the sake of mystery then that Chateaubriand one’s own dawn? Does the Lebanese and Arab of a human being but rather inside culture generally stand upon the and so every spoilage of the place following axiom: Life does not is damaging to human beings. spring forth nor days pass except A city becomes architecturally where blood runs? unique through what can be called If the city is on the one hand a “pleasure of the place”, an exten- an architectural vision and on the sion of Roland Barthes’ “pleasure other hand an actual construction of the text”. Beirut is practically that actualises this vision, is then devoid of such a pleasure. I am today’s architectural vision of Beirut referring to the aesthetic use of responding to the dictates and spatial clearings coupled with their demands of its natural place? functional use. Imparting poetic and With all due respect to all con- aesthetic qualities, and consequent- cerned architects I am inclined to ly adding value to the physicality of answer: No. For the architecture the place, generates such pleasure. that dominates the city of Beirut For instance, a closer relation lacks a minimum of ingenuity and is required between architecture regional peculiarity. Beirut is an and the other arts — sculpture architecture of imitation and mind- especially. Courtyards, streets, gar- less replication. Notwithstanding a dens, bifurcations, crossroads, and few exceptions, the general rule corners — all these do not simply prevails and inevitably blots any merge in a city’s structure or rather rare exceptions. do not accomplish their urban and This architecture translates a architectural dimensions unless social reality or social content more punctuated by artistic or natural so than it harbours an architectural objects. Moreover, it is necessary to artistry, a peculiar characteristic, or provide beautiful spaces within the specific and unique architectural city’s structure using painting and all meaning. It is merely a functional the other forms of image-making translation of a social, economic, as well as theatre, cinema, and and sectarian reality. And so it is other expressive arts. made of prefabricated moulds Architecture is organically com- rather than architectural plans. plemented by the other arts. It is Moulds are but one form repeated. fundamentally in need of the other And repetition inevitably empties arts when constructing the city to the signified from its signification, compensate for what is inevitably thus instigating estrangement and a functional. And it is those other feeling of confinement. arts that complete the aesthetic Briefly said, Beirut is an architec- dimension of architecture and cre- ture without planning, and in this ate what I have called the “pleasure sense it is a destruction of space. of the place”. Just as sectarianism destroys the Thus it is easier for us to recog- space of culture and of human nise that what fashions the space of beings in Beirut, so does archi- Beirut does not stem from an urban tecture destroy the space of the architectural and aesthetic vision but place. It is another kind of place for rather from individual vagaries con- consumption. Place is not outside gruous only with certain mercantile

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 15 and sectarian interests. The out- is inevitably tied and annexed to come is a haphazard polluting and the particular position of a certain polluted architectural space. And confession, the clout of its leaders, such a building construction cannot and the wealth of its constituents be but a spatial thieving, a violation more so than to planning or urban of space, a sort of violence against visions that ought to include the earth, an assassination of earth and whole of the city within a general space. regulating framework. Suffice it to The reality is that building con- look at what is supposed to stand struction in Beirut is no more than as the leading institution of higher a practical technicality that claims education, the Lebanese University, to answer pressing needs. What to blatantly see how it reflects a is lacking is the intimate meeting general dissolution of a national of construction and space. It is as culture in non-nationalism, non-civil- if buildings were a series of sharp ity, and non-urbanity. The Lebanese reliefs digging deep into the reliefs University is an embodiment of nature like claws digging into the of internal collapse: educational, spleen of the earth. cultural, and political. Culture in Beirut today is like an odd and Beirut is similar to its architecture: motley collection of neighbour- a multiplicity that quarrels rather hoods: boxes with darkened and than concords. As for social liv- closed tiers. The question is: Is ing, it is tied to neighbourhoods, Bourj Hammoud a veritable neigh- which in turn are made of isolated bour of Hamra or Ras Beirut? Is coalitions of inhabitants. Religion is Achrafieh truly a neighbour of Ain the primary basis for this culture. al-Mreisseh or al-Chiyah? Each Beirut is a mosaic: an ensemble of neighbourhood thinks itself the neighbourhoods, of confessions, navel in a city made of navels with and of cultures. And from this per- no real body. Consequently we spective it is a non-urban city or recognise that the inhabitants of a non-civil city. What exacerbates these neighbourhoods, of these this non-urbanity and non-civility darkened boxes, are nothing but is the incongruous, tragic, and bla- shreds and fragments crossing one tant persistence of a purportedly another in a geographical place foundational and prevalent Beiruti historically known as Beirut. And discourse: democracy, human rights, as such Beirut is a scene or, at best, emanation of knowledge, and other a stage-set but not a city. It is as fallacious propaganda. if nature in Beirut were unnatural. Just as Beirut is a non-urban And where there is no nature, and non-civil city, so is its domi- there are no human beings. In this nant culture a sort of sycophancy fragmented Beirut, statues and for all its hypocrisy, boastfulness, pictures occupy streets and squares, embellishments, and avoidance of and slogans plunder and impose crucial issues in all domains. What symbols, further subdividing the makes the importance of a culture city. Whatever we come upon in in a country where intellectuals some neighbourhoods in terms of acquire their standing not from development, services, or hygiene their capabilities and ingenuity but rather from their sectarian loyalty confessionally is but a world of and belonging? The truth is that cleavages, frontiers, and obstacles; the political, administrative, and inevitably resulting in wars, latent cultural institutions in Beirut do or manifest, according to the logic not evaluate a person according of particular situations. It is as if the to his or her personal capacities womb of Beirut is vowed to con- but according to his or her con- tinually beget Cain. fessional or sectarian credentials. In fact, confessional clans do not And by extension he or she gains live in Beirut “the city”. Rather, they standing according to the extent of merely scuttle across and prefer his or her closeness to the leader to live deeply in the church, the of a confession. How scornful of mosque, in addition to the pub of humanity are such standards, stan- politics and mercantilism. That is dards which invariably reflect the why time in Beirut seems exclu- culture. For in the Lebanese culture sively that of these three places there is no real dialogue among its and not the time of an urban parts, just a vociferous verbosity culture — as if Beirut lived outside made of praise and defamation. the creative time of humanity, the In this perspective, one sees time of civilization. It is a mere that it is the space of Beirut that observatory for mere expectations. is scorned and fragmented into a Because of this, the geniuses of collection of enclaves each fenced these three places or these three by its own customs. Yet as contra- spaces persist in making the future dictory as it may be, the invisible a form or image of the past, mean- act of quarrelling and excluding the ing that they persist, practically, in other carries a propensity toward destroying the Beirut of the pres- convergence that seeks ultimately ent and of the future. And what of to re-mould the other into one’s a human space struggling to turn own semblance. But when I insist the future into a past, or in which on making the other similar to me, the past seems as if it were the I am in fact insisting on cancelling future? him; for the propensity towards In Beirut we have nothing but convergence in Beirut is about its name and the lingering reputa- approximation more so than about tion it evokes. And if a name is cohabitation. It is the will to cancel all we have then how can it face or exclude, dissolve and smelt. And prevalent and superficial modes of the aim is invariably to conquer consumerism? and to dominate under the guise of Are we then also in the right to cohabitation. say that Beirut does not constitute The space of Beirut is a sacred one social network but rather place, not because it is a national layers or human agglomerations unifier but rather a collection of raised on confessional and religious confessional incorporations. That foundations? We all know that the is why it is unfeasible, in principle, civil war was a savage explosion for it to be a place for equality, for that rent the veil off the politico- there is no equality except in the religious volcano that is Beirut. The worldly and secular. A place divided civil war was resounding evidence

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 17 that the human and cultural con- urban and civil kernel for Beirut is cept of a city is of no importance Maarad Street and its vicinity that to its inhabitants. Everyone in this was destroyed by the civil war war, except for a marginalised and then recently rebuilt. This spot, minority, rode the wave of his or aside from its lack of artworks, her confessional loyalties and gave through its architecture, archaeo- full reigns to his or her repressions, logical digs, space and elements of devouring and raping the land of its ordered structure, can afford Lebanon, in every way and means to both the inhabitant and the possible. And there it is, for all to passerby, a specific felicity charged witness, the manifestations of those with aesthetic emotions that results released repressions piling up in in a sense that the city is built to Beirut and along the Lebanese serve humans and cater to their coastal mountains of despicable mental and physical comfort. It is a cement edifices blinding eyes and spot that practically embodies the vision; horrible mountains that architectural theory that proposes murder nature and suffocate the a variety of aesthetic dimensions beaches that once witnessed the to continuously surround humans sails and masts of the alphabet. in the public and the private space. A city, any city, is not accom- That is why it is no coincidence plished, is not a veritable city, unless to see this spot, more so than any human creativity dialogues with other part of the city, filled every its identity — in its being and day with groups of people of all its perpetuity. And it is precisely ages, all confessions, and from all in the arts that such creativity is neighbourhoods seeking leisure present. For it is art, sculpted and and comfort. There lies in this spe- painted, rhymed and put to music, cific show a generous shattering of that constitutes the only human the confessional and cultural web endeavour that gives a quiddity of Beirut and an implicit longing for that transcends humanity and time. another urban and civil space. Through its perpetuity and peren- Of course that is tenable only nial influence art is different from in principle. For in practice, people all other human works. It is as if art stroll about in that spot in proximi- were a temporal order that founds ty but do not truly meet. They cross a human and aesthetic cosmology. each other but do not interact, And it is in this sense that the city collaborate, or engage in a cultural becomes art or else remains a exchange, in the broadest sense bundle of blind accumulations: To of the term. Perhaps we should become art a city should break remind ourselves that the recon- through functionalism and be filled struction project for the Beirut city with art, statues, research centres, centre is primarily geared toward science, and gardens to establish foreign exploitation. And although an aesthetic balance between the people may concoct in the future architecture of dwelling and the their own mode of exchange, architecture of daily public life. the plan, as it is implemented, is The only part that constitutes unconcerned with profound and a spot for what can become the productive cultural exchange. It is solely concerned with the exchange infamous. of goods of all kinds. It is a plan for The creative obsession in Beirut restoration and beautification for a began to wane or retreat ever post-civil war peace, and perhaps since the advent of monotheistic also for its potential. So far, it does religions. This is historically evi- not exceed this set limit. And we denced in that Beirut was never all ought to hope that this spot, I able to equal what it created and mean the city centre, does not produced during its pre-monotheis- deteriorate under the weight of tic epochs, not in law, philosophy, or greed and be transformed into a in the arts. mere collection of shops. Beirut was born one. But if we But what is the meaning of the were to look at its parts we will word city in its modern usage? find that it has succumbed and still Firstly, it means the upholding of lives a despairing history because shared public values, untouchable of the fragmentation itself. And if and impersonal. we were to look at it as a whole Secondly, it means that it is we see that it is probably the founded on democracy that main- worst among all the cities of the tains this public property and the Arab world. freedom of each individual. For all To that, it must be added that that is in a city, whether material or since the 1950s, Beirut was gradu- ideas, is open for debate at any time. ally dragged by religious politics Thirdly, it means a complete or politicised religions toward an balance between the public and abyss of delusions that led in the impersonal and the private and 1970s to a savagery of internecine specific, namely a balance between destruction. And so it became sociality and individuality. known as a place for non-social If we return, in accordance coalitions and for concerns found- with the above mentioned, to ed solely on individualistic and the ancient philosophical tradi- monopolising tendencies. Beirut is tion, which proffers that the most internal and introverted while its accomplished model for theoretical arms seem to encircle the outside. thinking lies in the contemplation It is a fertile and varied field ever of earth and universe, then what of exploited by others. It is a meeting our thinking when compared with place for all sorts of politics with this earth called Beirut and this none of its own. It is a factory of space called the universe? knowledge, but one that stutters, is Since this question has been wayward, and paradoxically igno- coupled with a remembrance of rant. It is the tangible city and yet the earliest origins of Beirut, name- one that is most abstract. ly the development of the alphabet, It is a mere equation: one that the exploration of the unknown, gave birth to a body exploding embracing reason, the creative with longing and craving. On the receptiveness of the other, then level of thought, we find in Beirut the answer will be tragic, no matter two effective ideas: religion and the the amount of delusional claims for politics based upon it. A religion which the Lebanese have become that is oblivious to everything but

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 19 its own institutions and its needs, do in breaking the ever-tightening and politics that continues to feed confessional noose. upon a past founded on nepotism. And today, after all the horrors Everything else, whether art, of the civil war fed by sectarianism, philosophy, thinking, or social and although perhaps not its primary natural sciences, is marginal, inef- cause, the situation is clearly ruled fective, and negligible. It is also by division, the logic of quotas, and completely absent from the level of sectarian pillaging. It is unfortunate general consciousness. that the eyes of those responsible The resources Beirut has for roam left and right in search of initiating an urban and civilisational solutions and claim to find some shift are represented in three unex- in loans borrowed for develop- ploited and unprotected aspects. mental programs but remain blind First, there are its specialised to those answers easily found in human resources, unfortunately cultural programs. Obviously I do drained by the emigration of not simply mean publishing maga- skilled labour and accomplished zines and editing books. Cultural minds. Second, there are its natural programs include the whole range resources, an ecology so far demol- of research, invention, development, ished and polluted in sea and on and new visions within cooperative land by the defacement of moun- frameworks in the fields of science, tains, the pollution of drinkable literature, fine and performing arts, water, and the general over-use music, architecture, agriculture, of chemical fertilisers and plastic educational research, ecological greenhouses. Its third resource is its research, industrial research, local culture, beginning with the culture industries, political and legal confer- of rural life, the architecture of ences. And yet we see that these space in neighbourhoods and the institutions responsible for pro- architecture of cities, and on to moting interactivity and exchange institutions and cultural programs. It are reneging on their vocation, is good to remember that Lebanon or at least are capitulating to the remained even in the midst of the demands of sectarianism rather civil war a major centre for publish- than endeavouring to secularise as ing. It is also good to remember schools or universities ought to. that cultural and educational Development cannot be with- programs initiated between the out its primary capitals, which are 50s and 70s were ripe with future the capabilities and potentials of promises. They were clearings the people and nature of Lebanon. for meeting and communicating Neither loans nor borrowed pro- outside the confessional kingdoms. grams can replace human cultural They were an open space with force and natural resources. a promise for growth and devel- It is therefore necessary to say opment through exchange and that Beirut as a place does not profound partnerships. Regulations have an audience that can view it and capital are incapable by them- as one city. There is no correspon- selves to effectuate what a free and dence between its history and the profound cultural movement can history of its inhabitants. For each coalition of inhabitants promotes deadly beats of the modern world, and protects its own history and as beats that alienate and send us all such maintains a rift with the place scurrying to gather the shreds of a in which it lives. As if this place in lost and longed for motley identity. which it lives were not the home of It is then axiomatic to say its being, not a locus for civilisation that Beirut is neither one society but rather an outpost for trade. nor one city. Its inhabitants do In other words: Does Beirut not coexist as equals, sharing have a singular memory, and what responsibilities and rights, but as is it? How can it have a singular a quarrelling bunch where each history? The last civil war unlike all tries to be master. It is as if the other civil wars has increased the energy of Beirut is pre-emptied. It rift among the population rather spends half the time dissipating its than instigate its fusion. energy outside its orbits while it Between the oblivion of a singu- spends the rest of the time trying lar memory and a singular history, to gather it. Beirut has no present except that There is in Beirut a variety of of copying and mimesis, namely ethnicities and cultures unequalled the present of the modernised in the Mediterranean basin, at least West. Edit all that is Western from its Levantine side. That is why we Beirut and you will find nothing but suppose that such a city, consider- the church and the mosque. And ing its location, its potential roles, what is disastrous is that Beirut and its unique human and cultural is approaching a time when the composition, should stand in a church and the mosque will also distinguished position poised for a become useless. They will become unique civilisational meeting. impotent and immature, a mere Yet the realities of living in market among souks. Beirut ascertain that people con- Beirut is an agglomeration of sider it a shelter and not a city. religious groups: I say religious to Each holds on and defends his avoid the term confessional, which own fragment of a shelter. Each has become vulgarised. Each of practices by will or by force tactics these religious groups creates its of exclusion, contrariness, fixity, and own centre, its own city within the torpor. And what we still call the city. It creates it not only with ideas state is no more than an external and opinions but also practices it shell in which these exclusions and in action and imagination. Struggle quarrels move about with a sem- in Beirut is not only between the blance of legitimacy. In this place oppressor and the oppressed or each walks haunted by a foreigner, between the rich and the poor. It is be it a mediator, an ally, or a patron. also a struggle of ideals and utopias, In this city, this foreign other is an or shall we say in terms contrary organic part of the mind and imagi- to common opinion that it is a nation. Harmony with the foreign struggle of prophecies and last exterior comes as a compensation judgments. And that is why it is a for quarrelling with the interior. struggle of passions and potentates. And as such it is a fundamentally It is a struggle that follows the ambiguous compensation.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 21 In Beirut, people manifestly live certitude. Consequently, what we in contiguity. Yet they are separated call a society is nothing but an by wide chasms. The distance agglomeration of disjointed atoms. between the neighbourhoods of We also read that the struggle con- Achrafieh and Ras al-Nabaa and tinues in the name of this temporal Ras Beirut and Bourj Hammoud, and worldly throne, which tends to for instance, are much greater on integrate the world as a comple- the level of values and aspirations ment to integrating the other world. than between Paris and Rome or It is a struggle accomplished only Cairo and Mecca. through violence and therefore The foundational characteristic through tyranny and oppression. of a city lies in its efficiency to tran- We also read timid attempts at scend its geographical limits, namely emancipation from the outside, but the creativity which overflows aiming to make the powerful more across its limits toward the other. tyrannical and the tyrannical more In this perspective, if we were powerful. It is a distorted and fun- to look at Beirut we would see damentally impossible emancipation: it as a body fighting and devour- No people can become emanci- ing itself. For Beirut the city is not pated if not internally free. faithful to its human map or to its We also read on this map that geographical map. And thus the Beirut, or this Levant, is poverty in dysfunctionality of Beirut is not due everything and poverty for every- to foreign influence but to a lack thing. Poverty unalleviated except of hegemony over itself. It is Beirut purportedly by two things: money that works against it being a whole and power. For that is the prime city. It acts as a multifarious city, desire that moves individuals — with multifarious coalitions and cul- go, die out so that I can replace tures. To contemplate the obstacles you — in politics, religion, money, that prevail against its growth and art, poetry, and literature. All want development into a whole city to incarnate the person of the — the inequalities and injustices, tyrant, the person of the sovereign, the rise of unemployment — is the infallible one. It is a nihilism to contemplate a pile of houses reversed, one that reduces all the disconnected from any natural and dimensions of human experience to urban sensitivity, less a city than a the edicts of divine jurisprudence litany of grandiose enunciations. and interdictions, incrimination of It is almost as if the geography the other and acquittal of the self. of Beirut were a reduced map We rebel against one tyranny with of the Arabic Levant, Syria, Iraq, another tyranny, against one religion Palestine, and Jordan. In this map with another, against one copy with we read that no value is given to another. It is a naïve and ludicrous the earth except as a temporal reduction. It is a politics of death throne or as an otherworldly body. in a world that seems founded on In this map we read that relations one exterminating the other. amongst people are not based on A dark image of Beirut? Some citizenship but on the foundation might say. But even so, Beirut almost of this worldly or otherworldly became the cultural city of the Arabs in the 60s and early 70s. A truth, eternal as a corpse stinking city invented by publishers and of putrefaction. Those same ones creators, Lebanese and Arabs, flock- forget the lessons of history: Rotten ing to reside. But this Beirut was ideas are dead even if dominant. extinguished during the civil war. All What is worse in this field is that that is left now is to dream in the censorship looks upon ideas as midst of all this darkness, to sing its criminal. For to claim that an idea is dreams having been demolished by disruptive or destructive and then its realities. And now the dream is censor it is a denigration of those about to be snuffed out under the who express it and an insult to onslaught of censorship. For censor- those it claims to protect. ship does not only suffocate reality, The lack of freedom in a society it strangles the dream itself. Living is not only an indication of a lack thought and living humans refuse of a minimum of humanity but also to be surveilled. Nothing and no an indication of a senility of thinking, one condones censorship unless he language, and man. who is living as dead or is thought We are wrong if we are to think of as dead. That is how censorship that an idea could be imposed by pictures Beirut: a pile of straws flam- force, even if it is a religious idea. mable by a simple spark of words. We are also wrong to think that And let us say, on the political level, an idea can be limited through that the censoring authority tells censorship. Neither imposition is the people: You are incapable of dis- worthy of man. What is worthy is tinguishing the good from the bad, for us to create the conditions that incapable of judging and evaluating. allow freedom to do away with the This authority, infallible as it would bad and the ugly. For the bad is a like to appear, evaluates and judges reflection of a situation. Avoiding in your name. And all you can do is its causes only exacerbates the be silent and forget knowledge. issue. And so there is no other way But such an authority rules a but to strive in order to change dead city, a dead people, and is the situation itself by eradicating itself nothing but one of the masks the reasons that cause it. And to of death. For those who propound that end there is no other mean censorship forget that the ideas but freedom. In the name of this they impose on the silenced ones freedom I have dared to ask the are automatically pre-emptied. question: Any thought that is imposed is Beirut today: A veritable city or unthinking and inhuman. Each idea a mere historical name? elevated as the sole and eternal

A Syrian poet and literary critic, Adonis was born Ali Ahmad Esber in Qassabin and studied philosophy at Damascus University and Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He established two groundbreaking literary journals, Shi’r and Mawaqif. Through his views on modernism and his radical vision of Arab culture, Adonis has strongly influenced both his contemporaries and subsequent generations of theorists and thinkers.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 23 Between Abdel Halim and Amr Diab: Singing and Politics in Contemporary Arab Culture

Hazem Saghieh

When I typed the name Abdel country, the greater country”). Halim Hafez, searching on the Undoubtedly, Abdel Halim’s internet for what I did not know songbook was marked with an about him and trying to recall indelible imprint by the fervour of what I had known, I was flooded Nasserism and its calling to build a with a stream of articles and news state whose singers celebrated the reports on Abdel Halim Khaddam achievements of its army, its work- and Hafez al-Assad.1 It seemed ers, its peasants, and its leader. farfetched, at least on the World Much in the spirit of the 1960s Wide Web, for the halim and the worldwide, songs and singing — at hafez to pair in the body of a single least a faction among them — individual,2 despite the fact that in were conceived as inextricably reality, they existed in the bodies of bound to politics, as had been the two separate individuals. A simple, case with the civil rights movement, trivial occurrence perhaps, unbe- the sexual revolution, and the war knownst to the Dark Nightingale in Vietnam, which set the stage for (al-Andalib al-Asmar), but nonethe- the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, less revealing of the little fortune and others. Abdel Halim’s lack of he has garnered, a quarter of a fortuity is partly due to the divide century after his passing.3 that shaped the experience of the However much fastened to 1960s, or in the most charitable his person, the political has spilled of formulations, the reality of the 1 Hafez al-Assad was Syria’s presi- onto to the artistry of Abdel Halim plurality of that experience, as dent from 1970 to 2000, and Abdel Halim Khaddam was his and invaded its realms. After all, the above-mentioned decade vice president. he is the balladeer of Nasserism exacerbated and confounded the 2 The halim is the Arabic equiva- who was only 23 years old at the ambiguities within every locale, lent for the tolerant while the time of the July 23 coup in 1952. despite early signs at its incep- hafez is the keeper or the He sang for the high dam and tion suggesting a unified tenor. preserver. distinguished himself as the most Questions about sexuality and 3 Dark Nightingale was a title dynamic and only male voice in gender that marked the 1960s in given to Abdel Halim Hafez, by which he became widely the choir carolling: “Watani habibi, the “Western world” did not find known. al-watan al-akbar” (“My beloved their place on the agendas in the “Eastern world”, which seemed con- Arab 60s were par excellence tent in rediscovering sentimentality the historical moment of a deep on a new scale. engagement with questions of wide In the political and intellec- public concern. The decade was tual domains, the differentiation inaugurated by the war in Yemen, emerged in a variety of ways. Those Algeria earned its independence at espousing socialism in Europe, for a devastating cost in blood, violent instance, proclaimed their rejection strife ensued in southern Yemen, of nationalism and its harvest of the PLO was established, the 1967 strong states. They followed social war broke out and, at the conclu- and cultural innovations in keeping sion of the decade, Gamal Abdel with Harold Wilson’s attempt to Nasser passed away. reconcile socialism to the techno- This is not to discount the logical revolution. They debated Western world’s share of troubling at length the phenomenon of the events and crises that marked its emergence of a managerial class decade, between the Berlin Wall as the new substitute for a bour- and the Bay of Pigs, and the spec- geoisie holding ownership over tre of nuclear doom only a stone’s the means of production. They throw away. However, the genera- observed closely the transforma- tion born after World War II was tion of the petite bourgeoisie from intent on living and wanted others an old class chiefly constituted by to share their calling. They pro- the peasantry, craftsmen, and small claimed their sweeping yearning for commerce — the “Poujadists” — life with a heightened awareness of into a new class comprised of their individualism and their bodies, salaried employees orbiting in the empowered by the economic well- universe of civil service and public being afforded by the Marshall Plan administration. for reconstruction and Keynesian Conversely, soon after the Baath welfare economic policies. True, party rose to power in 1963 in they were primed to apprehend Iraq and in Syria, with its ideology their 60s with the tragic death of pairing socialism with nationalism, James Dean in 1955, and embarked it sought to eliminate its enemies, into their decade with the suicide including the socialists and national- of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, fol- ists. Damascus Radio, preaching the lowed by the assassination of John herald of a new value, found its Kennedy a year later. The grave- anthem in the infamous song that yards, however, resisted becoming began with the stanza which said: the conclusive end to the lives of “Al-Baath qamat thawratuhu / wal- these icons. Months before he per- thar darat dawratuhu” (“The Baath ished, James Dean personified the has realised its revolution / and the “rebel without a cause”, an effigy time for avenging has come”). that encouraged the youth to craft With the exception of a its own cause from conflicting aspi- discreet minority of those who rations and fears they perceived as studied in Western schools and embodied in the handsome actor. hailed from the upper classes Furthermore, by the 1950s, and the haute bourgeoisie, the representation of the masculine

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 25 archetype in the domains of Abdel Halim launched into a cinema and music had begun to song and ended it, standing in the witness a rebellion against the same spot. Picturing him smoking a prevailing machismo virility of the cigarette on stage and nonchalantly likes of John Wayne and Clark flicking the butt, for example, was Gable. New faces had emerged beyond the realm of the imagina- with blurred gender differen- tion as was any expectation from tiations, from Paul Newman to him to use playfulness, humour, Marlon Brando — whose personas and parody, like the French-Belgian endured suffering and died in the singer Jacques Brel, not to mention storylines of films in which they American or British performers. performed — to Elvis Presley While Mohammad Abdel Wahab before he was afflicted with obesity, performed in the vein of the tradi- to the Beatles and Mick Jagger. In tional cultural creed, underscoring general, these figures evoked very reverence to the podium, Abdel little of that self-assured virility, their Halim fell short from going as far faces, particularly those of James as to undermine the podium and Dean, Marlon Brando, and later deride its reverence. Touting that Mick Jagger, were nonetheless easy sort of a rebellion was beyond his to remember because their lips ability. If Elvis Presley roused the ire were prominent. of conservative mores in the 1950s, Lips, as is widely agreed, are which taxed his stage shows and amongst the physical features of hip gyrations as overcharged with the body that portend the most sexual suggestion, and as a result feminine evocations. To many, Abdel television broadcasts filmed his per- Halim’s sexuality suggested a dual- formances strictly from the waist ity; he embodied sensitivity and up, in the case of Abdel Halim, gentleness, in sharp contrast with similar considerations could not the manly aura of Fareed Shawqi, even reach such level of discussion who was named Wahsh al-Shashah to begin with. Had he attempted (Monster of the Screen). Abdel a fourth of what adeptly became Halim, with his lot of little fortune, Elvis’ signature, most likely Abdel could not dream of challenging the Halim would have become yet social norms that girded his life. another martyr among the martyrs When he performed, he moved ushered to the margins, those for his head, swayed his hand, shut his whom officialdom is too embar- eyes, or gazed with languor. All in rassed to enlist in the pantheon of contrast to his teacher, Mohammad martyrdom. Abdel Wahab, who stood with After the passing of so many stiff rectitude like a statue behind years, it is not possible to ignore a podium, his head coiffed with the repressive regime that Abdel a fez, very elegantly dressed. The Halim endured consciously or contrast emphasised the lament- unconsciously. The youth that ing sentimentality in Abdel Halim’s made up his following was partly posturing, but it did not make for impelled by how he drew the a sharp departure or radical break contours of their grief, but he also with his predecessor. later revealed the boundaries that corseted their universe. Part and al engagement with what impelled parcel of the relationship was a the tearing in the first place. pleasure extracted from divulging a Thus does reality morph into certain degree of interior pain, or a a realm of complete purity, as relishing in its description. The still with, for example, the emotional thriving currency of the Halimite vocabulary inspired from the icons musical sensibility, in contrast to the of the Virgin and her son, or with legacy of his generational peers, the syrupy pain of pure love, the feeds from the evidently lingering sleep of a child, the motherhood proclivity to this dead-end senti- of a mother, the martyrdom of the mentality in our societies. martyr. Abdel Halim — whose ren- That relationship is, in fact, ditions were repeatedly described predicated on a certain degree of as “from the heart”, and who sang: kitsch playing an operative role, not “Damii shuhudi / garrah khududi” unlike the function the crucifixion (“My tears witness / they have of Christ and the pain of the Virgin scarred my cheeks”) and “Fi yaom, perform to instigate an emotional fi shahr, fi sanah / tihda al-girah weh charge amongst Christian believers. tnam / da umr gurhi ana / atwal min Within the finite, total sentimen- al-ayyam” (“In a day, in a month, in tal circle locked in these sorts of a year / wounds settle and go to relationships, relived over and over, rest / my wounds remain / longer kitsch is ideally suited for enabling than the days”) — is the balladeer a swift and unencumbered fusion whose songbook was replete with of the re-enactment of the lived the vocabulary of heaven, fire, tears, and what is sought to be relived. and wounds. His films carried titles The excesses borne with kitsch, echoing the same vein, such as elevated to the lofty scale of sacral- Al-Wisadah al-Khaliyah (The Empty ity, ensure that the reliving of the Pillow) and Al-Khatayah (Sins), reso- emotional state remains identical nating ominously with the “life and to the one described, and wards passions of Christ”. Abdel Halim off the danger that unrelenting died very young, at the age of 48, repeated enactments render the after the press had satiated itself at emotions contrived. According to length with reports and rumours Milan Kundera, the sentimentality about his health. His premature of kitsch does not belong in the demise imparted his aura with a first tear shed at the specific loss romanticism of a Gibran-esque of someone or something, the real scale, which may not have matched expression of sorrow. Rather, it lies his fusion with the world of nature in the “second tear”, or the meta- — as was espoused by the hippie tear, that springs from what dwells movement, for example — but behind that tear and all tears nonetheless found inspiration for shed in compassion and concert his title, al-Andalib al-Asmar, from with shared collective feelings and nature. sentiments. It speaks for an emo- When the popular Egyptian tion in lieu of others, a surrogate poet Ahmad Fuad Najem wanted intimating in the interest of others, to satirise Abdel Halim Hafez, he avoiding a straightforward emotion- went for his Achilles’ heel, or the

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 27 crux of his kitsch: “Al-leylah hay inquisition of morals, as had been yighanni wa yitnahhad wa yimut” the convention previously. Rather, (“Tonight he will sing and sigh and they seem to earn the admira- die”). Another image was used by tion of women, who in turn have Arab caricaturists who represented changed and no longer subscribe him singing “Nar Ya Habibi” (“Fire, to the convention that previously Oh My Love”) with fire-fighters had them yearning for the “manly rescuing him from flames. The man”. If these notions, popular in departed Egyptian star stands our Arab social realms, do not for the state of being in extremis. necessarily manifest themselves in While others sang, he “loved sing- palpable findings, popular modes ing to death”, and while others fell of dancing attest to the definitive in love, he “loved to death”. transformation in mores. On the Love until death is at the oppo- one hand, men, from any Arab city, site end of the universe that Amr never partook in dancing — the Diab enacts, sings, and depicts. reference here is not to those folk- His songbook and showcase are loric dances designed for men only, replete with ballads of courtship nor to the professional transsexual and love, but their temperature performers — especially not the does not rise to the soaring sort of dancing usually stigmatised height of passion, and his following as feminine, like oriental dance. has never lost sight of the con- In fact, the stakes suggest that ventionally professional distance the traditional male archetype is separating the performer and the teetering toward its demise, at least text performed. Whereas listeners in urban settings, after the glory it were nearly driven to weeping in garnered during the era of Abdel concert with Abdel Halim and in Halim, a historical bracket when sympathy for him — as if he were nationalism reigned on the one the youngest sibling in the family, hand, and before women’s move- afflicted with some ailment — Amr ments achieved their victories in Diab’s singing remains exterior, the West on the other. The revival functional, essentially and basically of Hajj Metwalli and the wide an inducement for dancing, to the popularity achieved by that fictional extent where dancing alongside yet seemingly typical character at him seems to be the paramount the hands of both Islamists and objective of his singing. non-Islamists should not confuse Unlike his predecessor, the the television entertainment value young artist is not unfortunate. in the representation of that char- Without ambivalence to gender acter engendering that popularity differentiations and with unabashed — particularly during prime time boldness, he dares to feminise his in the month of Ramadan — with gaze. In the last decade, traditional presumptions on how such a char- gender functions of masculinity and acter would fare in an urban and 4 Hajj Metwalli is a a central femininity have changed a great civic realm that has espoused a protagonist who was polyga- deal; men are able to effeminise, penchant for challenging inherited mous in a widely popular and 4 famous Egyptian TV serial pro- seriously or playfully without the tradition and the sacred. We are duced for the Ramadan season. risk of calling onto themselves an living the moment after Madonna dared to playfully eroticise Jesus into the distant past contempo- Christ, and more importantly, when raneous cultural binds between every corner in the whole world is Arabs themselves, and their dim- able to watch her doing it. ming; Arabs today are more locked Amr Diab’s Arab following may in unity over al-Mutanabbi than any not have necessarily recast itself contemporary poet.5 On the one into the Westernised following hand, when our sensibilities and of Madonna, but the opportu- our temperaments are summoned nity for her Arabisation and his on an Arab-wide scale, as with the Westernisation has been made television program “Superstar”, in possible, now in terms unparal- which singers from all Arab coun- leled either in the 1960s or any tries compete fiercely, we find our decade since. I have heard Amr convention disrupted and ruptured Diab’s music blaring in the luxury with feuding national identities boutiques of London’s International and subnational tribal affiliations.6 Heathrow Airport, for example, a Moreover, most of the symbolic happenstance unimaginable, even signs of our grievances with the for a diva like Um Kulthum, prior United States and Europe agree to the globalisation of the 1990s. well with ideas, mores, and tools Those with a penchant for imported from the West that can- anthropology and advocates of not be ignored or done away with. extreme relativism would contest In fact, some we defend as cohab- all these comparisons on the iting easily within our societies. grounds that drawing such analo- Endorsing the veil, for example, is gies and parallels can only proceed accommodated as a tinting of the within the single field of the single overall garb, the acquisition of com- experience. Their perspective, puters and mastering their usage is however, denies all virtue to any widely promoted and encouraged, universalism, restricting purview so is the notion of professional to a number of unhinged locales achievement and some feminist that don’t connect and cannot be teachings within modern Islamic gauged against one another. In that discourse. vein, it would not be possible to Even with regards to our observe how the relationship of perception of time and the man- the Arab 1990s with the Western ner in which it is periodised and 1990s has become far more solid bracketed, the rift between the when contrasted to the decade Arab world and the West has nar- of the 1960s, despite the fact that rowed. True, there are voices in politically, the rift and contrast has the West that coin the break-up since increased and widened. In of the Beatles in late 1969 as the 5 A poet who lived in the tenth century, al-Mutanabbi is con- a manner unsettling for Samuel hallmark to the end of the 1960s, sidered the most important Huntington’s worldviews, cultural others choose the Woodstock Arab poet. affinity between the two worlds, concert. These propositions elevate 6 The franchise of the British- vehicled with emblems and icons, pop music and song to a cultural made television program “Pop has been steadily multiplying. standing that has yet to be granted Idol” was renamed in the Arab world as “Superstar of the These proclivities have impelled to Abdel Halim or any other per- Arabs”, disseminated by Future for the ushering further and further former in our culture. Obviously, Television in Lebanon.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 29 Amr Diab and his generational what it identified as “roots”. peers have also failed to success- In reality, the consideration here fully induce their artistry to be ought to be for the branches, rath- regarded as a central component er than the roots, and by branches in the historiographical study of life the reference is to the extensions and mass culture in the Arab world. created by the masses of souls However, they did not drag their migrating to Western metropoles, feet when the time came to ride building for the first time in his- the wave that carried them to the tory what could be called a furthest corners of the world. Their popular cosmopolitanism. Millions travels inaugurated a levelling, the of migrant workers in the big cit- equalising effects of which reach ies of Britain, France, Germany, and us in echoes that resonate in the the United States are able today same vein that echoes are roused to listen to Caribbean, African, when our books are translated and Arabic music, and to indulge beyond our borders, multiplied in Indian, Thai, and Mexican cui- with laudatory clamour. Amr Diab sine, available on the market to is the first Arab artist to produce the same degree as the national a music video at the historical cuisine of the country in question. instance where “videology” — the Admittedly, this emergent form term is borrowed from Benjamin of popular cosmopolitanism falls Barber — threatens to overwhelm short of measuring up in ideo- ideology. While both Abdel Halim logical direction and outlook to its and Amr Diab were cast in movies, original, more complex version. It is the music video has afforded Diab inferior in knowledge and culture, with an awesome means to intensi- more fragmented and dispersed fy and widen his reach, besides the in sociological definition, but it has fact that it represents a space for tremendous purchasing power that forging a new visual vocabulary and does not refrain from swelling with for a performativity that endows the ceaseless flow of migration. the song with an unprecedented With Amr Diab and his gen- instrumentality and increases its erational peers, value has become accessibility. Amr Diab has not indistinguishable from price, where- been bashful about his designs to as with Abdel Halim, there was a couple the worldwide purview of clear line of distinction where price his ambitions with his desire to was regarded with some contempt secure his share in the local market. in contrast to a value endowed He undertook strategic steps to with great worth. This said, market- reach out to the markets in the ing is no more a matter of price West and the East, resorting to alone. A new audience has formed state of the art technological tools from within the diasporic commu- of communication at a time when nities of immigrants, transgressing “marketing” no longer carries the the confines of the nation-state, negative insinuations it used to, in poignant, unsettled between as far as it was able to influence a integration to the country it has local culture that purported disdain chosen and affiliation to the coun- for profit-making and celebrated try it hails from. It is that audience locked into that liminality, and most of Abdel Halim’s songs. But the lan- likely it is the generation of their guage of the former seems always offspring that consumes what Amr to lighten its load, its expressions Diab tries to sell. abbreviated to utterances that fit In his attempts to widen the melodic sounds, accompanying scope of his marketability to music, all followed by dancing. His the furthest of his capacity, Amr lyrics seem barely an alignment of Diab has recorded duos with the words stacked with the purpose Greek singer Angela Dimitriou and to suit the tune. The storytelling with the Algerian Cheb Khaled. form, a tradition that Abdel Halim’s Moreover, Amr Diab is the artist audience had grown habituated to, to have mixed the most between has disappeared from Diab’s song cultural genres and musical styles: entirely. Songs like “Habibaha” and He has borrowed from the Spanish “Qareat al-Fingan”, for example, gypsy genre and from rap. He is were based on poems, the coher- also said to be influenced enough ence and integrity of the story they by the Latin pop music star Ricky told were grounded in a complete Martin to have emulated him in narrative structure. Abdel Halim demeanour, style, and stage perfor- sang relatively few classical poems, mance. but Amr Diab has sung none. As Diab is one of the few Arab such, Diab’s songs are in effect musical stars to have ventured shorter than his predecessor’s. into recording songs in English and Thematically, the songs of Diab do French, and his extensive usage of not impart any departure from synthesizers allows him to harmon- the legacy of Abdel Halim; he ise the coupling between Arabic remained in the classical domain melodies and Western rhythms. of sentimental ballads, and Diab When the dancing that accom- endorses the same syntactic, tradi- panies his singing performance tional form of addressing the loved is taken into consideration, the one in the masculine. Considering transformation reveals additional the sharp differences that contrast possibilities for interpretation. In both icons in all other facets of the video for the song “Habibi their artistry, these last two obser- Wa La Ala Balo”, Diab’s dancing vations are more telling of the seems like a mixture of rock ’n’ disparity between lack of interest roll and breakdancing, in the video in the language of lyrics as well as for “Habibi Ya Nur al-Eyn”, it seems the deterioration in craftsmanship to be more inspired by Spanish on the one hand, and the efforts flamenco. vested in the music and stage per- Far beyond all these aspects, sona of the performer on the other however, the transformation in hand. This last observation is not the lyrics of the songs is the most only valid for comparison between glaring evidence of compliance to the figures of Abdel Halim and Amr the creeds of merchandising and Diab, it is more emblematic of a marketing. The lyrics to Amr Diab’s comparison between the general songs are not outstanding, and to trend and outlook guiding the two some extent neither were those eras the two artists hail from.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 31 Although both performers’ likely joined gleefully in the chorus songbooks are perfectly suited with Abdel Halim’s singing: “Ihna for oriental dancing, the rhythm in baneynah, wa ihna ha-nebni al-sadd Amr Diab’s songs is markedly faster al-’ali” (“We have built, and we will and more hybrid. Abdel Halim’s build the high dam”). His son, how- orchestration, by no means tra- ever, came to consciousness under ditionally oriental, where western Anwar Sadat’s policies of economic instruments like the piano and the liberalisation and “opening” to the violin had a strong presence, played outside world and its markets, melodies that remained staunchly during the height of which Abdel oriental and were dominated by Halim Hafez passed away, in 1977. the tabla. This is no longer the case In contrast to Abdel Halim, who with Amr Diab, where we find in was born to a father who was an the song “Khallik Fakirni”, for exam- insignificant sheikh in the modest ple, an entirely western melody. In village of al-Hilwat in the Sharqiyah the song “Bahibbak Aktar”, we find province, Amr Diab was born in a light-heartedness and playfulness the city of Port Said in 1961. He we never encounter with Abdel has no record of any political Halim, even when he sang “Dahek involvement, except for accompa- Wa Loeb Wa Gadd Wa Hobb”, nying his father, at the tender age deemed as an endearing anthem of six, to a radio station on the to youth. occasion of the celebrations of the In contrast to Abdel Halim, July 23 military coup, to participate whose public and stage persona in carolling the patriotic anthem remained unchanged throughout “Biladi, Biladi” (“My Country, My his career, Amr Diab has changed Country”). That occasion, which his look unrelentingly. He is happened only weeks after the reported to undergo a makeover defeat in June 1967, and the region- and purport an entirely new image wide atmosphere of gloom that once every year. In fact, there is reigned then was more likely to little of that practice in terms of have been spurred to entertain the tradition in the world of musical young boy rather than instill in him performers in the Arab world. a sense of political engagement. Sabah, the legendary Lebanese In fairness, the elements used musical and stage star, is perhaps in the concoction of a look and the only one among the myriad an image have somewhat changed. figures from the constellation of In the newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi the “classical” era to have showed (September 10, 2003), Diab boast- concern for refashioning a public ed his athletic prowess, claiming he persona with an acute sense of trained in boxing, practiced scuba fashion. diving. He also complained of: Fixity and stability are not attributes one would associate . . . enduring harsh criticism in with the persona of Amr Diab many Arab capitals, notably, and his performances. His father, in Cairo, Dubai, and Beirut. In Abdel Basset Diab, who worked Cairo he is accused of running for the Suez Canal Company, most breathless after money, spe- cifically after joining the list of for mass consumption, ultimately singers under the monopoly of elevating the market into an end in the Rotana Corporation. itself. Following that transformation, “cost” and “costly” are no longer The place of Abdel Halim’s lean signifiers with mere functional and gait and asceticism has given way instrumental attributes. They have to Amr Diab’s sportsmanship and even extended beyond attaching his unashamed, proclaimed pursuit themselves to the consumption of of wealth. Even on the subject exclusive luxury goods of select of health and maladies, the same accessibility. Rather, they invoke newspaper referred to a surgical associations with new notions of procedure where Diab had “one the “interesting” and “fun”. of his glands” removed. Glands and With the expansion of the stock their endocrine clinical entailments market, a new class has emerged, are obviously not as dramatic as almost entirely absorbed in an clinical problems with the heart economy of global financial trading, and other obscure maladies attrib- across borders, identified in popular uted to Abdel Halim. In fact, while parlance as the class of “yuppies”. the former attach to the “profane” They consume with transitory and the carnal the latter attach to and elusive selectivity, their whims the spiritual and the “sacred”. and urges inform the spawning of As for Abdel Halim’s overflow- rituals tailored specifically to suit ing sentimentality, soft-heartedness each of them without necessarily was of absolutely no concern relying on, or taking stock of, the to Amr Diab. In the place of the consensus of established prevail- personal crises, the weeping, the ing convention. This falls under the wailing, we find stringing stories of constructed new and feeds it all at success, although admittedly not as once. The manufacture of stardom glaring and heroic. In other words, has acquired weight and reach of the time of peculiarity in the natu- hitherto unseen proportion, no ral seems to have expired, when longer impeded by the gushing of the gates have been opened wide a variety of elusive, short-lived star- for peculiarity in the manufactured doms, in the vein of Andy Warhol’s and what is man made. infamous adage that in the future, That shift is also inscribed in everyone will have their fifteen a worldwide framework, or at minutes of fame. Warhol’s other least, in a Western framework. infamous retort — implicitly reply- Particularly when thinking back to ing to Jackson Pollock’s claim that how Salvador Dali was received he wanted to become “nature” — in the 1940s and the 1950s, with namely, that he wanted to become that mixture of sarcasm and aver- a machine, is equally ominous. As sion, and how by the 1960s he art has variegated into a plurality became the prevailing norm; par- of species, genus, and media, born ticularly considering the work of from a chemical coupling of video Andy Warhol that investigated the and rendering by hand, of image boundaries between high art and and word, and since cultural prac- low-brow popular art intended tice has appropriated fashion and

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 33 design, the attraction of the whim- however, politics were more sical, symbolised by Dali, is lost. On prominent and the country was the one hand, since the 1960s, indi- more central in the Arab world. It vidualism has been satiated and has exported Abdel Halim, who was successfully grounded its legitimacy heroic in his political anthems and as a value in itself. On the other defeated, unheroic in everything hand, television and technologies of outside nationalist politics. Abdel mass communication have allowed Halim, whose songs found a wide for the rapid reproduction and reach with the transistor radio (the dissemination of the strange or essential medium in the spread of moody to unlimited edition. In this Nasserist fervour), did not mobilise vein, the uniqueness of individual- the vitality of the youth except ism in artistic expression has been when it came to “building” the high seriously undermined, as it finds dam. He did not sing to his brother, itself multiplied and disseminated as did Mohammad Abdel Wahab to a mass audience. The same is in “Khayyi, Khayyi” (“My Brother, My true of the idea of the artist, as Brother”), and he did not sing to a distinctive individual, producing his mother, as did Fayzeh Ahmad works of art exclusively to the in “Sitt al-Habayeb” (“The Most select elite that can afford to buy it. Beloved of Ladies”). There were These insights were first probably more channels of con- developed by the theorist Walter nectedness between the urban Benjamin in his essay “The Work environment and the environment of Art in the Age of Mechanical of the Egyptian Sa’eed in the coun- Reproduction”. Considering the tryside and its folk songs — the technological ability to create mawaweel — in his songbook, as limitless reproductions and the in “Sawwah” and “Ala Hisb Widad”. rise of the masses, art has lost its It was as if he were uniting the “authenticity” and “aura” in the field country’s expanse in his song. He of cultural production in advanced sang to “the people” — al-shaab — capitalist societies. Works of art, and to the “nice folk” of Egypt in once unique and rigidly affixed neighbourhoods, to the youth, the to their geographical location, students, and those who passed have lost their uniqueness; their their exams with success. In his reproductions are available every- films, he was one of the “boys of where, their transport and travel the neighbourhood”, al-hittah (the unencumbered, their consumption block), who had intimate relation- and myriad interpretation pos- ships with its residents, bound by sible and legitimate. Culture has love and complicity. It is from this itself become a realm for industry, patina that Abdel Nasser sought to manufacturing, and as such for con- mould a world joined in solidarity, sumption and merchandising. ordered in a nationalist or socialist Going back to the Arab world, “unity”, transcending the inherited in the era of Abdel Halim, Egypt primordial binds of family, kinship, was a smaller country than it and region. is today and less bound to the In turn, Amr Diab stood outside world at large. At the same time, that paradigm entirely. The Egyptian state in the 1990s is no longer odies without having fully identified what it was meant to be in the with them. As for his successor, 1960s, and families are no longer Amr Diab’s audience is borne what they used to be, particularly from the world that spawned him, after the tremendous demographic where the boundaries between transformations that started to what defined the Western versus unfold decades ago. Amr Diab is the Eastern have become blurred, the son of a fragmented world that and the oppositional dichotomy does not gel, neither in politics, nor is no longer able to perform the in its families, nor in its state, and functions it did. not in its leader. His only political In that atmosphere, without song, “Al-Quds” (“Jerusalem”), is permission from their states, their more a tribute to the human trag- institutions, or their “correct” poli- edy that weighs on Palestinians, in cies, some Arab artists have carved contrast to current vulgar and pop- themselves a space that surpasses ulist songs, such as Shaaban Abdel the Arab’s representation in any Raheem’s, which proclaims to “hate” other international domain. In Israel and “love” Amr Moussa and 1990, the World Music Institute, Hosni Mubarak.7 a nonprofit seeking venture, was As the political purview of our formed in Boston with the aim part of the world drifts further of introducing and promoting the and further, in hitherto unseen musical and dance cultures of the fashion, from the political purview non-Western world. The institute espoused by the West, the present organizes tens of festivals all year conjecture is also one marked by round for that purpose. In the the dissipation of nationalisms and globalised world of the arts, rai unparalleled intermingling of ethnic- music from Algeria and France has ities, gender, borders, countries, and asserted its presence, so has gnawa migrations. It is also less statist than music and jajuka from Morocco, it was previously, when the hold of in addition to figures like Sheikh governments over cultural produc- Yasin al-Tuhami, the Musiciens du tion is receding, and the elite is Nil (Musicians of the Nile) from losing significant privileges, all to the Egypt, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from benefit of popular culture, televi- Pakistan, Youssou N’Dour from sion, and the market. Precisely for Senegal, and many others from the such reasons, it is easier to iden- “third world”. There are now 120 tify the social parameters framing television channels in the United Abdel Halim’s song and perfor- States, and 15 European television mance than it is for Amr Diab. The channels that broadcast “Afropop core of both performers’ followings Worldwide” on a weekly basis. It was the youth. Abdel Halim’s typi- is not possible to discount the cal fan was timid, recently uprooted significance of these phenomena from the countryside and tradi- and to presume they are mere tional values without having fully expressions of despondency and absorbed urbanity and its moder- decadence, or simply a means for 7 Amr Moussa is the Secretary General of the Arab League nising effects yet, and had come to America to spread its hegemony. and Hosni Mubarak is the an acquaintance with western mel- Rai singers are regarded as voices President of Egypt.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 35 of dissent against fundamentalist and its livid yellowing.8 I don’t know Islamists, whereas gnawa is a revival which is preferable, in the same of old African folklore and jajuka way that I don’t know whether a is regarded as a pioneering rock higher standard of education is bet- band that preceded the invention ter or worse than a democratised of western rock by some hundreds education with a lower standard. of years. As for N’Dour, he was the If one must issue a judgment, organiser of a concert in Dakar armed with the “nature” of our in 1985, in support of freeing times, then perhaps the moment Nelson Mandela. It is also not pos- belongs to Amr Diab. And if one sible to regard these phenomena judges according to his genera- as simply Western manifestations tional experience, and I am over that only occidentalised youth in 50, I can only be biased to Abdel our countries. Amr Diab’s audi- Halim. He is one of us and we are ence is restricted neither to these part of him. We call him by his first youths nor to the crowd transiting name and when we speak of his through international airports. His successor we feel very contrived if songs and those of his peers, such we don’t pronounce his first and as Muhammad Munir, are listened last names. Nevertheless, belonging to in Cairo and other Arab cities to a certain generation is not by by housewives, taxi drivers, bus itself a license for objectivity. Abdel drivers, doormen, and waiters. Halim in one of his songs said: “Wa Despite the acuity of the sentiment hiya doniya bitela’ab fina” (“And it’s of enmity to America within the a world / life that plays with us”). Arab world, Amr Diab was not He might be right, as was probably deterred from starring in an ad Chinese leader Zhou Enlai: When for Pepsi Cola when the company asked whether the French revolu- wanted to expand its market share tion had a positive or negative of consumers in Egypt. impact, he answered that it was Perhaps these consider- too early to judge. ations serve only to engender ambivalence and render analysis tongue-tied, but what is certain is that Abdel Halim and Amr Diab, who obviously cannot be taken as embodiments of the totality of Arab life, represent two different trends from among a plurality of constitutive ones. With a great deal of simplification, the duality between the two could be seen as an extension of the duality between homogeneity and diversity, and could be seen as a mirror of the split between fast-food and 8 Koshari is a popular Egyptian meal made with lentils and koshari, or perhaps, a contradiction pasta. between the reddening of the face Hazem Saghieh worked as a journalist in Beirut for the daily newspaper as- Safir from 1974 to 1988. He is now a columnist for the London-based al-Hayat and editor of the paper's weekly political supplement, Tayyarat, which he founded. Saghieh has also published a number of books on Lebanon, political Islam, and pan-Arabism.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 37 Returning to Beirut

Anton Shammas

tance. When a Bint Jbayli was I’d like to preface the following asked: “Where are you going?” remarks with a very lengthy quote or “Where are you coming from a personal letter sent to me from?” and wanted to convey more than ten years ago by Ahmad the utmost anger in his reply, Beydoun. I ask for your indulgence he would say: “To Tallouza!” as I do that, and apologise to the or “From Tallouza!” And that writer for breaching his confidence was an equivalent to what we and dragging the personal tone of would nowadays say: “To Hell!” his letter into the public domain. or “From Hell!” In other words, At the same time, however, I hope going to Tallouza, and coming that this act of betrayal could be back from Tallouza, assumed a somehow mitigated by the fact that passage through the whole of the nature of the letter asks for life itself, and through the world and tolerates sharing, first; and, sec- from end to end. But the person ond — that the letter grants me giving the answer most probably a deferral of sorts, until I catch my meant that he was coming from breath, being the native of the vil- (or going to) a very close by lage of Fassouta, the subject of the place known to all and sundry, letter, who is intimidated by his first so much so that inquiring about visit to Beirut in order to reminisce it was nothing but pointless and about the city in its own language. redundant.

Beirut, May 22, 1993 …As for Fassouta, it was a mea- sure of size. If someone asked: Dear Antoun, “Why, are you from Fassouta?” or “You think you’re from Fassouta?” My childhood, in some respects, And the implication behind the was a world of legend and question would be that while that world had two boundar- you are from the smallest village ies: Fassouta and Tallouza. The on earth you behave as if you latter was a measure of dis- were from Nayerk [ie, New York]. Some of us used this last name ies and edges went through a to refer to both Americas, Tutrayt change many years ago. A friend [Detroit], Bani Saris [Buenos of mine told me once that a Aires], and all. So Fassouta was Shaykh from Jabal Aamel went a proper name for the two to Iran to pursue, or to acquire measures of size, the largest imag- additional knowledge… One inable as well as the smallest, and day the Shaykh was taking a not only for the latter. It reminded walk with a friend of his and he one of the frog that wanted to was suddenly hit by nostalgia to become an elephant. And no one his homeland, so he recited: “O bothered to explain to me, those how much I miss the life whose days, why Fassouta had been prime / I spend between Sel’ah, afflicted by the Almighty with Bareesh, and Ma’roub”. such a disposition. For my fellow villagers accepted the will of the The Iranian friend inquired: “And Creator, in general, such as it was, where exactly is that Sel’ah, my and seldom would any of them dear Shaykh?” And the Shaykh, venture to probe the depths of enticed by the evil spirit, wished divine wisdom. to glorify his home village, so he answered: “Sel’ah is a city I spent my childhood, then, between Seida and Sour”. The uncertain about the existence Iranian friend lifted his eyes of Tallouza or Fassouta. And until toward heaven and said in this very day, having reached amazement: “Praise to Allah, my my fifties, I haven’t met a single dear Shaykh, for his world is so person from Fassouta nor from vast and wide!” Tallouza. And this, according to what’s been left of the logic I didn’t disclose to my friend of that world of legend that that day how awfully significant my childhood was, is quite an his story was. I did feel, however, ordinary thing. For how could that Sel’ah was no longer situ- a person from Tallouza cross all ated between Seida and Sour these continents and spheres, but, rather, between Tallouza that separate Tallouza from Bint and Fassouta. And that sig- Jbayl, for me to see him? And nificantly complicated jughrafiya how could Fassouta be enough al-wahm (the geography of space for the birth and raising fantasy), as coined by my friend of a person if it’s so tiny and Husni Zayni, so much so that I small? And I still do not know felt the need, from then on, to why did the Jbaylis choose be constantly on the alert. For Fassouta and Tallouza in order how could Tallouza be drawn to assign them to represent away outside this world if the boundaries, and to stand guard world was so wide; and how over the edge of the universe… could one reconcile oneself to the miniscule size of Fassouta if …I have to admit to you that Sel’ah was “a city between Seida my position vis-à-vis boundar- and Sour”?

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 39 Be that as it may, I realised then lescence ended with a three-year that I was growing old and, ebb and flow of a love story with subsequently, ready to make the my Palestinian would-be father. acquaintance of people from And that love story culminated in Fassouta and Tallouza. So far, a wedding early in 1940, with “just no one has ever arrived from a peasant from Palestine” (that Tallouza, but Fawwaz Traboulsi phrase must have set tongues arrived the other day from Paris wagging between al-Batroun and and handed me your letter. And Beirut). And that wedding took you are, as you may well know, place in the Maronite church of a person from Fassouta… So Saint Estefan in al-Batroun, because it’s all right now, I guess, to bid the Catholic priest in Beirut, for farewell to that entire childhood reasons you must be more familiar of mine… with, refused to marry the couple. My mother would of course Take care, my friend vehemently oppose the usage of the compound “love story” in this Ahmad context — that is an imaginary I have always wanted to return construct, she would say, invented to Beirut (or Berout, as we used by kuttab, book writers, and real to, and still, call it), even though life as we know it has nothing to I’d never been to the city before, do with it. Besides, contrary to or to any other Arab city for that what Elias Khoury tells us in Bab matter. That’s what one would go al-Shams, it’s really impossible to through in point of chronotopic have a love story with a Palestinian. immobility — assuming Bakhtin But I’ll take the liberty of naming it was right — when the wrong pass- as such, kuttab-style, simply because port is literally imposed on one. As we are in Beirut, where fantasy is you may well know, unlike iden- permissible, let alone all the other tity a passport is not a self-issued things. . . document, so I’m absolved of its She lives all by herself now sins. But my mother tongue, being in Haifa, the city created in the the ultimate chronotope, used to Palestinian imaginary by Ghassan take me there, and I mean — take Kanafani. Her Lebanese accent has me there, in the most tangible and long eroded, except for what could physical manner, and to bestow be termed as “code words”. As if upon me the unconditional, the she wanted to diminish the patch no-strings-attached gift of a Beiruti of her nostalgia to a place she past; a past like my mother’s. could never go back to by repress- But my mother was born in ing the unconscious “tongue” of Sour, long before the city was that place, diminishing the space reinvented (or should I say, “recre- which that place occupies in her ated”) by Sa’id ‘Aql, a couple of language. Nonetheless, when asked months after her father had passed what she misses the most in her away. She spent an orphaned ado- eighteen Lebanese years, my moth- lescence in Beirut and al-Batroun, er would say, rather apologetically, alternately, in the 1930s. That ado- with an eightysomething-year-old sigh: “I wish I could stand again on the darak policeman didn’t suspect the beach of Sour, being eight years a thing. Now, sixteen-year-old Alice old, and breathe in the sea wind, was, from revealed tip to skirt-hid- hawa ‘l-bahr”. And the word hawa, den toe, madly in love with Fouad, the way Arabic words tantalise my mother’s other cousin, whose us, turns the soft wind into desire family was also living in Sour. and love and longing and nostalgia; So, on a hot Haifawi summer turns the vertical, diachronic alif day, Alice couldn’t take the longing into an alif maqsurah, a synchronic, any longer, and decided to travel all horizontal cradle of warmth and the way to Sour to see her Fouad, tenderness. even though the young, blue-eyed What follows, then, are my chap wasn’t at all aware of this personal variations on hawa ‘l-bahr, all consuming love, and “wouldn’t and a nostalgic return to one of even look in her direction”, as my my personal capitals of fantasy — mother would claim, even if he Beirut; a return to my mother(’s) was aware of it. But love was blind tongue, at more levels than one; a and, contrary to what Aristophanes return to the unconscious of that believed, so were the neighbours, mother tongue; an attempt to sort who were supposed to keep “ten and map out the itineraries of my eyes” on the young woman in love cultural imaginaries of Beirut, few when her parents were out and, as they might be, from the allegedly alas, failed to. Around noon that safe, and equally imagined distance day she took little Hélène with her of exile. After all, we, the orphaned and, without telling anyone else, children of the Arab nahdah, and tiptoed to the service station to as Jurji Zaidan taught us, are all Sour. At Ras an-Naqurah, the same Biyaarteh, Beirutis, in some way or trick was repeated — little Hélène another; we are all the virtual citi- was concealed under the invisibility zens of Beirut, the Arab capital of skirt of Alice… And you can imag- the nineteenth century, attempting ine the rest of the story, when the perpetually, with a stretch of the family in Haifa discovered that Alice imagination, to make our way back had disappeared, together with to it. little Hélène, to an undisclosed When she was eight, breathing destination. in the hawa of Sour, my mother In a certain sense, then, her took a secret journey to Haifa, act of border crossing was never where she would end up, eventu- registered, her smuggling never ally, so many years later. The family recorded at the checkpoint, not of her Haifawi uncle was visiting even by herself. Haifa for her, to Sour, and when they left back this very day, still is a mere geo- they took little Hélène, my future graphic extension of that childhood mother, with them, to spend the of Sour and the adolescence of summer vacation in Haifa. At Ras Beirut and al-Batroun, all being an-Naqurah checkpoint, and since capitals of fantasy for her, as she little Hélène wasn’t registered in is still hiding under Alice’s skirt. any travel documents, her cousin My continuous returns to Beirut Alice hid her under her skirt, and were always conducted, as is the

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 41 case today, through a reading of Bakhtinian take on Derrida) merely her nostalgia, across borders that an imaginary chronotopic trace. language can sometimes render This was in the late 50s, probably invisible. Unfortunately, though, I’m around the same time that this city not lucky enough, like her, to be was going through its first major able to cross borders while hiding civil war less than a century after under Alice’s skirt. (If my mother the hawadeth, events, of 1860, or were here, I wouldn’t have dared the idhtirabaat, disturbances, as Jurji to say this last sentence. But we Zaidan, whose parents married that are in Beirut now…) year, refers to it. In his autobiogra- My first image of Beirut has phy he writes: nothing to do with that won- During that year the well- derland of Alice, nor with her known disturbances occurred invisibility skirt; rather, it had a and the people of Beirut military march-like, anti-nostalgic feared a general upheaval like and almost carnivalesque tinge to that which had taken place in it: “Saff el-’askar tout tout/ wehna Lebanon and Damascus. They rayheen ‘a Beirut” (“File of sol- began to make preparations for diers, tout tout / we are going to flight. Grandmother said to my Beirut”). father: “We find ourselves in This was a refrain we used great distress and the city is in to sing in northern Palestine in danger. So, either you marry the the 50s, as part of a weird game girl and take care of her or you whose details escape me now. We dissolve the engagement and would march in Indian-file (no pun we take her with us”. He pre- intended), putting our hands on the ferred marriage and they were shoulders of the kid in front of us, wed in the same year.1 singing our lungs out, going in cir- cles, marching in place, and, in effect, And as a result of that “fortu- going aimlessly nowhere in particu- nate” turn of events, Zaidan “was lar, but somehow reaching Beirut at born on December 14, 1861, the end. That was Beirut for us as which is the day Prince Albert (the kids — going nowhere, yet mov- husband of the queen of England) ing inside language constructs and, died”.2 years before Derrida, moving inside I first came upon the name of a signifier that was nothing more Jurji Zaidan in one of the books than a “trace”, not tracking anything that were stuffed inside our book- tangible and substantial but, rather, case, together with books that my looking for more “tracks” of that mother had brought with her from trace. Beirut was there all right, in Lebanon, across the border, to a 1 Thomas Philipp. Gurgi Zaidan: our song but, simultaneously, it was small village in northern Palestine His Life and Thought (Beirut, not. Because, though we were play- called Fassouta. The people of Bint 1979), p. 130, English transla- ing at a two-hour driving distance Jbayl, as mentioned in the preamble, tion of Mudhakkiraat Juiji Zaidan, edited by Salah from the actual place, we — that considered Fassouta part of what al-Deen al-Munajjid, (Dar al- “file of soldiers” — were actually Husni Zayni calls “the geography Kitaab al-Jadeed, 1968) light years away, and the only thing of fantasy”. Our bookcase was 2 Ibid, p. 131 we could have of it was (as a embedded in the southern, stone- built, double-wall of our house and girls — would convene and (killeen wall), right above the couch, sit on the mat… The teacher with its back touching the outside would sit in front of the room wall from within, its door the on a hassock, in front of him colour of olives. I used to spend a small box…upon which he hours on end under that magic put his book, his inkwell, and door, lying on the wooden couch his pens. At his right he had (kanabye, as we called it), slowly assembled a number of sticks devouring its contents. There was varying in length and thickness. a series of Lebanese text books He would use each of them published in Beirut that belonged appropriately, according to to my brother, who attended the age and sex of the child, and local Catholic, private school, called according to his closeness or Al-Lughah al-Arabiyyah (The Arabic distance to him.3 Language), and a reader called Al-Mushawwaq. It must have been The other illustrations in in one of these textbooks that I Al-Lughah al-Arabiyyah were of land- read Jurji Zaidan for the first time scapes and city life and interiors — a short piece that used to make of houses with people in suits and us laugh a lot. It had an illustration fancy dresses and nightgowns that of a teacher sitting idly on the floor we hadn’t seen even in our dreams. behind a wooden box, dozing off, They were so strikingly different and surrounded by a number of from what we could see around us, little kids whose faces expressed in that world of shabbiness, wretch- mischief and wretchedness. Or edness, and poverty, in Palestine maybe that’s how we saw that of the 1950s. But that was Beirut expression, as a reflection of our for us, as if another planet, where own world. But we never thought people were sitting in luxurious the scene could have taken armchairs, enjoying the warmth of place in Beirut. Many years later, I the fireplace in their houses, and came across that text in Zaidan’s where pupils attended schools that Mudhakkiraat, and was shocked had spacious rooms, lit by electric to discover that that school had lights, taught by teachers in three- indeed been once upon a time in piece suits. Even the illustrations Beirut: of rural landscapes in those books, accompanying excerpts from The thought would not have Amin Nakhleh’s Al-Mufakkarah al- occurred to anybody that the Reefiyyah (The Countryside Diary), teacher Elyas was a learned were so different from what we philosopher: Even the gospel could see around us, in that moun- he could hardly read properly. tain village in northern Palestine. His school consisted of a wide And even the goat, prostrating vaulted cellar room… It resem- next to “The Goat’s Prayer in bled more a cattle pen than a the Countryside” from the Diary, school. There the children of looked gentler, more elegant, and the neighbourhood between indeed more “goatish” than all the the ages of four to ten — boys goats around us put together. Then 3 Ibid, p. 136

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 43 the years elapsed, and we discov- in this sliding game, this “slippage”, ered that those illustrations may between the signifier and the have been copied from European signified; and has it left any “tracks” schoolbooks, and that goat may behind? And do we believe Soueid have been of an ifranji, European or, rather, my mother? Or do we pedigree. But we were content believe both simultaneously? Or, with fantasy, and content with what better still, do we turn to Monsieur language could offer us in point of Foucault who tells us that: imagination and deceit. And there was a photo in the The imaginary now resides family album, taken most probably between the book and the in the early 50s, of my two- or lamp. The fantastic is no longer three-year-old maternal cousin, a property of the heart nor is walking in Sahat al-Burj, a partial it found among the incongrui- view of the Martyrs Monument ties of nature… Dreams are no behind her, as my mother used to longer summoned with closed tell us, and in the deep background eyes, but in reading… The imagi- on the left — a partial view of nary…is a phenomenon of the a cinema, a billboard hanging on library.5 its front, carrying a huge poster And that’s what we used to whose details were completely indulge in, lying down, daydream- blurred. This was the scene as we ing under the olive-coloured deciphered its signification years door of the bookcase. Actually, I later, but in the 50s we were still remembered that picture of my ignorant of what the word cinema cousin when I read the memoirs meant, and what would cause of Jurji Zaidan, and al-Burj Square, people, who were presumably far which haunted the fantasies of more intelligent and knowledgeable 4 Mohamed Soueid. Ya Fou’aadi our childhood, was conjured up all in the matters of this world than (Dar an-Nahar, 1996) over again. This is how the Square we ever were, to hang a picture of 5 Michel Foucault. Afterward seemed to the eleven-year-old Jurji, such dimensions so high up on the to “The Temptation of Saint in the early 70s of the nineteenth Anthony”, in Aesthetics, Method façade of a building. century: and Epistemology: The Essential Imagine, then, Mr. Mohamed Works of Michel Foucault 1954- 1984, Volume 2, edited by Soueid, a Fouad at heart, who …When I was eleven years James D. Faubion, translated by didn’t know what cinema it was! old and my knowledge was Robert Hurley et al, (Penguin, My mother, who hasn’t seen Beirut still faulty, my father needed 1998), p.105-106. In Amin Nakhleh’s Fi al-Hawaa’ al-Talq, since the mid 40s, tells me now me in his restaurant to ren- I later find the following lines, when I ask her that the cinema der him temporary help in which I read under the light was called KitKat. But Mohamed writing down the names and of the lamp in my library: “We were once sitting on the roof Soueid, who hasn’t left Beirut yet, payments of customers… He of ‘Miramar’ in Beirut, which is tells me that the KitKat was actu- told me “Jurji, come assist me called the KitKat Club these ally in al-Zaytouneh, and that it got for seven or eight days until I days, and it was summer, and the sun was about to set, and the name after it was turned into a find someone to replace you!” the sea stretched itself out as nightclub, and that it had a different I went there against my will far as the eye could see…” name altogether before that.4 Is it because I enjoyed my stud- Amin Nakhleh. Fi al-Hawaa’ al-Talq (Maktabat al-Hayaat, Cinema Rivoli, then, in the picture? ies very much. I obeyed him, 1967), p. 76 And where is the “sign” of Rivoli but still cherished the hope of returning to the school. These then, when its signified disappears, seven days stretched into seven becomes extinct; and does the dis- or eight years. I spent them in appearance of al-Burj Square from the markets of Beirut amongst a map of Beirut make the Square their crowds and was forced somehow disappear from that to associate with the lowliest picture and from my memories groups amongst them, because that are, in effect, a picture of the our eating place — or restau- memories of my mother? rant — was in the areas of the al-Burj Square. It was moved Of all the names, Khan Antoun from one location to another Beik was the least in circulation. but never was far off this Because no one ever heard Square. The al-Burj Square was it anymore since the woman in those days the meeting point announcer had stopped men- for the crooks, the rowdies, tioning it. and the idle — amongst them That’s how Hassan Daoud drunkards, gamblers, pimps, and starts off his text “Khan Antoun quarrelsome people.6 Beik”, (dedicated to Muhammad Abi Samra). Then, in a series of Things remind us of other flashes exchanged between two things; things collapse over other “taciturn men”, taking a stroll on the things; things refer us to other Corniche, he goes on to dissect things, away from their original the relationship between objects referentiality; and the meaning and their names, as the relationship these things signify for us within becomes disjointed and the ties language becomes contingent upon that connect signifier to signified what they mean to us in a differ- unravelled. He is also wondering ent linguistic context. So a square how memory relates to this rup- in a book reminds us of a square ture. The two “taciturn men” recall, in a picture, and the square in the in Hassan Daoud’s fully diacriticised picture is reminiscent of a square language, splinters of the vanish- in a tale which we are reminded ing name after the Khan itself has of by a casual scene, an utterance, disappeared but remained present that ignites the sparkle, then ebbs in the commercial of the woman away. For the al-Burj Square in a announcer and in a photo pub- map of Beirut may no longer pro- lished in a book containing other vide the referentiality for all of this, photos of old Beirut: or maybe it never did. And when I read what Jurji Zaidan says about They said names were older a signified he refers to as al-Burj than their places. And that Square, the Square around which street they had lost was in fact he used to walk never crosses two streets: The one was in my mind; what does is, rather, the the old photo, and the other in Square around which my cousin the commercial of the woman walks in a photo from the 50s, announcer. Two places for a some 80 years later. single name. And they couldn’t What happens to the signifier, bring the two places together 6 Philipp, p. 139

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 45 within that name unless they hand, on the page that replaced wiped out what had existed in the street. both, unless they turned the When I first read this text name into a vacant lot, and that many years ago, it didn’t take was the price that places paid me to Beirut much as it referred when they carried names that me, instead, to the City of Brass, had already abandoned them… mentioned by the twelfth-century For in those days, the days of al-Ghirnati’s Tuhfat al-Alabaab,8 the woman announcer, the along the tradition which Husni Khan was no longer there and Zayni calls “the geography of fan- Antoun Beik, the owner after tasy”, in a book of the same title whom the Khan was named, (Jughraphiya al-Wahm), which was wasn’t around anymore. And my companion while writing these of that person, Antoun Beik, comments.9 Then Alf Laylah wa- nothing was left except his Laylah (A Thousand and One Nights) name, except the utterance of picked it up where al-Ghirnati had his name, rid of all that usually left off: It let Prince Mousa Ibn adheres to all things… And Nusayr enter the City of Brass, a name like that wouldn’t in after he had almost despaired. And any case drape itself over its it added a rather brilliant sentence street — sidewalks, asphalt and to the Ghirnati version: all, as if it were the separating They asked him where was membrane between street and the road leading to the City of space.7 Brass, and he pointed the way Though all texts in the collec- for us, and we realised that tion Nuzhat al-Maalak (Angel’s there were 25 doors between Stroll) are diacriticised, the diacritic us and the City, none of which marks, or the harakaat, movements, was visible and none had left in this particular text, instead of any tracks.10 merely adding Arabic vowel sounds The sentence, in point of to the letters, seem to perform narration, is a prolepsis, or a a different role. For instead of flash-forward: The doors’ enigma adding “movements”, the diacritic is unravelled later on, for the 25 marks in this story add a touch of doors cannot be seen and, subse- immobility and groundedness to 7 Hassan Daoud. Nuzhat al- quently, opened, except from inside Malaak (Dar al-Jadeed, 1992), the language employed for telling the city walls. In other words, the p. 75 us the story of the evanescent and door could be called a door only 8 Al-Ghirnati. Tuhfat al-Albaab vanishing street. The diacritic marks from the inside! (Al-Mu’assasah al-Arabiyyah look as if they were miniature nails lid-Dirasaat wan-Nashr, 2003), Would the imaginary that meant to commit words to paper, p. 44-47 brought me to Beirut manage to literally, and turn them into a sub- 9 Husni Zayni. Jughrafiya al-Wahm find a door for me, and open it up stitute for the disappearing things (The Geography of Fantasy) from the outside? (Riad El-Rayyes, 1989) they represent. Or, as if they were Or should I, rather, wish for one the old paving stones of the Khan, 10 “City of Brass”, in Alf Laylah of your keys? wa-Laylah, Volume 3 (Dar concealed now under the asphalt, Maktabat at-Tarbiyah, 1987), being paved again, by a master’s p. 175 A Palestinian writer and translator, Anton Shammas has published numer- ous poems, essays, plays, and works of fiction. His critically acclaimed novel Arabesques has been translated into seven languages. Shammas is currently teaching in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he has lived since 1987.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 47 Toward Extraterritoriality: The Dilemmas of Situatedness

Stephen Wright

“The real is merely the imaginary alent, both in learned and everyday confirmed”. — Mahmoud Darwish parlance, that its suppositions have been assimilated into our intellectu- Full Disclosure al habits and gestures, embedded in When in English we say: “Where our discourse. We no longer wait are you coming from?” or “Let me for the border guards of thought tell you where I’m coming from”, to ask, but rather voluntarily and we don’t mean: “Where were you?” almost compulsively preface our or “Where are you from?” In an speech acts with the expression: extraordinarily subtle and compara- Speaking “azza…” Or with the tively recent shift of syntax, which I almost protocol-like permission to want to contend is emblematic of situate: “Let me situate my argu- a shift in ideological control of the ment”. In so doing, we contribute subject, the present progressive to laying down partition lines, and “to be coming from” has become voluntarily placing ourselves behind a marker of situatedness. We are borderlines of our own invention. using a territorial metaphor to ask We pre-emptively territorialise the speaker to flesh out explicitly ourselves, so as not to submissively the embedded suppositions which allow others to do it for us. we detect implicitly in his or her It seems to me that this often discourse. We are asking for details makeshift version of what in con- about self-affiliation or rootedness temporary philosophy is called the that will allegedly help us clarify “hermeneutics of suspicion” has why the person is saying what he become so widespread that it has or she is saying. We are asking for almost become second nature. We what is known as a “full disclosure” assume that the possession of this of self-interest and belonging. It is sort of information will almost in the intellectual community’s way of and of itself enable an adequate saying: “Passport please!” decoding of what is being said As such, it turns every conver- — on the assumption that self inter- sation into a border control. The est, adequately framed, provides phenomenon has become so prev- a meta-discourse that ultimately shapes all content. The assumption . . . requires the subject’s self- is that if one can properly situate descriptions to be at once one’s interlocutor’s ontological abject, made by others, merged landscape, then one need scarcely into prior formations, and at the listen to what he or she is actually same time to bear all the marks saying. And in this case, the gram- of a recognizable agency and mar is quite peculiar: The speaking responsibility.1 “azza” formula is always a preamble to telling us where someone is Simpson, I think, is dead on: going with their arguments, never There is something disarmingly really where they are coming from aggressive about situating oneself. — which suggests we don’t really It strikes me as crucial to question know much about it even as we the meaning of this compulsive, assert that we do. pre-emptive self-situating that has infected the rhetorical and concep- Disarming Aggressiveness tual apparatus of contemporary In composing this context-specific intellectual creativity and virtually lecture, I felt a strangely pressing, structures the discursive economy puzzling, and almost irresistible urge of art today. to pre-emptively situate myself at I want to unzip some of the the outset, as if to justify my being central aspects of situatedness, here. This is learned behaviour: both in terms of its theoretical Speakers invariably take pains at underpinnings and in terms of its once to circumscribe and ironically consequences, because it seems to bolster their position of author- underpin a whole way of thinking, ity by saying who they are, or and as such has serious implications with deferential assertiveness and for intellectual creativity. Perhaps feigned humility, who they are not. you are thinking, Well of course, Beyond empirically justifiable self- “azza” white, male, Canadian-born, description, what does this sort of Paris-based whatever-he-is, he foregrounding accomplish, I asked would want to do that. His situat- myself, beyond pre-empting not edness, if not his background alone, so much the accusation that one gives us the full matrix of reference is ill-informed about the context points we need in order to map where one is speaking, as the accu- out his discourse; what he will say sation that one is not adequately will merely confirm, and at best self-aware, and to frame one’s perhaps refine, what we know. The position in such a way as to limit point is not that you would be one’s authority as speaking from a wrong in an empirical sense: It is designated situation. In other words, obvious that people are situated, like everyone, I was tempted by and that their situatedness con- an intractably paradoxical situation: sciously or inadvertently conditions Desiring to please the demands their representations. The question of a hegemonic ideology, as David is: What is important? What are Simpson has written in an interest- salient factors in mapping a situa- 1 David Simpson. Situatedness ing study of this whole issue, tion? What tools would enable us (Duke University Press, 2002), to measure degrees of context- p. 195

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 49 specificity? This present-day logic of what it is: a risk-management tool self-demarcation, self-affiliation, and for pre-emptive damage control, self-specification — so self-assured a way of flashing our credentials in its rejection of the universal to ward off objection before it is human subject — needs to be deployed, diffusing responsibility to reconsidered from top to bottom. some community, while still leav- ing the legal subject intact. “The Marketable Identities odd duality of empowerment- Situatedness, of the voluntary kind, disempowerment to which the is very different from ideology, rhetoric of situatedness commonly which, in the Marxist sense of the speaks”, writes Simpson, “is not term, is construed as a coercive so odd when it is seen for what it form of situatedness that prevents is: the authorized, flexible subject people from seeing the truth about position” of globalized capitalism.2 their lives: When one cheerfully In this respect, it preserves rather offers to situate oneself, making than resolves the tension we expe- use of a reflexivity that the term rience between being in control ideology does not provide, one is and out of control, between being making clear to one’s interlocutors agents of change and passive recipi- that one does see things as they ents: It tends toward closure, while are, that one has already done remaining always open. And it is the cognitive mapping work. It is this very slipperiness that leaves us almost as if one could will one’s tongue-tied when we are asked: form of embeddedness: It projects “So who are you?” as an option that which it imme- It should by now be clear that diately implies is predetermined what is called a situation is in fact (occupation, subculture, ethnicity, a predicament. The predicament and so on). Much work has been of oscillating between the rhetoric done in the social sciences around of self-determination and passive subject positionality (a knowledge response is not somehow innate to of where one stands, along with life itself but is historically generated, one’s successfully achieved inten- and extends back to the emergence tion to stand there). Locatedness of possessive individualism in seven- is a more objective embedded- teenth-century thought, with Locke ness, something imposed rather and Descartes, trying to conjugate than assumed. But situatedness, the language of individualism with with its rhetoric of self-affiliation, the stolid facts of social existence. seems to occupy a slippery place As John Dewey argued, there was between the two — and it may nothing inevitable about this evolu- be that it is precisely this slippage tion (though there were powerful that greases the gears that allows interests behind it to be sure): contemporary capitalist ideology to function by fudging every corner. There was no logic which ren- For once one notes the conflict dered necessary the appeal to built into this tic of state-of-the-art the individual as an independent thinking and approved moral seri- and isolated being. In abstract 2 Ibid, p. 8 ousness, it is more easily seen for logic, it would have sufficed to assert that some primary their situatedness has no exchange groupings had claims which value in the symbolic economy the state could legitimately of authority. Because that is what encroach upon. In that case, the self-situating is all about, and why it celebrated modern antitheses is so ostentatious: I may not have between the Individual and any real power, but nor do I feel Social, and the problem of their myself void of any marketable or reconciliation, would not have recognition-worthy credentials. It’s arisen. The problem would have my passport — the lack of which, taken the form of defining the as we know, is one of the defining relationship which non-political features of dispossession. groups bear to political union.3 It should by now be clear that self-situating — at least as I have This is a profound insight. It been using the term — is at once stands in stark contrast to how pragmatically, grammatically, and utilitarianism — the source for ethically very different from taking mainstream political liberalism — a stand. For whereas self-situating construes persons using territorial is a pre-emptive posture, made by metaphors. As Amartya Sen and prefatory self-proclamation in order Bernard Williams emphasize: to obtain the sort of audience focus most beneficial to one’s pur- Essentially, utilitarianism sees poses, a stance cannot be verbally persons as locations of their wished into existence in advance. respective utilities — as the It is the outcome of one’s acts and sites at which such activities as statements and emerges from the desiring and having pleasure and ethical positionality they reveal. pain take place. Once note has It does no good to announce been taken of the person’s util- one’s stance, for without at least a ity, utilitarianism has no further minimal web of confidence that it direct interest in any informa- presupposes, it merely lapses back tion about him… Persons do into situatedness. And though one not count as individuals in this may occasionally hear people claim any more than individual petrol to speak “as a friend of the down- tanks do in the analysis of the trodden”, such gesturing smacks of national consumption of petro- facetiousness and condescension; leum.4 sincerity behooves the speaker I shall come back to petrol to actually take a stance. Because tanks in a moment. But I should a stance has to be constructed, first make it clear that self-specify- it cannot be articulated except ing is relative luxury: The radically through reconstruction. dispossessed — who constitute One might ask: Situatedness the silenced majority of human- in what exactly? Human life 3 John Dewey. The Public and ity — know all too well where is a flux between overlapping Its Problems (Ohio University Press, 1991), pp. 87-88 they are coming from; they have situations, never an escape from for the most part inculcated the situatedness nor ever an absolute 4 Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism and knowledge that they are not to situatedness. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Beyond (Cambridge University talk about it, and that at any rate “situation”, like Maurice Merleau- Press, 1988), p. 4

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 51 Ponty’s, is analogous to Martin equipped with special steel Heidegger’s being-in-the-world and tanks (custom built to fit under- Wittgenstein’s language game: We neath the trucks) used for the cannot think ourselves outside of it off-the-books transportation — indeed it has no “outside”. I refer of diesel fuel back into Turkey. to this type of shifting but inescap- Now outlawed and hence use- able situatedness as an “ontological less, these tanks lie sprawled landscape”, for this term allows us along the highways as the to see that it is not only human remnants of a once-prosperous subjects who are forever being pre- barter economy of sorts. emptively bracketed off; fiction too is cordoned off from non-fiction, Xurban has sought to draw our art from non-art, and so on. An attention to these fuel tanks, which ontological landscape is experi- have a great deal to tell us about enced, by those who dwell in it free trade and mobility, about ter- — be they fictional or non-fictional ritory and perception on the one subjects — as a space for produc- hand, as well as about contain- ing, exchanging, and sustaining ment and restriction, and seeing coherency and meaning. But when and oversight on the other. They we acknowledge our containment have used art-related techniques in such a landscape, are we really (film, documentary photography, capable of living in the full light of research and writing) to focus our that acknowledgement? Can the art-informed gaze on the fuel tanks. containment, in other words, be It is not the architectonics or form contained? This problem points, I of the fuel tanks per se that make think, to one of art’s debilitating them meaningful symbols, but rath- errors, in its desire to bring the real er their embodiment of a whole into its folds by containing it in a range of politically determined picture, or framing it as an object actions, their ability to anchor a of veneration. whole slew of issues regarding visibility, inscription in a conflicted Can the Containment be territory of geopolitical and art-re- Contained? lated issues. Rather as if they were Let me take the example of unauthored monuments. Of course the Xurban Collective, for monuments have always been built their extraordinary project The to provide symbolic and tangible Containment Re-Contained, carried evocations of events of memory- out in eastern Anatolia and exhib- worthy significance to a community. ited at Espace SD, is exemplary of But they invariably fail, politically if a sort of extraterritorial practice, not aesthetically, because the willful both in terms of its strengths and sign, so fraught with intent, obdu- weakness. I quote from their bro- rately refuses to yield to the event, chure: concealing precisely what it was supposed to evoke behind its own In the recent past, almost all of opacity. The authored sign obscures the trucks transporting goods the transparent event. If art’s own between Turkey and Iraq were internal logic is founded on parti- tioning, transforming politics into sustained scrutiny enjoyed by art, an image, its real and potential they become richly legible in an force is defused. Where Xurban unforeseen way. failed, at least in part, was in making concessions to the usual framing The Vernacular and the World strategies of the art world: that is, Obviously, then, the dilemmas of of reterritorialising perception in an situatedness are particularly acute art object. It is the recontainment in that realm of contemporary cre- of the container in a picture frame, ativity known as the visual arts. In which blinds us to the collective’s the face of the proliferating number radical insight: to see art not in of “anxious objects”, which, were terms of its specific ends, but of its it not for the conventions of the specific means, as a set of percep- art world, could by no means be tive habits and skills rather than identified as art, many have been objects. tempted to reterritorialise art itself, We live in partitioned times trotting out norms establishing an — in my opinion, this is almost cer- essential borderline between what tainly a more apt description of the is art and what is not, reproduc- spirit of our times than the more ing a territorialising logic in the prevalent “postcolonial” times. The realm of the imaginary; others rendering asunder of common ter- have cordoned off great tracts of ritories and histories in the name diffuse creativity as being suitable of imaginary ethnic imperatives has and ripe for colonisation by art. been the bane of this region and Because, as I said at the outset, we most others, so let us not fall prey are dealing with a territorial — or to laying down symbolic barriers territorialising — metaphor, let us between authored and unauthored, take that metaphor at face value advertent and inadvertent art. and consider the ways in which The real question concerns the art is bound up with territory, fuel tanks’ artistic legibility and and first of all with the territory visibility. We are not accustomed of art itself. Though not neces- to seeing such things at all — let sarily undisciplined, art seems to alone to looking at them as art. To have become an extradisciplinary claim — the way the art world practice, sprawling far beyond the often does — that the picture of circumscribed borders of any given the object is actually the artwork “territory”. It is in this expanded is to dramatically miss the point sense of the term that I want to and to allow politics to recede consider the various relationships into what my friend Brian Holmes between territorial belonging and calls mere “picture politics”. How contemporary artistic expression. to make these monuments visible To this end, I propose to define remains an unresolved question; two basic postures, which very one, indeed, that may defy resolu- roughly correspond to two his- tion altogether, at least as long torical moments as well as two as the art world has any say. But kinds of art-making, both of which once Xurban makes those fuel coexist within contemporary tanks the object of the sort of artistic production. But because

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 53 I think this binary opposition has deep intensity even while using the almost entirely suffocated what is visual vernacular specific to their interesting and genuinely creative origins. Their work — whether about art, I want to suggest a third installation or painting and so possibility as a way of overcoming on — integrates and in one way such a stale opposition. Let us sup- or another reflects on the symbols pose a certain axiological neutrality of a consciously accepted heritage and admit that in each of these and identity. For them, art depends three “families”, one finds more or upon its inscription in a context less the same number of eminent that is at once more extensive and artists. For situated or what I shall more intensive than what art alone call vernacular artists (using Tony can provide. As I understand his Chakar’s phrase), activity is situ- eloquent notion of “the pleasure of ated, territorialised, vernacularised, the place”, Adonis is making a plea the context being an integral part for a renewal of the vernacular, of the productive framework; without which we run the risk of what I shall call world artists, on not only urban but indeed psychic the other hand, seek to wrest art and social disintegration. free from any territorial rooted- Drawing upon a modern- ness, concerned with pitting origins ist paradigm, world artists are against subsequent development; immersed in the present of rapidly artists of reciprocal extraterritoriality changing societies. They see their (to borrow a term from Giorgio work as reflecting the confusion Agamben) deliberately expatriate of a world which has lost its bear- themselves not only from their ings. Generally speaking, however, geographical territory but from this loss is experienced without all the usual symbolic terrain that anguish or despair. On the con- is customarily reserved for art: By trary, these artists — in keeping refusing both territorialisation and with the modern insistence upon deterritorialisation, their proposi- individual freedom — seek to free tions are animated by a constitutive themselves from any geographi- mobility. In practice, of course, one cal or social determinism. Their finds a good deal of overlap and aspiration is to produce work that interpenetration between these is autonomous with regard to con- three aesthetic (and profoundly text, emphatically breaking ties with ethical) attitudes — just as one their formal and cultural heritage does among territories themselves. — without necessarily renouncing it But that need not prevent us from per se — thereby giving free rein delimiting them more closely. to autonomous expression. Vernacular artists perpetuate Breaking with the modernist age-old traditions which they paradigm, artists of reciprocal extra- invigorate and enrich with formal territoriality undermine the whole innovations taken from other cul- issue of topography inasmuch as tures, thanks to the intermingling they refuse not only geographical made possible — indeed inevitable borders but borders of all kinds, — by modernity. Many artists today including those separating art from live their historical moment with other and sundry social undertak- ings. Like vernacular artists, they are production: The artist is at best suspicious of any talk of autonomy; the co-author of his or her work, like world artists, they decline any which, like the artist, bears the inheritance. Their artistic practice indelible stamp of a particular time does not necessarily culminate in and place. the production of works, but nor is Conversely, world artists adopt it exclusively process based. Rather, a normative and aggressively hos- these artists see art as a system tile position toward any notion of for producing meaning, which is vernacular rootedness. They have most effective when engaged in nothing but sarcasm for those overstepping borders and setting whom they see as snugly at home up interdisciplinary “work sites”. in the quiet mass of a particular By displacing the creative centre culture, clinging to the visual idiom of gravity toward artistic activity typical of a particular region; they — originating in an artistic attitude rail against those who take no or idea, before spreading among account of the boundless labyrinth the public — these artists seek to of cultures and languages, through challenge the specificity of art as which Caribbean poet Édouard work on a unique object (paint- Glissant invites us to wander and ing, sculpture) by activating other blaze new trails. They explain the domains and inviting other currents recent proliferation of identity poli- of knowledge to irrigate the field tics as ultimately due to a universal of art. As they see it, art has now depletion of the resources of col- integrated everything — other dis- lective hope. And as they are quick ciplines and materials of all orders to point out, it is often toward — and no longer needs to retrench regional or national origin that itself behind borders of any kind. identity turns when suffering from Nothing whatsoever links art with a lack of confidence, creativity, and a specific geography, and all that singularity. links it to its own history is a cer- It would be abusive, however, tain aesthetics of decision-making, to portray vernacular artists as the specific to each artist. fundamentalists of the art world, Typically, vernacular artists just as it would be overly hasty to accuse world artists of encourag- depict world artists as the jet set of ing the emergence of a sort of contemporary art (although jet air- consumerist multiculturalism: World craft do tend to figure prominently music and world fiction are not in their visual vocabulary — as if seen as the expression of univer- their privilege were outstripped salisation but as symptoms of a only by their cynicism); on the con- planet-wide standardisation that trary, vernacular artists stress the barely tolerates — here and there, need for cultural relativism in the like unavoidable ripples on an face of the massive homogenisation otherwise seamless surface — the that they see occurring on a plan- odd flash of regional identity. As etary scale. And this attitude is by territorial artists see it, the meaning no means confined to art. “In order of an artwork is intrinsically bound to progress”, wrote French anthro- up with the time and place of its pologist Claude Lévi-Strauss,

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 55 . . . people have to work affect us through a combination of together; and in the course of emotion and knowledge — and their collaboration, they gradu- to do so independently of any ally see an identification in their context — that is the defining qual- relationships whose initial diver- ity of autonomous art. However sity was precisely what made important the conditions of its their collaboration fruitful and emergence may be, the effects necessary.5 it produces here and now are What interests me in this infinitely more so. With staunch remark is less the crypto-Hegelian allegiance to the precepts of logic of identity which informs it modernity, world artists may even (whereby initial difference is neces- go so far as to argue that an art- sarily eroded through association), work is meaningful only outside its than three ideas that are implicit original context, leaving the initia- to it, and which are important to tive to the constitutive gaze. The understanding what is at stake in white cubes that characterise the extraterritorial reciprocity: firstly, architecture of our galleries and that collaboration emerges and museums, devised for the neutral flourishes under certain sets of exhibition of artworks, seem to fit circumstances; secondly, that it is hand in glove with the purposes of diversity, rather than commonality world artists. or similarity, which makes collabora- Like vernacular artists, artists of tion “fruitful and necessary”; and reciprocal extraterritoriality situate thirdly — and on this point, I pro- art in a bigger picture. But for them, foundly disagree with Lévi-Strauss’s this broader context is not given: utilitarian perspective, though I It has to be created. Their prac- think it underlies most contem- tice consists of implanting certain porary political theory and seems aspects of the general economy virtually self-evident to most artists into the symbolic economy of — that collaboration is founded art, encouraging the creation of a upon mutual interest. This myopic broader, interdisciplinary context. identification of utilitarian reason Their point is to transform the and free association — whereby alleged autonomy of the artwork otherwise mutually indifferent into an operative autonomy of individuals interact on the basis of human subjects, and to confront calculated reciprocal gain — seems the know-how specific to the field all too reminiscent of contempo- of art with competencies stemming rary political liberalism. I will come from other fields of knowledge, back to this. thereby establishing a reciprocity For the world artist, the ver- between art and the sciences, for nacular artist’s obsession with instance, and in so doing, dislocat- constantly bringing art back to its ing borders and the conventions context of origin is tantamount and habits they were set up to to saying that it is impossible for protect, and prompting innovative 5 Claude Lévi-Strauss. art to function outside this con- collaborations. It is an art without Anthropologie structurale deux (Plan, 1973), translation is the text. In fact, maintains the world a territory, which operates in the author’s own. artist, it is precisely its ability to intersubjective space of collabora- tion. Yet that “space” is really no the premise of the work was a space at all, or only in the meta- question (that is, a lack, a need, an phorical sense of the term; it would incompetency), those providing probably be more accurate to the proposal (a gift, a competency) speak of a “time” of collaboration came to be vectors of cross-border and intervention. But the geograph- collaboration. Jacir documented ical model, with its cartography her project with the written text of partially overlapping territories, of each co-author in Arabic and has the advantage of providing a English, juxtaposed with a photo- tangible picture of what artists of graph documenting the execution reciprocal extraterritoriality are of the task. Go see such and such a really after. Constitutive mobility; house; drink water from such and elusive implication. such a well. Or, for instance:

From Where We’re Coming From Eat a kinafa from Jafar Sweets to Where We Come From in Jerusalem. Whenever I apply These two qualities are best illus- for an Israeli visa, they reject me. trated by an example I recently I have been trying to enter for came upon, quite unprepared, in two years now. I feel insulted as the recent Istanbul Biennial. Among a Palestinian for even having to the 80-odd examples of world art, apply for a visa to visit a land assembled by world curator Dan where my family has lived for Cameron, one project stood out, centuries. in that it embodied what might With sobriety, rigor, and a sincerely be understood as “Poetic pared-down economy of means, Justice”, the title of the exhibition. I yet without any trace of pathos or refer to Palestinian-American artist anger (which would have been all Emily Jacir’s recent project entitled too understandable given both the Where We Come From. I situate Jacir subject matter and the highly per- as a Palestinian American, because sonal nature of her approach), the it is precisely her slippery situated- artist gives a devastating account of ness that is at issue in this project, the tragedy, the absurdity, of parti- and which makes it possible. The tion in Palestine. One task is so artist asked 32 Palestinians, perhaps vexingly absurd that one is at a loss more, the following question: “If as whether to laugh or cry: I could do anything for you, any- where in Palestine, what would it Go to the Israeli Post Office be?” Her double and uncomfort- and pay my phone bill. I live ably incongruous situatedness in Area C, which is under full made it possible for her (at the Israeli control, so my phone ser- time, for it is doubtful that it is still vice is Israeli. In order to pay my possible today) to slip between phone bill, I have to go to an interstices, cross borders in both Israeli Post Office which doesn’t directions, dodge between onto- exist in Zone C. Because I logical landscapes, and carry out am forbidden from going to the different tasks, ranging from the Jerusalem, I am always looking sublime to the banal. And because for someone to go and pay my

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 57 phone bill. tion. Art is, or rather has become The work stubbornly yet sub- in twentieth-century usage, a per- tly confronts us with that which formative. As such, it makes things is, in a way, common and close happen, romantic things, and gener- at hand, but which is also, in its ates endless amounts of the most significant strangeness, the object extravagant sorts of claims, using its of both profound ignorance and institutions to lend them not only steadfast emotional refusal. Using a largely unchallenged semblance her constitutive mobility, her artistic of truth but all the trustworthiness skills, her elusive implication, Jacir of convention. And by the same manages to renew our — or at token, it prevents things from hap- least my — confidence in art’s pening — including meaningful potential use-value. For its ethical collaboration. underpinnings seem less rooted in One might ask: What could a symbolic economy of exchange be more normal than the fact than in an economy of the gift, free that artists produce art? After all, from considerations of any return. they’re just doing their job, and What could be less situated than there seems to be no stopping a gift? For a gift, as Marcel Mauss them. Besides, who would want understood it, is a mixture of free- to stop them? So they go on and dom and obligation, interest and on — and on — making art. What disinterest — the true bedrock of is more unusual, and far more human sociality. So the paradox of interesting, is when artists don’t extraterritorial reciprocity in art is do art. Or, at any rate, when they thus the paradox of the gift: Just don’t claim that whatever it is they as the gift presupposes the sort of are doing is, in fact, art; when they confidence that it contributes to inject their artistic aptitudes and establishing, so too collaboration perceptual habitus into the general presupposes the very sort of soli- symbolic economy of the real. In darity that it is part of reinforcing. the wake of the radical deskilling Circles of this kind are vicious only that has characterised art practices from a theoretical point of view — over the past decades, art can now the important thing is setting the be seen — and is seen, at least process into motion. implicitly — as a specific set of What I have been suggesting, competencies, skills, aptitudes, and here, without quite saying so, is perceptions. Over its long history, that self-situating is not merely a art has had the opportunity to way of pigeonholing oneself into hone that set to a very sophisti- a category; it is a performative cated level. operation, not so much describ- The most radical shift implied ing as enacting. One of the most by art understood in terms of its powerful forms of performative specific competencies, rather than situating, and the one that interests its specific performances, is its us most here, involves art. For of impaired visibility as art. Outside course art is not merely an ever- the legitimating framework of expanding category of objects and the art world, the deployment of processes which obey that descrip- artistic competencies simply does not generate art. They are visible, tatorship — all manifestations of they contribute to enhancing our oneness and unicity are not struck perception of what is overlooked, down but rather assimilated into but they are not necessarily seen collaboration, and so disappear as as art. Art-related initiatives on such. So this, I suppose, is my stance. the threshold between fiction and documentary use their wavering visibility as art heuristically: I am thinking here of the online Atlas Group, initiated by Walid Raad, which invites artists and non-artists, and indeed fictional and non-fic- tional collaborators, to participate in research projects on the history of the civil wars in Lebanon. Raad doesn’t believe in impermeable borderlines between fictionalising and factualising; he just doesn’t believe that facts are out there in the world as pre-existing, pre-con- stituted entities, anxiously waiting “discovery”, contrary to what we all too often suppose. So the Atlas Group produces its documents, which makes their status properly extraterritorial. Their definition seems to defy current vocabulary, as we struggle to find words to describe them. Ficts or factoids, they function as a wedge, opening an extraterritorial space between current typological and ontologi- cal demarcation lines. Simply put, the logic of such ontological fis- sion is that were the real ever to receive the sort of sustained and attentive gaze that artworks enjoy, justice would not be poorly served. In such works, art, and the holy trinity upon which it is founded — authorship, the artwork, spec-

Born in Vancouver in 1963, Stephen Wright is a Paris-based writer, theorist, and teacher. He is the former European editor of Montreal's contemporary art journal Parachute and serves on the editorial board of the interdisciplin- ary magazine Mouvements in Paris. He is currently working on a long-term project on the use-value of art.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 59 The Archaeology of the Catastrophic

Guven Incirlioglu

In Orientalism, Edward Said almost nection can be found among never touches on the role of the Ottoman subjects of various Ottoman state of Istanbul as the nationalities: Any attempt to glorify subject or agent of an orientalist the history of the unified eastern construct. There appears to be Mediterranean under Ottoman several reasons for this neglect rule is immoral. Said’s resentment (or resentment), the most logical stems from this long period of being that the Ottoman imperial domination, capped with an air of presence in the Middle East was conspiracy and complication before problematic in many ways. While the whole system collapsed, leading being a domination in the imperial the way to the desperation every- sense, it contradicts (but eventu- one feels now. ally conspires with) the colonial In between the Balkans and the interests of England and France in Middle East, we, the peoples of the late eighteenth and nineteenth the young and xenophobic Turkish century, and complicates issues of republic, are caught in a schizo- nationality, territory, and ethnic- phrenic state of affairs as to whom ity. Some of the most troubled we should pledge allegiance. Arising regions and peoples in the world partly from this contextual back- today, namely the Balkans and ground and situating itself globally, the Middle East, are the remnants the Xurban Collective tends to of complications in the late (and be overtly political through the weak) Ottoman Empire, and the production of collaborative expres- conspiracy of various colonial pow- sions, mostly of an artistic kind. ers attests to this. More and more, we see that the Apparently, the affinity and problems of oppression and world affection of the Ottoman court for domination converge, that the the rest of the Middle East never catastrophe is global, and that no went beyond a shared Islamic faith one is safe. (albeit based on clerical superior- In the new order of the world, ity), Koranic script, and the regular the discourse of hegemonic world collection of taxes. A similar con- domination is franchised through the practices of locally governing based artistic collectivity dispenses bodies. To pit unholy terror against with the need for inspiration of the holy trinity of the state, the a divine kind, dreams, childhood military, and the multinationals is memories, and the personal expe- a cover for continuing oppression riences of a lifetime. The dialogue worldwide. In these conditions, we within the collective becomes an stress the impossibility of turning intellectual projection. For us, inspi- inward, the subjectivity of art- ration comes, to quote Benjamin work that misses the catastrophic again, from “despair and desolation existence, the scar of social con- which was ours”. sciousness. Xurban tends to keep The Xurban Collective started a distance between the work and out as an initiative on the World the individual self, externalises Wide Web (www.xurban.net) issues but moving to specify and in the year 2000, and from the localise a situation in order to beginning we were involved in avoid a broader rhetoric of resis- bringing together exhibition space tance that will vanish into thin air. and the space of the web. We Only in these circumstances can have maintained a web version the artist avoid being part of the of all our gallery installations in global spectacle and escape the order to further explore the pos- profession for the production of sibilities of artistic expression and culture as such. the dissemination of ideas and Each artistic endeavour is, for us, attitudes. Each project comes a research project, and our sources with an elaboration of ideas and a range from historic instances contextual statement, but there is (distant and recent, to “seize hold no benefit in repeating them here. of a memory as it flashes up at a We have also developed coopera- moment of danger”, in the words tive web projects without physical of Walter Benjamin) to critiques of counterparts to be shown in an power (as in Foucault, Deleuze, and exhibition space (www.turbulence. others). As autonomous as it can org/Works/Knit++). Born in a land be, within the multiple layers of the where there is a dubious record works we produce, we try to bring of democracy and freedom of forth the possibilities of a collective expression, we value the anonymity existence that opposes the official, of collective power and the means military, technocratic, and corpo- offered by the internet, even rate organisation of time and space. though everything of substance In short, we search for a truly civil tends to be more and more dif- (and civilised) means of conduct. fused through the murky space We are well aware that the poetic of the web. We detest the com- vistas of artistic expression are mercialisation of public domains a world beyond the outcome of and try to maintain a network, a scientific research, so dear to the community of people dedicated to institutions of enlightened civilisa- remaining autonomous. tion, and for everything we do, we The project we realised for the try to avoid being “literal” in every 8th Istanbul Biennial in 2003, enti- sense of the word. The process- tled The Containment Re-Contained,

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 61 related to the nature of “contain- ment”, that is, of territory, of bodies and populations, and, of course, of the situation. For us, the southeast was known as a high-alert zone for a long time due to a civil war, thou- sands (mostly Kurds) killed, villages evacuated and burned, and a popu- lation suffering exile. The extreme militarisation and containment of the area through checkpoints has apparently eased up in recent years, while across the border the occupation of Iraq was going full force. Today, the militarisation and privatisation of the country and its resources is confronted with increasing resistance, as can rightly be expected in a country under occupation and from a people with dignity. The “archaeology” we allude to in our working methods brings up instances of the past for the purpose of mapping an alternative history of a given situation. Treating the fuel tank as an archaeological object was well in tune with the provides clues to our future field consideration given to vessels of Central Intelligence A Xurban Collective online of interest, and raises key issues all kinds that have travelled back and installation project, 2001 for understanding the current situ- and forth in this region for millen- Photographs, vrml projection, ation in parts of the Middle East. nia. But what the mute objects of and mixed media Dimensions variable For this, we exhibited an extensive archaeology do not make manifest From “Im zeichen der Stadt: record of a journey we made from has to be filled in, meaning has Contemporary Art from southeastern Anatolia all the way to be attributed. Any student of Turkey” at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, December 2001 through to the Iraqi border. That record- Ottoman history (and by the same February 2002 ing (through photographs) was token of all empires) is well aware www.xurban.net accompanied by a fuel tank that that this was a time of periodic we brought over the border, one insurgency and counterinsurgency, representative amongst thousands that is, of containment. In that sprawled around the area. They sense, the legends of revolt are were once used for the clandestine sung for the heroic/romantic seek- but halfway legal purpose of trans- ers of justice up on the mountain ferring diesel fuel from northern (so dear to Anatolian folklore) Iraq to Turkey. As a container hold- as well as for an entire people ing a prized substance, it sparked as the subjects of empire. With for us a number of associations archaeological references, we try to dig into probabilities other than militarisation and the containment of territories. The ethical stance we take suggests that the observation/ sampling of these probabilities is more important than a reactionary position, when we face the siege of our livelihood by the military/eco- nomic apparatus of empire.

A Catastrophe / On the Outside, Same as Inside, 2000 A Xurban Collective online and installation project, 2000 Photographs and vrml projec- tion Installation view at Kassa Galeri, Istanbul, October 2000 www.xurban.net

Guven Incirlioglu is an artist who studied architecture, photography, and art theory. He lives and works in Istanbul. His many installations using photographs and computer technology have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Turkey and the United States. Since 1997, Incirlioglu has been involved in a number of web-based projects with an urban emphasis, including the Xurban Collective (www.xurban.net). He is currently a faculty member in Yildiz Technical University’s Faculty of Art and Design in Istanbul.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 63 Jerusalem Walls: Real and Imagined

Salim Tamari

Jerusalem’s modernity is linked, Jerusalem: A Provincial Capital both in the public imagination and In contrast to its sacred status, as a social process, to the move- Jerusalem had been primarily a ment of the city’s households at provincial capital throughout the the turn of the last century from late Ottoman period. It was only within the confining walls of the until 1839, when the city was the old city — the Holy Basin — to seat of the Mutassarifiyyeh, account- the green suburbs that lay to the ing to Istanbul directly, that a class north and west of the city. It is no of local ulema and ashraf assumed accident that this modernity, and a status vying for equal footing with the social freedoms accompanying Damascus and Beirut. Even then, it, was an escape from the walled however, Jerusalem remained a “social ghetto”, but also from the town of pilgrimage and associated religious iconography associated religious services. with it. With the establishment of The trajectory for the city’s Ottoman security outside the city growth was deflected by war and walls, with mammoth gates used to the Zionist enterprise, but also seal the movement of inhabitants by a colonial (British) moder- after sunset until the last third of nity that undermined what was the nineteenth century, the mer- about to develop into a vibrant chant classes and the ashraf began and cosmopolitan urban culture, to venture into living in exclusive transforming the lives of its ethnic villas in Bab al-Sahira, Sheikh Jarrah, and religious communities. In this Sa’d wa Sa’eed, and Musrara. context the city’s historic walls, Towards the end of the century, built by Suleiman al-Qanuni (the Orthodox Christian endowments Magnificent), were being reconsti- and Jewish philanthropy established tuted as ethnic-sectarian walls of modern middle-class neighbour- nationalist separation and subjuga- hoods in the western part of the tion. But this process was hardly city: Baq’a, Nammamreh, Yamin inevitable. Moshe, Mea She’arim, and the Russian Compound. And during the British Mandate, the more bour- servants and professionals that geois outposts for civil servants and made the city an attraction for the professionals: Talbieh, Rehavia, immigrants. As the capital of the and Qatamon. Holy Land, it also brought in a Jerusalem’s modernity was modern system of education that paradoxical. The end of the city’s generated a new cosmopolitan ghettoisation produced a more elite: Ottoman nizamiyyah schools, pronounced sectarian (confes- Catholic and Orthodox seminaries, sional) system than the one it and Protestant colleges all vied for replaced. The British introduced a the soul and heart of the native clear delineation of religious quar- population. Jewish migration, as ters to replace mixed mahallat of Najati Sidqi noted, brought with it the pre-war period. Whereas the Bolshevism as well as Zionism to Ottoman city was a hybrid mixture the Holy City. of confessions and ethnicities living The cultural rejuvenation of the — and coexisting astonishingly well city had two dimensions. On the — in communal neighbourhoods, one hand, the celebration of reli- Christians were now associated gious traditions and quasi-religious with Haret al-Nasara, Muslims rituals turned into nationalist with the Islamic Quarter, and Jews revival(s) that combined popular with the Jewish Quarter. Only festivity with recasting saints who Armenians continued to live in their were given the status of national historic locality, unperturbed. At heroes: Nebi Musa, al-Khader (Saint this time, religious identity and turf George), and Nebi Rubeen. On the overlapped in a disturbing reversal other hand, the dissemination of of liberating trends. The significance modern technology (newspapers, of moving to the new neighbour- electricity, cars, and a network of hoods outside the city walls was road systems) forged the founda- deemed a rebellion against this tions for secular culture, paying only definition of one’s residence with lip service to religious ritual. one’s locale. Moreover, the com- The new cosmopolitan culture bination of Zionism and religious manifested itself through the endowments (awqaf) meant that emergence of neighbourhoods dis- the nationalism that emerged in tinguished by class differences and the mandate period was a national- new modes of social insulation. In ism reinforced by religious zeal. western neighbourhoods, unlike in There were countertrends the communities of the old city, the to this retrogression. The his- economic status of the family, not torical reputation of Jerusalem as its religious affiliation, was increas- a conservative antidote to the ingly becoming the determining emancipated secular culture of the consideration for its residence. coastal region (Jaffa and Haifa) is By contrast the walled city now not entirely deserved. Although contained the poorer households, its economic base was based on dependent on convents and awqaf pilgrimage and religious endow- endowments, that could not afford ments, it had become the seat of to move outside. a new bureaucratic class of civil The main mechanism of eman-

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 65 cipated lifestyle was the insular Elsewhere in the Arab East and milieu protecting upper and middle the Levant, it was the anonymity classes, regardless of religious affilia- of the big city that allowed this tion. Two items go unnoticed in the condition of protective insular- popular saying of the period: “Mawt ity. This was certainly the case for al-faqir was taaris al-ghani” (“The Damascus, Cairo, Alexandria, and death of the poor man, and the Istanbul. Coastal cities like Jaffa debauchery of the rich”). It was this and Beirut had a large mercantile insulating mechanism — that social class and a substantial number of distancing that comes with privi- ethnic minorities with European lege — more so than the walls of proclivities and penchants who the bourgeois villas which allowed buffered their behaviour from the the ashraf of Jerusalem and their “street” or the “masses”. The masses, nouveau riche retinues to flaunt the collective agency articulating convention and impose their own monolithic social control, probably normative ethics. Those were mani- did not emerge in these cities until fested in the culture of cafés and the 1940s. bars, in the access to odahs (gar- In any case, one should not çonières) for dilettante bachelors, confuse the introduction of and in their own single-dwelling modernity with the presence of villas when they moved outside European elements. In many east- the crowded city walls to their ern Mediterranean cities, it was own separate neighbourhoods. It either the state or the native mer- was not the ethos of privacy that cantile groups — or sometimes the allowed such permissive latitudes urban ashraf — that acted as the — a notion that was still embryonic agents of modernity. In Jerusalem if not absent — but the inability of particularly, it was neither size nor the street, the public at large, to the cultural presence of European The Musrara neighbourhood, reproach their privileged elites for communities that allowed for these one of the first modern Arab housing projects outside the what they considered unacceptable latitudes. A town of about 70,000 old city walls, 1910 or undoable. inhabitants — such as Jerusalem at the turn of the century — was across class boundaries — through a virtual extended village as far the networks of neighbourhoods as invisibility was concerned. The and mahallat. Here popular cul- European presence in the city ture was celebrated during the was primarily one of proselytising mawasim of saints and prophets, groups and pietistic Jewish com- in the street processions of Sufi munities — hardly the material for orders, in the chants of Orthodox a cosmopolitan ethos. It was the Holy Saturday, Sabt al-Nur, and in aristocratic privilege of the native the recitations of fada’il al-Quds, of upper classes and their emerging medieval origin. It is not that one middle class periphery, buttressed culture was modern and the other by a new and energetic civil ser- traditional. Rather the modern- vice that created the social base ist streak was national and global, for a modernist cultural milieu. while the popular tradition was They articulated this milieu in the local and communal. schooling system, in newspapers, theatres, social clubs, and family- Biography and the Transformation of based factional political parties. Urban Consciousness Above all, this urban privileged class I have been attempting to trace was on its way to becoming both changes in the texture of the Holy a regional and national class, linking City’s urban social consciousness its aspirations with its equivalents through autobiographic litera- in Jaffa, Haifa, Nablus, Damascus, ture — that is, with the subjective Beirut, and Tripoli, until it was narratives of actual people. This undermined by the rebellion of allows for the examination of the 1936-39 and dealt a death blow by emergence of new mores, norma- the war of 1948. tive ethics, and the decline of old Against this cultural milieu of conventions and solidarities with privilege, we observe the popular the presence of a variety of actors culture of religious ritual, which in the early and later modern The Russian compound, as united the whole community — periods in two epochal eras of seen from inside the city walls

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 67 the city’s history: the transition The life of an old city educator from Ottoman decentralism and and pedagogue who pioneered the emergence of a separatist the establishment of free secular Palestinian nationalism — separate education (Khalil Sakakini, 1887- from the wider Syrian and Arab 1953) nationalism and defined by the struggle against Zionist colonialism. The stormy life of a militant The main problem with this Bolshevik, who became the paradigm is that it leaves us at the Comintern representative in mercy of individuals who experi- Palestine, in charge of Arabising enced modernity from a relatively the PCP (Najati Sidqi, 1905- privileged position, since it was 1979) mostly professional and upper class men (hardly any women) who The story of an Ottoman left memoirs and diaries. The main medical doctor who devoted advantage is that the city’s social his life to the study of peasant and cultural transformations can lore in an attempt to establish now be understood in the context primordial roots for Palestinian of both structural change and nationalism (Tawfiq Canaan, the subjective experience of that 1882-1964) change. We have here six Jerusalem The predicament of Ishaq al- characters, downtrodden and Shami (1888-1949), a Jewish elevated, who have bequeathed us novelist from Hebron who written narratives of their lives that wrote about the religious cere- illuminate transformations of the monies of Nabi Musa but found city over the last century: his salvation in secular culture and epitomised the dilemma The career of a feudal lord of an Arab Jew on the eve of who became part of the city’s Zionism governing elite (Sheikh Omar al- Nabi Musa procession, 1910 Saleh, 1894-1965) The eccentric biography of a less reveal worlds of contrasting popular musician from Haret al- possibilities. As one would expect Sa’diyyeh, who was also at one in a relatively medium sized town time an Ottoman naval officer that can be crossed from one end and who entertained in public to the other in less than three weddings, and in the palaces walking hours, or one hour by car- of the city’s aristocracy (Wasif riage, they shared the common life Jawhariyyeh, 1887-1967) of the intelligentsia. Yet they exhib- ited contrasting ideologies, tastes, One can hardly imagine five out inclinations, and hopes, unthinkable of six characters that were further in the world of homologous glo- apart: a musician, an educator, a balisation. defrocked aristocrat, a doctor, and The reason for this diversity lies a professional Bolshevik. In each in a simple feature of early moder- of these lives we see a different nity. The loss of confinement inside facet of the city. What is astounding, the city’s walls, as well as avenues however, is that their lives actually of intellectual mobility emerging crossed: With the exception of from the physical move to the Najati Sidqi, the communist leader, periphery of the city and beyond each of them knew the others — (to Jaffa, Istanbul, Cairo, Europe, and some intimately — and interacted the Americas) led into uncharted with them socially if not profes- intellectual territory. Some claimed sionally. their destiny in the struggle for the They uncover for us a city that, nationalist reconstruction of society despite its grim reputation and in a country that was far more communal warfare, is surprisingly manageable (or so it seemed) alive with intellectual, cultural, and than the limitless parameters of political debates. What is more sur- the Ottoman Empire. Some (like prising is that religion played a very Siqdi) chose the socialist revolu- minor role, if any at all, in those tion, allying himself with Republican debates. The sacredness of the city Spain, and then with the move- was an element of fate that set the ments of the Lebanese and Syrian scene for the coming wars at the working class over the struggle for end of the century. It defined the Palestinian independence. Some, economy of the city. For the period like Canaan, found his calling in under discussion, it was simply a the search for the “soul of the source of livelihood for a substan- nation”, in its peasant culture and tial segment of the city’s population: lore, and in the proto-nationalism hoteliers, food and drink manufac- of Biblical, Cananite, and Jebusite tures, administrators of pilgrimage, origins. Some found their calling awqaf management, yeshivot, sou- in the search for cultural affinities venir crafts, portrait photographers, between Egypt and Greater Syria, carriage drivers, candle makers, Bilad al-Sham, as we witness in prayer book printers, and so on. the musical repertoire of Wasif Furthermore these six biog- Jawhariyyeh, who saw Palestine as raphies present us with lives that, the bridge between the Nile Valley while contemporaneous, neverthe- and the “Land of the Cedars”.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 69 Against the backdrop of these Above all I am a member of the voices and trends, we hear Khalil human race. Sakakini proclaiming, as the Great Perhaps Sakakini was unique War of 1914 is coming to a close, within his intellectual class in his anti-nationalist humanism from proclaiming himself to be above the debris of Jerusalem’s communi- nationalism, but he lived and tarian ghettos: worked in a milieu that allowed for Why do the authorities want to the free expression of this senti- exile me from Jerusalem? I am ment. The prevalent atmosphere not a Christian, nor a Buddhist, at the turn of the century was nor a Muslim, nor a Jew. I do pregnant with intellectual and not see myself as an Arab, nor ideological possibilities in which a an Englishman, nor a Frenchman, number of identities were imagin- nor a German, nor a Turk. able: Ottoman constitutionalism

Right was definitely on the decline, but Khalil al-Sakakini, an educator which crucible was going to inherit and pioneer of the Palestinian its mantle — Arab nationalism, literary renaissance, 1907 Syrian nationalism, socialism, Islamic Below reform, or a narrower Palestinian Hizb al-Sa’aleek (The Party regional identity? All these con- of Vagabonds), gathered in Jerusalem, circa 1919. In the tested identities were legitimate front row are Khalil Sakakini, and members of the local intel- Achille Saikally, and Adel Jaber. ligentsia (as was the case in Egypt Jaber was a pro-Ottoman figure who became a noted and Bilad al-Sham) adopted them professor at Salahiyyah College, eclectically and in combination with which was established in one another. They also shifted their Damascus and Jerusalem by Ahmad Jamal Pasha. The loyalties without feeling a sense of men standing in the back row hypocrisy or betrayal. include Musa Alami, one of Sakakini’s students who later War and the Loss of Metropolitan played a major role in the Palestinian national movement. Status The Jawhariyyeh Collection, IPS The emancipation project that Jerusalem was undergoing at the hands of its intelligentsia was short lived. War and Zionism contributed to transform the city’s (as well as the country’s) destiny in the direc- tion of nationalist exclusivity and physical dismemberment. The war of 1948 ended with the redrawing of boundaries along the city’s east-west axis, skirting the southern and western walls of the city. These walls came to delineate national and religious boundaries. Palestinians who happened to live on the wrong side of the armistice lines were forcibly transferred nor Palestinian subjects, acquiring to the Jordanian-controlled side. pariah status not only among the Similarly, Jews living in the old city Israeli Jews but also among their were evicted to Mea Sh’arim and compatriots. other western neighbourhoods. Jerusalem’s walls were recon- With this dismemberment, not structed (from ancient ramparts) only did the city lose its physical by Sultan Suleiman al-Qanuni unity and cosmopolitan character to fortify the city from external of ethnic-religious diversity but also invasion. The city walls continued its access (and openness) to the to be closed for centuries after coastal culture of Jaffa and Haifa. sunset, ostensibly to protect the Until then, those twin port cities city dwellers from intruders and constituted a social safety valve invaders. But they also performed and intellectual and cultural stimu- the function of preventing people lus to Jerusalem’s control by the from escaping the confines of the tax-farming ideology of the city’s city. One of the great features of landed elites. Ottoman modernity was the per- Within two years the city was manent opening of the city walls totally marginalised. It turned day and night. The event accom- inwards and played second fiddle panied the movement of the city’s to the capital city of Amman. It was new classes — just before World transformed from being a national War I — to their suburban villas, capital, with a national political and started a process that linked class, to a regional market for the city to its rural hinterland and Bethlehem, Hebron, and Ramallah. to the national economy. It also Demographically it became a city hastened the process of integrating of migrants and refugees. The Jerusalem’s economy to the world migrants were petty merchants and economy. itinerant labourers from Mount Spiritual Jerusalem was seen in Hebron, and refugees from its medieval cosmology as the centre The Montefiori neighbourhood western rural hinterland and the of the world. During the first half outside the city walls facing the vacated cities of Ramleh, Lyddah, of the twentieth century it was on Jaffa Gate (Bab al-Khalil) and Jaffa. The war of 1967, while “uniting” the two parts of the city under Israeli rule, furthered the cultural marginalisation of Jerusalem from its remaining Arab environment. It created a cordon sanitaire of Jewish colonial settlements around the north, east, and south of the city, ensuring the rupture of the city’s urban continuity with its own vil- lages and townships. The remaining Arab population was given legal status equivalent to Dante’s limbo. They were neither Israeli citizens

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 71 its way to becoming an important Jerusalem’s new wall has become a regional urban centre and the monstrous mockery of its historic capital of a nascent colonial coun- walls — rendering them a quaint try on its road to independence. subject of nostalgia for a time In between, it became a worldly when enclosures were erected city where pietism, pilgrimage, and to protect the urban ethos from endowments and religious ceremo- external invasion, and a delineation nies gave way to an urban nexus of the civic solidarity of the city’s for a new notion of citizenship. internal neighbourhoods. The new A century later this emancipa- wall, instead, acts as a strangling tion project has come to an end. noose for both its subject popula- The city’s physical walls remain tion and their lords and masters. open, and they do not close at sunset. But they might as well. New walls — more formidable than ever — have been erected: The walls of legal residency separating Jewish citizens from Arab residents

The walls of demographic limitations, which create housing restrictions for the growth of the city’s native population

The walls of colonial encircle- ment, sealing the inner city from its hinterland through some nineteen settlements that create an apartheid system of separa- tion

The wall of military checkpoints (68 of them), making sure that some three million Palestinians enter either the worldly or the secular city only by military pass

And now the new physical wall: a complex monstrosity of elec- tric wires, early warning systems, and concrete barriers, twelve metres high to ensure that the other walls become hermetically sealed

Salim Tamari is the director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies in Jerusalem and a professor of sociology at Birzeit University. Tamari is also an editor at Jerusalem’s Quarterly File and Hawliyyat. He is the author of Jerusalem 1948 and Ottoman Jerusalem: Al-Muza Karat al-Jawhariyyeh, which he cowrote with Issam Nassar.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 73 Baghdad: A Metonymy for a Capital

Mohammad Mazlum

There I was, after thirteen years of legacy: Madinat al-Mansur (City of exile, roaming in Baghdad with my Mansur). Not only in the ambiguity brother or a relative for a guide, of its name but also in the confu- seeking the places I always longed sion of its urbanity and population, to revisit. I was like a stranger in a the true Baghdad remains, as city visited only in dreams, trying always, lost. The search for the city to decipher what truth they hold, of Baghdad, the origin of its name wishing to distinguish visions from and its history, resembles a process nightmares. of excavation for all the cultures I was not alone in trekking with that once lived in Mesopotamia. mandatory guides. I crossed many To begin with, the name carries Iraqi returnees, all accompanied a plethora of explanations: Some by relatives, usually a generation see it as Chaldean, others believe or two their juniors, trying not to it to be Babylonian, while for oth- lose their way as they searched for ers still it is most likely Aramaic. places — their past paradises — in Urban historians like al-Khatib, a city that has become unrecognis- al-Baghdadi, and Yaqut al-Hamawi able. Moreover, even those who and lexicographers like Ibn al- never left found themselves as if Manzur and al-Razzi argue that it is in another city. “Baghdad changed Persian, or perhaps even Chinese. much after the 9th of April” is a Overall, they agree the name is a saying often heard. For me, these composite. It refers to an ethnic or changes began long before that racial god such as Baal Jad, Bagh date. Dad, or Beit Qadad, to name just Were it not for the persistent a few examples from an extended ambiguities summoned by its name, list with various philological refer- ancient Baghdad seems lost. Over ences. Nevertheless, with all these the ruins of Persian cities, Aqr Kouf appellations, it is clear that many a and the Babylonian Tell Hermel, people landed in its vicinities. We arrived Abou Ja‘far al-Mansur. He do not know if the city centre founded Baghdad, a city that car- itself existed before the Abbassid ried, in one of its appellations, his epoch. Regardless, it is the lateral expansion of the city that eventu- ered territory won by coercion. ally overlapped with the various Furthermore, they considered it peoples who lived and occupied licit for those who owned homes the Mesopotamian region and can to sell them even if in ruins. As for account for the persistent racial the land, it was deemed unlawful to and ethnic interlacing of Baghdad’s own but permissible to rent.1 Some population. jurists went as far as to prohibit The ambiguity of the city’s name praying on the land or harvesting sets us in the midst of a complex its yield.2 and still current map. That is why A map made with fire, such was history, in this sense, is not merely Baghdad the day al-Mansur saw a passing event, but an event it for the first time — as he was that begs explanation. Because it probably the first to see it. On is incumbent, it is important to that fateful day the caliph called inquire whether or not it is rel- engineers, architects, and crafts- evant to recall history in the face of men from the four corners of the current events. empire to build the “enflamed” 1 Islamic law stipulates that terri- tories can be conquered either It is said that al-Mansur, while model of the city he saw in his by arrangement or by force. surveying the land before building mind.3 If by arrangement, then taxes Baghdad, looked for someone to Dreams of men, ashes, fires, and are levied. If by force, then the fate of the land is given to the identify that corner of the world oil are eternal, shared by all, seeking governor to decide. Either he for him. He found a secluded priest to redraw Baghdad over the ves- hands it to the warriors as and another man who, ignorant of tiges of that foundational enflamed booty, leaving one fifth to the state, or keeps it as entitle- Arabic, told the caliph in Persian: plan. ment, which is what Omar Bin “Bag dad!” (“This grove is mine!”) Since its inception, Baghdad was al-Khatab opted for in all of Religious jurists generally populated by the troops of the Iraq or what was then known as Ard al-Sawad (Land of the despised the city’s first given name. caliph. Its architects were solicited Multitude). And so they persisted in avoiding for various cities under his aegis. 2 Al-Fadil Bin Ayad was one of the name Baghdad with various One can only imagine the breadth those who prohibited prayer nicknames and metonymies such as of knowledge and skill that fed in Baghdad. He was known Madinat al-Salaam (City of Peace), into building the city. The primary to be an ascetic who lived his youth as a bandit and Madinat al-Zawra (City of Untruth), materials used for construction womaniser before becoming a and Dar al-Khilafa (Residence of were diverse. For instance, stone renowned Sufi during the reign the Caliphate). The other, older was brought from the palace of of al-Rashid. names were of foreign descent: Taq Kusra (or Kisra). As for the 3 In the fourth part of his historic Chinese, Persian, Aramaic, Magian, four gates, one was imported from account, al-Tabari recounts a memorable incident when al- or otherwise. And because they Zanda Ward in the south, a second Mansur first ordered Baghdad all carried pagan meanings, such as from al-Sham, a third from al-Kufa, to be drawn on the ground Beit al-Mashiya (Stable), Mu‘askar and the fourth, called al-Khurasan, with ash so that he would be able to see it. Once delimited, al-Aliha (Encampment of the Gods) was expressly built on site and he walked it alleys, crossed and Hadiqat al-Shaytan (Garden known by historians to be the its thresholds and stood in its of the Devil), they were obviously weakest of the four. open spaces. He then ordered these lines be dug, stuffed with not considered proper by religious All four gates went through cotton balls, and filled with oil. jurists. Some such as Ahmad many changes. Upon the making of He then had the troughs lit so Ben Hanbal and Abu Hunayfa al- the city, they opened up to neigh- he could see and understand its plan. Finally, he ordered that Na‘man prohibited land ownership bouring cities, only to be renamed the foundations of the city be in Baghdad because it was consid- in changing epochs. All the while, built accordingly.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 75 these gates never stood firm in the expression “The fall of Baghdad”. face of enemies nor kept the popu- Rather they tried vehemently to lation within from escaping. They differentiate between the fall of the remained precarious in the face regime and that of the city. Others of conquerors, used as gateways saw that same expression as fateful through which many were exiled. and indicative of a greater capitula- But to the ruler, they meant some- tion, one exceeding the circular thing different. Only he could enter boundaries of the city. the City of Mansur on horseback; Many are not aware that everyone else had to cross on foot Baghdad has fallen often, and through other minor entryways. always easily. Whether at the Today, nothing remains of these hands of foreign conquerors or gates, not even the names, except internal conspirators, Baghdad has for the east gate and another known many masters: several times known as al-Mu‘azzam.4 Rather, between the time of its foundation they remain, if at all, loaded with by al-Mansur and its fall to Holaku, contradictory symbolic meanings. and many more times between the It was at the western gate of the time of the Moguls and that of the city that Saddam Hussein reviewed marines.5 a parade of more than one and a Long before this last war 4 Among the gates on the two half million soldiers, dubbed the started, Baghdad was a main target sides of Baghdad are: al-Kufa, Army of al-Quds, parading under for the Americans. When the hos- al-Khurasan, al-Basra, al-Sham, the so-called Qaws al-Nasr (Arch tilities broke out, the British were the eastern gate known as the Gate of Darkness, al-Talsam, of Victory). The Americans, recog- delegated the task of securing the al-Wustani, al-Mu‘azam (Gate nising the visually strategic location, southern front while American of the Sultan), al-Anbar, Harb, broadcast some of the first images convoys headed straight towards Kluaza, al-Shamasiyya, al-Burdan, Abraz, al-Zafariyya, al-Halaba, of the invasion and later set up one Baghdad. Once fallen, the city al-Basaliyya, al-Mahul, al-Mar- of their bases there. earned an additional name, another ateb, al-Jadid, Katarbeyl, al-Da’er, Baghdad was first built for mili- metonymy: Bush-Dad, a name al-Hadid, Banbari, al-Ghirbeh, Suq al-Tamr, al-Badriyya, al-Nu- tary and security reasons, after the following and building upon the bi, al-Amma, Ammuriyyeh, and insurgence of al-Mansur’s former series of variations on the ancient Bustan. Most probably there followers, an episode known as the name, certainly a more appropriate were several different names designated for a few gates. Rowandian incident. This tendency, name than Blair-Dad, the anecdotal which binds Baghdad with military appellation entertained for a while security, persisted throughout the by the British press. Bush-Dad is 5 In addition to the two waves Abbassid era. the newest name that incorpo- of Mogul invasion, Baghdad always solicited foreign invad- No one thought the city would rates all the sultans, caliphs, and ers to shake off internal fall so easily to the Americans. After generals who passed before. All despots. The city seemed to all, it was encircled by a great con- of them were again summoned repeat this pattern, starting with the struggle between centration of military bases: al-Taji, and appropriated as the American al-Amin and al-Ma’mun, when al-Rashid, Abu Ghraib, al-Habban- president, its latest emperor, set its poor called on the dynasty iyeh, and Mansuriyat al-Jabbal. All out to redraw the city, the city of Beni Boueih and then the neighbouring Persians to fend expected a great battle, based first opened by al-Mansur, planned off the wanton destructiveness on what was in fact a fallacious, within a perimeter of flames, and of Turkmen tribes, while the imaginary historical representation. then conquered, always, in billows caliph fled each and every time with his entourage, abandoning After the city was occupied by the of smoke and raging flames. the city to conquerors. Americans, many avoided using the If the map of fire is the old- est imaginary representation of cession took hold of Baghdad. It Baghdad, cemeteries are the old- was a city built by the Abbassids, est markers of the city’s ruined the seat of their authority, a centre neighbourhoods, as they are also from which to conquer and subdue putative survivors of catastrophes, surrounding regions. And a ques- eclipses, and recurring apocalypses. tion arose: Was Baghdad a military These cemeteries offer an encampment or was it a house of alternative set of coordinates that wisdom? It was this tenuous entan- still indicate the old plans of the glement of authority and culture city. Although neighbourhoods and — the seat of power and the city of quarters are in constant change a cultural diversity — that forced and often lose their architectural contradictions to surface. This and urban character, burial grounds unresolved duality marked Baghdad endure to testify, such as the burial since its inception and rendered it grounds of Abu Hunayfa, al-Qazem, a city that embraces and expels at Ahmad Ben Hanbal, Sheikh Ma‘ruf once, with equal force, never a city al-Karkhi, Bushr al-Hafi, Mansur Ben for interaction or for the promo- Amar, al-Junayd, al-Chebli, al-Kilani, tion of an intelligentsia. al-Khalani, and al-Tusi. These burial And so how is it possible to grounds have remained constant draw the cultural map of a city that with some aggrandising architec- lacks that element of chemistry tural appendices added to minarets binding its population, when its and domes. Cases in point are neighbourhoods are segregated al-Athamiyya and al-Kathimiyya, according to sectarian, racial, and two of the oldest neighbourhoods ethnic quotas? in Baghdad, so-called for having Although the city diligently been erected in the vicinity of two regrouped after each catastrophe, it of the oldest burial grounds for was no longer a capital. As a result Abu Hunayfa al-Na‘man, known of the first and second Mogul inva- as al-Imam al-A‘tham, and Musa sions, known as the Dark Epoch, Ben Ja‘far, the seventh Imam of surviving plagues, floods, and the the Shiite Jaafari sect, known as al- destructive wantonness of Turkmen Kathem. It is noteworthy that all of tribes, the city’s population was those laid in these burial grounds reduced to a mere 15,000 by were victims of the successive the middle of the seventeenth rulers of Baghdad. Imprisoned, tor- century. To say that the inhabitants tured, murdered, or simply made of Baghdad have faced the threat to vanish, all came to the city from of extinction more than once other places and fell victim to the is no exaggeration. The threats wrath of the City of the Sultan. Its have been more than man-made. main Abbassid rulers all perished, Historian Ahmad Susa dedicated in a historical anachronism worth three volumes to tracing the city’s 6 6 Al-Mansur died and was buried investigating, outside its gates. The long history of floods. in Mecca. Al-Hadi died in Issa city nevertheless carried the names When looking into the unfolding Abad. Al-Mahdi died in a little of two of its more enlightened process of subrogation and expul- known town in Persia. Al-Amin was deposed and killed at one caliphs: al-Mansur and al-Rashid. It sion, it is important to consider the of the city’s gates. Al-Ma’mun was then that the anxiety of suc- effects of incoming and occupying died in Tartus in Syria.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 77 forces on Baghdad as the capital of without a national people — to be the state, a capital even if without manufactured later and accordingly.7 a state. When Army General Abdel In the second chapter of the Karim Qasem, known for his city’s history as the capital of a partiality to the poor, announced state, Faisal I came along with his the foundation of the first Iraqi entourage and a few of his father’s Republic, he lacked an entourage friends. That period is known as to inject into the city to vitalise it. the Arab revolution against the That is perhaps why he opened Ottomans. Faisal’s entourage was a the city to immigrants from the diverse group and later constituted south who flooded through its the basis of an Arab intelligen- gates. These new recruits seemed tsia that regarded Baghdad as its no more than a demographic centre. All the while, the myriad encampment. Today, however, they cultural elements — Indian, Polish, constitute a third of the capital’s etc — within the British colonial population. occupying force persisted in build- As a matter of fact, rather than ing their military, social, and cultural governing the peripheries from the presence in the city, as opposed capital, Baghdad was always gov- to the previous contingent of erned by its neighbouring towns. the Ottoman elite. Outside the Such was the case in the 1960s city, Bedouin and tribal culture with al-Ramadi during the rule of remained dominant. the brothers Aref. It was the case With this heterogeneous mix, with the people of Tikrit during the an approximate image of the ascent of Saddam and the Baath state’s capital was proffered by the party. The biggest influx of new occupying power for a period of 37 immigrants into the city from the years, spanning from the mandate north and west traces back to that up to the foundation of the repub- time frame. It was then that one lic: 37 years of Arab legacy that could notice changes occurring in approximately replaced the model the attire of men and women, a of the caliphate. And this time, prevalence of conservative archi- Baghdad was the metaphorical city tectural styles, and the spread of chosen to implement this model. Bedouin mores and tradition, quite Amongst its components was the foreign to what had been previ- figure of the Arab searching for a ously common in Baghdad. When vacant throne, in this case Faisal I, reconsidering the dual model of born in Mecca. the Bedouin-urban set by Ibn 7 In a letter sent to a close associ- As the Iraqi state gradu- Khaldun as a foundation for his the- ate and published by Abdel Razzaq al-Husni in his third ally began to form alongside the ory of history, this point becomes volume of the history of Iraqi establishment of the new British relevant. In the case of Baghdad, governments, King Faisal writes occupying forces, Baghdad the capi- the theoretical model is only true that he does not consider there to be an Iraqi people. tal, slowly embarked on its social if reversed. Our capital was never Rather, he considers there to reconstruction. It also embarked on successful in taming the ferocious be quarrelsome and rebellious its own metaphorical reconstruc- wilderness in the hearts of those agglomerations of people who will be formed, he promises, tion as the king sat on his throne in rulers flocking from governorates, into a proper Iraqi people. a city that represented a territory their mindset shaped by a puzzling mix of the desert and the ruler, to the grip of another sultan. Today, unfamiliar with the urban and civic. the city is composed of periph- According to Ibn Khaldun, civilisa- eral agglomerations in an urban tion becomes the embodiment of sprawl that exceeds 700 square the Bedouin’s aspirations. Through kilometres. In this lateral expansion, its effects he becomes inclined neighbourhoods fell increasingly to pacifism and comfort, thereby into isolation, maintaining among becoming vulnerable to an external them only those links that bind the predator. In the case of Baghdad, tribe. The tribal immigrants who the situation was the opposite. Its have successively occupied the city rulers, fiercely loyal to their tribal constitute today the majority of its origins, imbued the city with two population. traits attributed to Bedouin culture, Just as the religious authorities namely hostility and savagery. maintained their seats outside the In spite of the fact that the city city, so did the tribes with their was reorganised as a capital of a own referential authorities. The state, it is significant to question true body of the tribe lays invari- why Baghdad never witnessed the ably elsewhere; the capital is no formation of an active social group more than a temporary shelter for to defend it from capitulating too the dispersed extremities of that easily to the traditions of the des- body. Tribes are known to look ert and the rural. down on those who identify them- The impossibility of such a selves with the epithet “Baghdadi”, formation is emblematised in the they suspect them of hiding some- lingering duality of expulsion and thing dubious about their origins. colonisation that marks the history That is why most residents of of the city. Let us remember that Baghdad append their belonging to al-Mansur first built Baghdad as an the city with a more foundational encampment for his troops. This nickname that locates them once inaugurated a tradition whereby again under the aegis of a tribe or each new caliph would bring in territory. “Baghdadi” is a borrowed his own entourage and expel the epithet, useless for identifying any- previous one. Arabs, Persians, and one. Seljuks were all but andirons on Baghdad, in fact, with its tenuous which the pot of social fermenta- racial and ethnic mix, condenses in tion never took hold. itself and projects the image of the And so, to this day, Baghdad country as a whole. It is the image is marked by waves of expulsion. of Iraq, yet at the same time it is And since the population usually peculiar to itself. It is a capital only bears the damage of such violent in this sense. Diversity in the rest processes, the city could never of the country, however, remains embrace continued social devel- governed by geography: The north opment. Thus its social fabric was is predominantly Kurdish, the south unevenly woven and easily trans- and centre are Arab. gressed, and thus Baghdad lived Alone, Baghdad remains an anx- from one capitulation to another, ious geography. Like the Tigris River, from the hand of one conqueror it is a cosmopolitan reservoir that Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 79 pumps and receives not water but left by the Jewish population after the blood of births and murders. its expulsion. So the al-Filiyyah Succumbing to conquests, Kurds moved into Suq al-Shurjah tyrants, and waves of migrants, in working as merchants and porters, addition to growing local birth while Arabs from the west side rates, Baghdad continues to — al-Qabissiyya especially — took change relentlessly. Not a single over the main arteries. Once group has succeeded in rooting again, a forced replacement of one itself, not the Kurds (whether al- group with another postponed the Filiyyah, Bakhtaree, Karamanjee, or growth of a coherent social coali- Suranee), Jews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, tion capable of resisting authority. Armenians, or Sa’iba. Neither the And that was not even the last capital nor the state were able episode. Again, in their turn, the to anchor any group into a stable al-Filiyyah Kurds were dispossessed, social realm; none became contex- leaving the city vulnerable and tualised in the city proper. Rather disempowered against the continu- they were expelled violently as ous influx of rural immigrants. Yet the city was repeatedly drained the Kurds did not succumb to their of its diversity. In the last half of greatest catastrophe until the onset the past century, Baghdad saw the of Baath party rule. Consistently expulsion of more than two million expelled from various cities, the people. It was during that period numbers of dispossessed reached that most of the Iraqi Jews were a record high of 250,000 in 1980, forced to emigrate according to the year the Iraq-Iran war began. a well-rehearsed scenario written Half of those expelled were from and performed by the Iraqi state, Baghdad.9 8 Al-Farhud is a vernacular term the British government, and Zionist The general modality by meaning acts of looting and organisations well-established in the which authorities viewed people stealing. It goes back to an insurrection by the move- capital. It was in fact from Baghdad was accusatory and destructive. ment of Rashid Ali al-Kilani that the Jews left for the south Following each insurrection or against the British in 1941. upon the establishment of the protest, authorities cracked down Jewish communities stood with the British and favoured the modern state of Iraq. ruthlessly and silenced voices of return of the crown prince Between the year of al-Farhud the opposition. forced to abdicate by the and the unfolding chapters of The events in the aftermath army. Consequently, Jews in Baghdad, Mousol, Basra, and this scenario, more than 100,000 of the insurrection known as the other cities were the targets of Jews left Baghdad, a fifth of its March Revolt, which erupted at acts of looting and killing. And population.8 They had constituted the end of the war named Desert although some try to paint the events as another holo- an integral element in some of Storm and the expulsion of caust, it is most probable that the city’s traditional classes, yet Saddam from Kuwait, are cases in no more than 200 perished. they were forced to leave under point. In the pages of their publish- Notwithstanding the exact number, these occurrences pressure from Zionist terrorism ing organ, Jaridat al-Thawra (The were demagogical even if con- perpetrated with the tacit collabo- Journal of the Revolution), the Baath nected with specific events. ration of the state. They left behind authorities claimed that southern 9 The numbers included in this a tangible absence in the life of insurgents were actually brought paper are a summary of many the city. Since Baghdad had always by Mohamad Bin al-Qassem, along comparative studies of reports by international and Iraqi compensated through borrowing, with a herd of buffaloes, during the human rights organisations. other groups tried to fill the gaps Islamic conquest of India, and were known to have copulated and Thousand and One Nights. That is multiplied with them, thus carrying an image only worthy of enter- some of their traits. taining the sultan, a stratagem Through numerous occupations manufactured during long nights and a putative independence, the weaving stories and sex to defer a image of Baghdad has endured as death sentence. It was this image, a clear expression of the ambigu- however, along with the image of ity that lies at its core. It is an an enflamed map, that the marines image that remained elusive, often carried with them when they reduced to an absence or a fact, entered the city in the midst of but it was never considered as that chaos, like a human flood churning of a metonymic city, namely, a city with the aggressive sentiment of deadened and occulted behind the population toward its own city. stereotypes and therefore always The Americans had to find prone to suicide just to shake off some explanation for the looting the deadly weight of the metonymy. and destruction that took place Accounts by renowned Arab and made the city, once again, chroniclers like Ibn Jubayr and reflect the map of its founder. Ali Ibn Battuta support the dramatic Baba provided such an explanatory contrast between on the one description, shared in contradictory hand the image of the city and its ways by the locals and the invaders people, and on the other, its image in this new Baghdad, or Bush-Dad. as confabulated from memory. In Contrary to the legend which more concise formulation, both tells of an Ali Baba who fought 40 travellers agreed that except for thieves to prove his goodness, the the Tigris River, nothing in the Americans reduced him to a mob city was remarkable. Yet even this of 40 thieves, reversing the symbol. mighty river has been the subject To me, “You are no longer your- of radical transformations. The self, home is no longer itself”, the Tigris used to flood and over- verse by Abi Tammam, summarises whelm — as in the root meaning well the perplexing sight of today’s of its Arabic name, Dujla. But it is Baghdad. Nothing remains fixed. no longer a term borrowed and Places and streets have changed used comparatively by analysts and their names leaving no clues or novelists (such as the Baghdadi- memories for returnees or even Palestinian writer Jabra Ibrahim locals. All has changed as abruptly Jabra) to conjure the unpredictable as our holidays: our National Day, upsurge of the Baghdadi sense of the Day of the Martyr, the Day of humour. Rather, in Baghdad, it has the Unknown Soldier. Movie hous- been rendered narrow, dragged es have changed as well; they all like a weakling towards improvised seem like sites from antiquity even towns, with small dams and partial though they date from the recent canals becoming waste dumps and past, from a few decades past. Aqd mass graves. al-Nasara, Harat al-Yahud, Darbunat It would be irrelevant for us al-Ajam, Hayy al-Akrad, Camp to gaze at the image of the city al-Arman, Beit al-Turkman, all obvi- as refracted in the mirror of A ous and once familiar appellations

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 81 for locating a quarter or a street, captured, only to return as if lost, are no more. None of Baghdad’s wandering the streets, looking for Jewish population and only a few someone, for someplace. Such is Christians remain. Most of the al- the capital today. Filiyyah Kurds are still waiting for The only remaining movement permission from the occupying is the rhythm of demographic forces to return to their homes, ebb and flow that seems to have while the rest hide behind applica- replaced the episodic flooding of tions for a change of ethnicity. the Tigris. In general, occupants of The Ministry of Defense has the capital seem to be in a race to been relocated and streets don buy and own land, shops, and any new names. New martyrs kill old other asset that could assist new martyrs as they expel them from racial or ethnic incursions into the their boulevards to take their place. city. And so in the face of the man- Monuments fall and others are ufactured demographic shifts of the quickly concocted before others past, other shifts, just as contrived, still claim the location. Fires erupt are being concocted today. everywhere, according to a strange Not only has the urbanity of plan, consuming entire buildings. the city changed through the Railroads once hung, as I remem- transformations of streets, residents, ber, like the gardens of Babylon, and neighbourhoods, so too has with trains passing along as if the experience of this grand with- flying through Baghdad’s navel at drawal from a history not made al-A’zamieh and crossing the Tigris by deserters. If cemeteries, bars, towards al-Karkh. The railroad has mosques, souks, and hammams are been stripped to rebuild destroyed the expressive markers by which bridges and construct new ones. the living and dying of a city are All that is left are huge cement col- studied, then it must be said that umns that signal elsewhere, which the preponderance of mosques is exactly how one feels when one and cemeteries is a clear (if tempo- is there. One feels confused as rary) indication, even, that Baghdad one senses a belonging to all this is a city metaphorically dead. ruination. Unsurprisingly, because The night is a target for a stray this is a country where spare parts bullet, a story, or some legend. The from MiG fighter planes are sold marines came to invent a new A in secret auctions, where some of Thousand and One Nights or per- their left-over metal sheets end haps to experience the ancient up as tea kettles or traditional and one. In any case, theirs has a whole folkloric objects sold in Suq al-Safa- new cast. fir, and where engines are smuggled Yet the night is still latent with to other countries. The building many mysterious stories, hidden stock of places we once loved was behind the light of days, enclosed used during the siege as primary within large and arbitrarily materials for the construction deployed cement walls, fences of of other buildings. As for friends, barbed wire, and metal obstacles. A almost none remain. Most have left; new vocabulary for security help- others died in the fighting or were lessly seeks to defend the city from enflamed maps approaching from all sides. Baghdad was twice a capital. And twice it was a metonymy in name, in population, in urbanity, in legend, in living, in residence, in exile. It is a metonymic city, as much in its details as in its concep- tion.

Born in Baghdad in 1963, Mohammad Mazlum is a published poet whose work has been translated into English, Spanish, and Polish. He earned a degree in Islamic studies and following graduation, he was drafted into the armed forces. He fought in the Iran-Iraq war, taught Arabic in Kurdistan, and subsequently went to Syria to escape persecution and censorship.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 83 Of the Theatrical Act: A Matter of Speech and Distance

Lina Saneh

In this essay, I plan to restate mitted friends. interrogations, at once simple and In the beginning was the verb; difficult questions, that have accom- image is mere a product of the panied my practice in theatre from verb. its beginning until this present With the verb, God created moment. Questions such as: What Light: “Let there be light! And so is represented in theatre? What there was light!” That whatever is offered to be seen? By which thing should be, there it was. And means? What is action? What is, so on and so forth, until man was or what could still be today, the created in His own image. Thus is role of the body of the actor? And man a mere image. An image of lastly, how does representation on God. stage relate to image, speech, and This is the version according space? My engagement with these to religion. The religious does not interrogations is grounded in our interest me in itself in this story experience as actors, directors, and but rather man’s intellect which playwrights; an experience albeit has rendered speech a creative act, modest and brief but nonetheless the act at the root of creation of rich in discovery, tremor, evolution, all things that make up the world, and revolution — the latter used and most importantly, the act of here to refer to its circling move- creation of images. Speech does ment. not replace image, neither does First, a note of precision: it continue its significations, nor When I say “our”, I mean to complement, nor operate in paral- speak for myself and my partner, lel, nor explain, nor comment, nor Rabih Mroué, with whom I have analyse: It creates it. embarked from the onset and In the story, the intellect identi- continue, on this arduous work fies two steps in the history of the of research, the difficult path of evolution of society. The first is perpetually questioning our prac- religious; the second, political. In the tice, for some fifteen years now, first, everything is but an imaging surrounded by attentive and com- of everything, image of the unique, selfsame source-origin, image of selfsame specimen. Man is no more God. Everything, not only man, than a genus, a species, but men because all that God has created, are political individuals, efficient, he has done so in His own image. with agency for action, capacity for And when all was created, God enterprise in the new, as Hannah asked man to name things in their Arendt explains so well.1 name. And man did so without According to the dictionary, any hesitation. These things were space is “an indefinite expanse that then so close to the Truth, to the contains and surrounds objects”.2 Original Source, so transparent to “Vital space” is the “space needed the Verb that created them, to the to not feel disturbed by others”.3 image of that Verb. Thus was it at It is widely accepted that what the instigation of God that man differentiates man from animal looked at things around him, and is the attribute of the political, in whatever he saw was an image other words, his capacity to estab- that was glued to his eye. Only lish bonds that are not grounded when he began to name things, in the familial, tribal, or any other things began to acquire identifica- such communitarian solidarities tion and depth in relation to what where space lacks to the extent of surrounded them, singularity, indi- asphyxiation, rather with “strang- viduality. Only then were all things ers”, with people at a distance granted distance from one another, from him. In his political being, man and space emerged around man, creates space between himself and outside man, between his sight and other men, as well as between all things making up the world. Man him and the things in the world, was no longer the world, and the through speech. world was no longer man. God When social relations between created all things in the world, and strangers are regimented by dis- man named them, and as such they tance, social space becomes public became distinct from one another. space. Public space is precisely God created things in the thou- that spacing, the distance neces- sands, apple trees in the thousands, sary between people, binding and in one fell swoop, undifferentiated separating them in the same one from the other; man took instance. It is also, and mostly, an time to identify every single tree, abstract space constituted of wielding volume to the flat image words — hence invisible and created by God, creating space intangible — words that precisely, around every single one. More to as Arendt notes, pertain to the the point than the apple trees, man objective world that surrounds 1 Hannah Arendt. The Human learned to differentiate men from men and lies between them: “Most Condition (University of one another, naming and identify- action and speech is concerned Chicago Press, 1958) 4 ing each one individually, creating with this in-between”, says Arendt. 2 Translation is the author’s own. space around all and every single She adds that this objective world Definition borrowed in French one. Thus, men acquired conscious- is common to all and interests us from the Petit Larousse Illustré (1996) ness of their plurality, and acquired all. “Inter-est: which lies between freedom vis-à-vis “man” — a mere people and therefore can relate 3 Ibid and infinite reproduction of the and bind them together”, and 4 Arendt, pp. 182-183

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 85 yet “prevents our falling over each theatrical practices; they aimed at other”.5 pointing to influences. In the case Action and speech, praxis and of considering the history of theat- lexis, two acts, political par excel- rical practices in the country, they lence, constitute what Aristotle looked to unearth filiations and described as bios politikos, and con- similarities. In short, to determine cern a world made of space that all that is same, to remain in the binds and separates men. They are selfsame, where one is merely an also two theatrical acts, par excel- image of the other. The other, dif- lence. ferent, singular, does not exist. The Theatre is the product of the same process holds for religious human consciousness of space. dogma: Rather than identify and Obviously, theatre is also the name things, separate them and product of the political and of distinguish them, look for differ- the city, of the polis, of the urban; ences more meaningful and more but the city and the political are significant than similarities. This themselves, in turn, products of trivial and trivialising discourse, this that same consciousness of space. depoliticisation of theatre and of Despite the recognition and suc- culture in general, this reticent or cess we have earned from the ill-intentioned effort at rendering a onset of our work in the theatre precise and accurate reading, none as actors and directors, we have of all that was the cause of our dis- harboured a lingering sentiment of satisfaction. dissatisfaction. Something essential, Indeed, it is possible that on we felt, was amiss. Our discomfort the face of it, various practices was not a matter of artists’ spleen, in theatre, art, and culture could born from the overall situation of bear resemblances to one another, our country or our region, even but this is strictly at first glance, less so from the threat of globali- superficial. However — and thank- sation. Neither was it born from fully, I repeat it because it is vital the lack of interest from state and — profound divergences separate official institutions, nor from the practices of artists; in the same vein, general tendency of the media, despite our close collaboration, our intellectuals, artists, and critics to intellectual agreements, our artistic cast us in reductive categories: and aesthetic affinities, the work We were at once lumped in the I have done is different from the same bag as the young generation, work Rabih Mroué has done. That the new generation, or the post- is the instance when Rabih and I war generation, the bracketing of began to interrogate our practice. which included artists who range We were compelled to radicalise, from twenty to 45 years of age theorise with clarity, and sometimes and sometimes 50 years of age (!). violence — a violence that, I doubt, These categories overlooked all is ever detached from art which, aesthetic considerations — in the amongst other things, renders dif- broad meaning of the aesthetic — ficult but certainly not impossible opinions, worldviews, positioning a cooptation by official and politi- 5 Ibid, p. 52 vis-à-vis the métier, the history of cal forces. Have we succeeded? I cannot tell, but this is where learned about the theatre of the we stand now. Surely, things are body, the gestuelle, the liberation of never as clear or obvious as they the body from bourgeois psychol- might seem further in time, when ogy, the exploration of its abilities, we undertake looking back and movement, stylisation, the integra- analysing. From the purview of the tion of forms and techniques such retrospective lens, we often gloss as dance, mime, acrobatics, all of over the torturous difficulties, per- this to distance ourselves from sistent doubts, and mistaken paths the literary theatre, the academic, which seem as if without a trace. bourgeois, and psychological the- When we began working in atre to the theatre of action, a theatre, Rabih and I displayed a visual and dynamic theatre… The clear and confident penchant for word theatre itself takes root in the theatrical practice centred on the Greek teatron, meaning the the body of the actor, the visual place from which we see. What unravelling on stage. We also felt could possibly be seen, if not action, the urge to reflect on the social especially since the word drama and political context in which we means action, or what we do. I was were living. For a long time, our not aware then of the degree to research seemed to concentrate which I was bypassing the essential, on the visual face of the body and overwhelmed by the urgency to the physical work of the actor, the escape the literary and the ennui mise-en-scène and scenography, of theatre. We had no idea that which we perceived to serve the action in theatre could possibly expressive power of the body of signify anything other than physical the actor, etc. It is only later that action, the object of which was to we came to understand there bring scenes to life, enact beauti- was work to be done on how we ful visuals that rendered the piece approached the world in which we more agreeable and easy to follow. lived, in which we were embedded, In brief, the acting and the staging that summoned us perpetually to were equivalent to soda ingested be redefined, rethought. to facilitate the digestion of a meal In our early years, we were that threatened to be too heavy. emboldened by all that we had Without these scenes, theatre learned at university about modern threatened to be arid, intellectual, theatre, including the avant-garde, elitist, non-organic. Particularly if the experimental, Meyerhold’s that theatre did not seemingly bio-mechanical, the image-theatre, bow to the exigencies of the social going through the physical and consensus — itself confounded cruel theatre of Artaud (where the with expression of popular will — actor sends signs from the bonfire although in reality, it remained in on which he burns), Kantor’s the- conformance with the ideology of atre of death, the Living Theater, the Lebanese bourgeoisie. the Bread and Puppet, the hap- With the progress of time, pening, Grotowsky, and so many projects accumulating slowly and others that made the glory of we began to realise that our stage the twentieth century. All that we work that had willed itself as very

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 87 physical was not enough to usher the twentieth century. With the literature off stage, nor could it enormous technological progress avoid the narrative, the illustrative, that has improved people’s lives, far or even the psychological. Neither beyond anyone had ever hoped, could it eliminate clichés, worse yet, liberated from countless chores, the pathetic melodramatic antics and afforded free time to engage in catering to the fans of martyrdom, leisure, people have been increas- nor could it avoid the ostentatious. ingly called on to dispense their We felt it therefore necessary technical intelligence rather than to develop our work in acting, physical labour; paradoxically, with action, movement, the gestuelle, we all this progress, the body has never also pushed stage direction into been more solicited! As we rely unventured territories. The more less and less on our bodies (now our work evolved and produced more so with the internet and results, the more evident it seemed virtual images, computer games, that it was not what we were etc), the body is expected to liber- looking for. It was not only a ques- ate itself, to be beautiful, strong, tion of ameliorating the quality of svelte, and healthy. It is expected to acting and the stage direction, nor perform, give evidence of physical was it to permit a better vision of energy as well as prowess, for no what we believed that theatre was utilitarian purpose or function. supposed to reveal. Our practice Theatre could not always remain ventured in the territory of re-ask- protected from the injunctions of ing ourselves precisely: What does official culture. If in the beginning the theatre lend to see? of the last century, the body was In fact, we were becoming the weapon, par excellence, against conscious of a new problem. Rabih the static conservatism of bour- addressed the subject in a long geois convention, today, things have article that appeared in 1999. We changed tremendously. What was were becoming aware that, with deemed revolutionary and vital at the rare exception, few projects a certain period has become today were noticed as they were con- fatal sclerosis. Effectively, looking fused with the rest. I am thinking with fresh eyes on our theatrical of Raïf Karam and Siham Nasser, practice, it seemed that our work whose theatrical practices then often had a tendency to move in continued to present a body that a meaningless excess of physical corresponded in fact to the official action and gestuality, short of say- ideology and to the modern myth ing gesticulation and agitation. The of the ideal body. Ideology and actor expended effort to prove myth transmitted chiefly through how well he/she knew how to the media, borrowed by practi- use his/her body, bending it in all tioners, even those who claim to directions, stretching it to the limits, subvert bourgeois capitalist civilisa- rolling, dancing, singing, miming, tion. What body is that? grimacing, being expressive, adopt- Before answering this question, ing all sorts of postures, remaining let us first note that never has the vital, energetic, enduring, never body been more solicited than in breathless… Pure performance, spectacle, Olympic games, circus, that could suggest, for example, the that represented nothing, despite actor was drinking his coffee, or all often redundant and illustrative, that he was a thief, etc. The actors’ mimetic efforts to represent. What bodies unravelled and moved in a does the body represent? Nothing non-chaotic manner that was not existed besides the nostalgia for a arbitrary. They unleashed, unbridled, performing body. without hope, promise, or the We resorted then to venture portend of any illusion; moving in another direction; we sought to until collapsing from exhaustion, understand how the war marked soft, useless, admittedly defeated, our bodies. We did not want to tell or rather to be more precise, not the story of the war, its horrors; seeking to mask their defeat in this neither orally, nor through the bias part of the world where defeat is of a corporeal mimesis, that could never acknowledged; if they did not not be more than illustrative and hide their defeat, there was nothing narrative, or worse yet, a pathetic in their attitude to evoke heroism, drowning in martyrdom. We modesty, or complacency. wanted to understand how this They neither had the strength body of ours moved, after enduring nor the will to benefit from fifteen years of war, how it moved, anything; a simple factuality the how it ate, how it went to sleep, spectator had to evidence on his/ how it loved, how it worked, how her own. In falling they were not it thought, and how it acted… victims of anything, they were This body defeated by war and merely exhausted by their desires regressive ideologies, such as Arab that were going to be crushed nationalism, Islamism, political sys- against the wall delineating the tems, military and/or religious, local space or collide violently between and regional, and finally with the themselves. There was nothing to fascist and impossible summon of find for the gaze seeking pleasure, modern performance still extended nothing also for the senses in quest to it through liberal, official, and of emotion or goose bumps. Even global culture. It was around that the technically very arduous bodily time, in 1997, when we presented work by the actors was barely per- Rabih’s Extension 19 and my own ceptible. The spectators walked out creation, Ovrira. disappointed, disconcerted, irked, or With Ovrira, I tried to go to even angry. the end of the experience of the These two instances of Rabih’s corporeal. I rid the theatre of experience and my own, we deem everything except the bodies of amongst the most rich and inter- actors. And I tried to shatter these esting for the both of us. But in bodies. On stage, the bodies did both cases the theatrical practice not dance, they did not sing, they centred on physical stage work was, did not speak, they mimed nothing, by then, over for us. We turned performed no acrobatics, they did a page. It seemed the time had not act, meaning they represented come, perhaps it may have already nothing; I mean to say that there been too late, for us to distance was nothing in the play of actors ourselves from this primary means

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 89 of the practice, the body of the of the radical adepts of the body actor, which was in reality merely amongst the practitioners of the an accessory. physical of the twentieth century Besides, what could this body ended up converting to different pretend to do still, what could religious sects and spiritual rituals. it offer to be seen, what living Turning this page on our prac- experience would it still be able tice, what were we proposing as an to propose today for sharing, at alternative to action, understood least 30 years late compared to as strictly a play of the body, often theatrical experiments such as the arbitrary and chaotic, and whose happening, amongst others, and the visual effects become confused non-theatrical experiments, such with theatricality? What does the- as performance art (of which the atre offer to be seen? We were, body performance had essentially and remain, conscious of what we explored to the limits of death). do not want, rather than having If the theatre is the place from ready answers to what we want or which we see, where action is seen, ought to have done. there is no single assurance that We were confident of the the action will come to life in the urgency to radicalise our practice body of the actor by necessity, nor in a manner clearer than we had through sensationalist scenography, done previously, more pertinent as or bombastic stage direction. Surely, well as more impertinent. there is something else, and more We aspired to push further important, to see in the theatre. in trapping the clear, readymade The opaque layering of the visual, ideas we had endorsed, for a long the corporeal as well as the drive time and with a lot of laziness, on to create beautiful images and the level of theatre but also in frames, serves to confound sight terms of culture in general, the and distract the mind rather than political, social, as well as the civil promote a better vision of what war. It seemed important for us the theatre is supposed to reveal. to radicalise our reflection on the Greek theatre shrouded the world around us, which is common physical, real, carnal, presence to all, and render it more effective. of the actor behind a mask, a We were not animated with the costume, the cothurn, and other belief we could change the face of prothesis. In other words, Greek the world, but our thoughts had theatre masked all indicators that to be effective in preventing Rabih reminded the actor, and as such and I from finding comfort in new the spectator, of their theological answers, from sinking into new cer- condition and biological being as titudes. Every time we sensed we man. This practice was contrary had something in hand, we were to some trends in Roman theatre, impelled to question and inter- contrary as well to what some rogate it. of the most modern and radical It was necessary to tackle the theatrical experiences and forms remaining set of the taboos which, of the body performance. It should without our realising it, prohibited not be surprising that a number escaping the dichotomous political divisions that paralyse the country; to identify the enemy, contrary to divisions reducing the other to an a practice in theatre, and in politics, absolute alterity, isolated in space, well ingrained since the 1960s, that captive of a distance that is all consisted in criticising, denouncing, except that space and distance and confounding the other, the necessary to create and nurture enemy — always well-identified, political binds between strangers. recognisable, with a pointing finger. For that purpose, we deemed A complexity that would rather necessary, amongst other means, to point to the pressing need for delineate themes increasingly pre- critical self-insight, against settling cise, concrete, actual, circumscribed, for a camp endorsed a priori, rather than aim to rewrite history: and lastly, a complexity that does the history of Lebanon, Beirut, the not address an audience that has war, or even the future… It was already endorsed our own convic- not that subjects less laden with tions. For all these reasons, we epic portends (sometimes even deemed it important to proceed an epic religious portend, because from real and personal experience only the religious worldview can that interrogated our convictions claim to embrace the entire world and views. Interrogation that will with its sovereign gaze, as for remain unanswered but speaks to example with the religious theatre so much more. of the Middle Ages) could facilitate That was the mindset guiding uncovering truth, and denouncing Rabih, who, in collaboration with falsehoods, rather they had the Tony Chakar, presented a play ability to reveal internal contradic- entitled Enter Sir, We Are Waiting tions better. For You Outside in 1998. In this And this was not for the play, the actors did not attempt purpose of bringing them to a to dispense the illusion of playing resolution but rather to evidence a role or character, nor did they the complexity of things and the belabour to impress the audience complexity of the world, irreduc- with their technical and physical ible to binary schemes such as performance. Quite the contrary, executioner/victim, power/people, they turned their back to the public the good versus the bad, black on stage, showed impassible faces versus white… A complexity that on television screens installed in does not allow an abbreviation of front of them on a black wall that power to a transcendental exteri- obstructed the opening of the ority that has befallen on us from scene and forbade any depth. Their wherever, another world, another voices were heard through micro- space, completely independently of phones, commenting on the images, will, work and action of the people instructing the audience to remain who endure it, in the vein of the in their seats without moving and Arabic saying “La hawla wa la to accept the images unravelling quwwa” (“Without any means and on television as identity because power except…that of God”). A Palestine will not be freed. In 2000, complexity that allows understand- Rabih presented another play with ing the extent to which it is difficult Elias Khoury entitled Three Posters,

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 91 where the actor was furthermore the media in lieu of the actor and absented to the benefit of the his living presence, or his physical image and speech. The play dealt activity. Neither were these images with a theme regarded as an even there to create beautiful effects worse taboo, namely, the suicide on stage, attractive tableaux, nor a operations organised by the place, a scenography, an ambiance. Lebanese Communist Party against These images forged from the the Israeli occupation and the same everyday routine in which we manipulation of Lebanese political are immersed, and from official cul- life by the Syrian regime. Finally, ture, we used them to interrogate in 2002, Rabih and I presented their mechanisms and functions, as Biokhraphia, where the actor pres- well as our desires, fantasies, unsus- ent on stage made use only of his pected ideological complicity, the voice and spoke through a micro- complexity and fluctuating relations phone to avoid any strain. of power between those holding These three works roused a power — or powers — and those similar discomfort, anger, and dis- that endure this/these power(s), appointment amongst spectators. between governors and governed. Some wondered, was this theatre? It is possible to deem these last Where is the actor? Do we go works to be outside the realm of to the theatre to see videos? theatrical practice per se, as many Images from the television? There who were outraged claimed. I don’t were also screams of outrage that have the answer, but this is not the theatre was being lost, invaded relevant question here. I am more by new technologies. Theatre interested in investigating notions had to remain faithful to what it of the theatrical act, of action, had always been! But what had it of representation beyond the always been? It had to remain vir- boundaries of theatrical practice, gin from this impure invasion, which extending to all forms of represen- is none of its business in the first tation, including the political, which place, and safeguarded in its natural unveils something beyond duplicat- and original purity. It implied for- ing what is already there. getting that there is nothing either So what does theatre, the natural or original in theatre. These theatrical act, the representation, are religious conceptions; theatre offer to be seen? To go back to and religion are two entirely dis- the example of Greek theatre, or tinct practices. Theatre is all about the etymological definition of term, the artificial, the constructed. namely, the place from which we Often, in those plays where see, what did the Greek see in we eliminated all dramatic per- theatre? (If I choose to talk about formance, or to be more precise, Greek theatre, it is only because of where the status of representa- the clarity afforded in that example tion in acting was very ambiguous, and not because I want to find the video image was granted an a model to follow or an original enormous space. We were not source. The purpose is rather to proposing that theatre should unearth those elements that will reveal images manufactured in help with research and reflection. American action films. Battles, com- We could find many examples in bat scenes, struggles, death, agony, the domain of dance, plastic arts, the young lady who at the moment the novel, cinema, etc, but I prefer of sacrifice transformed into a goat, to remain in the example of the- the old man who regained his atre to finesse a better exit). youth, and another who blinded In Greek theatre, only those himself (we only see him after he dances performed by the chorus has blinded himself, never in the around the alter created a repre- act), etc, representational stories sentational action that addressed par excellence that were in no way the eye of the spectator. Besides directly perceptible to the eye on the dancing, the choir told the stage. They summoned the per- story of the saga, peopled with an sonal and individual imagination of intensely intertwined alignment of the spectator. Only in his/her head heroes and gods, retraced back images were born and moved. to generations and generations Was that, then, all that people of ancestors. The dramatic scenes wanted to see in the theatre? where principal protagonists con- Mental images, products of their front one other directly, in the own imagination? There are wide present and through dialogue, references to the spectacular resemble mostly pleading or a polit- scenic effects that the Greeks ical debate. The stage is relegated had recourse to with the help of to speeches on political problems, machinery, like the famous mècha- democratic values, civil rights and nè and the ekkyklèma. But what human rights, military strategy, etc, did these machines show? The all combed carefully with the logos. mèchanè were used to show gods These ethical debates surrounding that had lost their sacred aura. The abstract concepts were not propi- ekkyklèma showed cadavers, never tious for the manufacture of images, agonising, never death in its work- action, and visuals. ings. Greek theatre did not give The same can be said of the much to see, anyway it showed messengers, the epic “reciters”, little in the literal sense of “seeing”. par excellence. Entrusted with “Life is not in itself representable” announcing news, they had a dra- says Artaud.6 Or, to be more pre- matic role in the unravelling of the cise, the act itself, any act, the event, scene on stage. The news, however, any event, is not in itself represent- could be easily abbreviated in a able. All representation, theatrical few words: So and so died, and or otherwise, will never be able to the other committed suicide next capture and reproduce the event, to his fiancée, the other city lost the moment, when it happens; it the war, etc. That didn’t prevent can only be an account. messengers from coupling their If theatre cannot represent the delivery of the news with long event, it could, nonetheless, consti- stories that described in meticu- tute in itself an event: lous detail what happened. Their accounts were precisely those 6 Antonin Artaud. Manifeste pour rich in events, in action, situations A: Through the distancing it cre- un theater avorté, Complete worthy of the most sensational ates in human and social relations Works, Vol. II, p.31

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 93 B: In the fact of revealing what is port is articulated along abstract invisible, and not the visible, life, rational, democratic notions such the quotidian. as reciprocity, reversibility, equality, etc, all essentially human conceptu- What distancing are we refer- alisations, predicated to transform, ring to? I began my discussion evolve, and diversify, and subject arguing that theatre is the “product to critique. This also applies to the of space”. On the one hand, its patterns of relationships that derive virtue as a matter of speech and from them. action deals with the objective Finally, considering that theatre world in which we are embed- is the place from which we see, ded, which separates and binds us well in order to be able to see at once. On the other hand, the well, the viewer has to take some theatrical space is in itself very distance. particular: The zôon politikon, or political A: Theatre is construed in man, is no other than…the one reflection to the image of the that has distanced himself to democratic city, itself an ideal see…that has understood that conception, grounded in the all is not tightly stacked, collated Greeks’ new abstract, scientific, to each other.7 geometric, spherical understand- Theatre is hence born when the ing of space and cosmos; a new first protagonist takes a distance conception where notions of from the chorus, and goes to stand distance, symmetrical, equal far and above to declaim the role and reversible relations replace of a single character, and what a the archaic, mythical hierarchi- character! A single individual, the cal vision of the world as an first to have distinguished him/ enclosed, finite space, despite its herself, in his/her affront to the size and where things are col- gods, and having to endure their lated to each other. wrath. One of the first individuals to have distinguished his/herself B: Similarly, the theatrical space for having dared to take a distance is in correspondence with with regards to mores, traditions the space of the agora, itself a and conventions of the family, for virtual reproduction of the city having dared to resemble no one 7 The translation is the author’s and the cosmos. own. The citation is originally in else. The collective recanting of French:“L’homme politique, le It is important to note here the chorus, that impersonal voice, zôon politikon, n’est autre que that the correspondences between which narrates without distinction celui qui…s’est éloigné pour voir à distance…qui a compris the theatre, the agora, the city, and the acts, the speech of various que tout n’était pas serré, the cosmos are not linear. They roles and characters was done collé”. Quoted from Jean- are not duplicate images, deriving with. A new speech was taking Christophe Bailly, “Théâtre et agora, aux sources de l’espace from the selfsame image-source as place in a new space borne from public”, in Prendre place, espace in the religious discourse. The cor- a distancing, a distance that binds public et culture dramatique: respondences are dialectical in their and separates strangers. Space and Colloque de Cerisy, edited by I. Joseph (Recherches, Plan casting of the rapport between speech. Political speech. A speech Urbain, 1995), p. 56 spatial and social entities. That rap- that creates images. We find ourselves again asking cern all citizens here present. the question, what could theatre Once man was able to clear possibly lend to be seen, this the- enough space around him, and atre that is a political product of around everything else, and to rid the city, construed in correspon- himself of his status as an image, he dence with the agora and the city? was empowered to create in his Three spaces (theatre, city, and turn images and representations. agora), all of them conceived from In summary, this was what the ideal notions of reciprocity and citizen came to see at the theatre: equality. What do we offer to be images that had become citizens, seen in theatre, in this public space convened to see other citizens, constituted of speech and action themselves images, because they regarding the outside objective represented characters, played world that separates and binds roles, and who, by virtue of speech men? spoken in this singular space made According to Denis Guenoun, up of spacing, allowed for the contrary to popular belief, the creation of images. Only the latter rounded shape of the stage in were mental, interior images. Greek Greek theatre did not enhance theatre lent to see the invisible, the the representation of equality, emergence of the individual, of dis- “democracy”.8 At least not with tance, public space, political action, regards to what was being staged, expressed essentially through the spectacle itself. In clearest speech. A speech critical of old and sight of the spectators were other archaic images, representations and spectators; and we all know they conceptions of the world, a speech were not ordinary spectators, they embedded in the present. Spoken were all citizens, nothing other by the individual, theatre lent to than citizens! Thus, what the citizen/ see the emergence of men who spectators of Greek theatre would had at last freed themselves from see most clearly was the sight of their theological and biological the assembly of citizens, images of condition — that rendered them God rendered political individuals as “man” undifferentiated from by the strength of the distance, and other men — in their least unusual by the achievement of an immense demeanour, singular men, politi- effort vested by Greece to rup- cal, free. And contrary to Genesis, ture the close binds, too close, of where the image born from the the archaic world. These citizens/ Verb was glued to the eye, here spectators had come to that very all attempts to display images that particular space to witness a rep- were formed first in our imagina- resentation, an image, an image of tion in this space will fail. themselves. What did actors on Things have changed enormous- stage represent, actors who were ly since the time of the Greeks. also themselves citizens? Precisely Today, under the aegis of globalisa- an assembly of citizens, the chorus, tion, digital technology, computers, and a few individuals debating on the internet, a new virtual space is 8 Denis Guenoun. L’Exhibition des mots. Une idée (politique) stage, as they would in the agora, bringing the world closer to itself. du théâtre (L’Aube, Collection on matters of politics, which con- The world seems tightened in a Monde en Cours, 1992)

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 95 centripetal movement that runs counter to the immense centrifugal effort at distancing vested by man in his political agency. Globalisation promises to transform the world into a village. Should we be rejoic- ing? The most alarming of the transformations in the world as we live them today are not the hegemony of one culture over another, nor the erosion of the local and regional particularisms of culture, nor even the loss or death of theatre or the invasion of the stage — as well as our lives — by technology. Rather, it is the loss of the political, of that public space that binds and separates us, of speech and action concerning the world that lies between us, that in-between, that inter-est. In lieu of that apocalyptic, romantic, martyro- logic vision of the globalised future, we ought to reflect on how or where and with what means could we construct pockets of resistance, where speech, spoken in a loud voice in front of an assembly of citizens, concerned for the world around us and between us, can continue to be. Would it be suffi- cient were it not spoken loudly and in front of an assembly of citizen? Maybe… Why would it not? But then, how? How can virtual space become a space that binds and separates strangers at once? How could it not be? Lina Saneh was born in 1966 and studied theatre in Beirut and Paris. She has been actively working as a director, actor, and teacher since 1990. Her works include Biokhraphia, Ikhraj Kaid A‘elee (Family Civil Register), Ovrira, The Chairs, and Little Gandhi.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 97 panel

Panel: Three New York Projects, Emily Jacir, Moukhtar Kocache, and Sina Najafi, Rasha Salti Transcription of a Lecture Given at Home Works II, Emily Jacir Up in the Air, Moukhtar Kocache An Apology for Curiosity: An Imaginary Conversation Between Two Editors at Cabinet Magazine, Sina Najafi Panel: Three New York Projects Emily Jacir, Moukhtar Kocache, Sina Najafi

Rasha Salti

Amongst the Forum’s chief objec- York and Ramallah, presented three tives is to provide a platform projects, conventionally perceived to introduce works by cultural as site-specific that interpellate practitioners in the world. In the the historical, political, and cul- first edition of the Forum, Solange tural mapping of sites in New York. Farkas was invited to curate and Moukhtar Kocache, former director present a video program from of the visual arts program at the the 13th International Electronica Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Festival, Videobrasil, which takes located until September 11, 2001, place every two years in São Paolo, in the World Trade Center, present- Brazil. In this second edition of the ed the artist-in-residency program Forum, we hosted a panel, entitled at the World Trade Center, which “Three New York Projects”, for he developed during his tenure. which we invited artist Emily Jacir, The residency program invited curator Moukhtar Kocache, and artists worldwide to interact with editor Sina Najafi to present New the plural significations the World York-based projects. Trade Center site carried, providing In their locatedness, their inter- the opportunity to produce work pellation of site, local culture, and in open-space studios inside the extraterritorial articulation, all three building. Lastly, Sina Najafi, editor presentations are at once emblem- of Cabinet magazine, was invited atic of the cultural life of the City to present the publication, whose of New York, as well as deeply con- bold, innovative, and imaginative versant with its many faces: New approach takes root from the York City as one of the main transit simple premise, namely to give ports of entry to the USA, the voice to artists and consider artistic capital of cultural life in the country, practices from the purview of the the capital of capitals, or the finan- artist, rather than from the purview cial centre for the American global of the spectator or critic. economy, etc. Emily Jacir, a Palestinian artist living and working between New Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 101 Transcription of a Lecture Given at Home Works II

Emily Jacir

It’s a little bit strange to be asked which I went shopping everyday for to present only the works I have a month, into each and every store made in relationship to one specific that existed inside the World Trade place. I moved to New York at the Center Mall. The piece is called My end of 1998, and I live there part- America (I am Still Here). Each time time. In any case, I am just going to I purchased an object, I took it to discuss three or four projects that my studio and photographed it, are site-specific to the City of New and then I returned it to the store. York. There were 33 stores, and the proj- Below ect took one month. I exhibited My Amercia (I am Still Here) My America (I am Still Here) the photos (which were close-ups Documentation of the pur- chase and return of goods This is a piece I made in 2000. of the tags stating where each from every store in the World The Lower Manhattan Cultural object was made) and then the Trade Center Mall Council had a residency program receipt (which was the refund). I February 2000 on the 91st floor of the World was marking my existence through Right, detail Trade Center, and I was an artist-in- time and space within the space of 33 purchases and returns residence there in 2000. During my the credit card system. Each time I Photographs, receipts, and shopping bags time there, I did a performance in returned an object, printed on its receipt was the exact time and day when I returned it, which created this direct linear trajectory mark- ing my steps in the system. They let me keep the shopping bags for free when I returned the items I had purchased, so I used them to those three months when we were make an installation on the floor. working on it. Now when I exhibit The shapes echoed the architec- the piece, it functions the way a ture of the buildings below from photograph does documenting a the view from my window in the moment of time that has passed. World Trade Center. It’s a document (or the remains) of a three-month, community-based Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages project. I also kept a daily log of which were Destroyed, Depopulated, the people who came in and this is and Occupied by Israel in 1948 always exhibited with the piece. This is a piece I started in the We used as the reference for beginning of 2002. It’s called the 418 villages Walid Khalidi’s Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages book All That Remains, which we which were Destroyed, Depopulated, kept in the studio all the time and and Occupied by Israel in 1948. It is which people were constantly a refugee tent in which I stencilled opening and reading to each other the names of all the villages Israel the story of what exactly hap- destroyed upon the foundation of pened with each village. I chose the state. I opened my studio for to make the tent in English but three months and invited people for some Israelis and Europeans to come work on the Memorial this was problematic as they didn’t Memorial to 418 Palestinian with me. Each village name was think it was “authentic” because Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated, and hand-embroidered into the tent it was not done in Arabic. There Occupied by Israel in 1948 using black thread. The majority of are several reasons it was done in Refugee tent and embroidery the people who came daily, night English, first and foremost was obvi- thread, 2001 8 x 10 x 12 feet and day, to work on this piece ously because it was made in New were Palestinians, some of whom York. Some of the Palestinians who were born and raised in NYC, and come from these villages could some of whom were in New York not read or write Arabic and this to study. There was also a large is their history. Nothing changes group of transient people coming that, English or Arabic. It is the in and out of New York, visiting same pain, the same struggle, the from Palestine, who also joined us. same injustice. Also, in the context Over 140 people came through my studio to sew and socialise. Oftentimes there was live Arabic music. There were lawyers, bankers, filmmakers, dentists, consultants, playwrights, artists, human rights activists, teachers, etc. It became a social space where people were coming everyday. There were several Arab musicians in the city who used to come at night after they finished their gigs to play for us while we sewed. For me, the piece took place during

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 103 of New York City, if the piece had been in Arabic it would have been a completely unreadable, beauti- ful oriental object. I did not want that reading of the piece. I wanted the viewer to be able to read the names and say them out loud and question why he or she has Right Today, There are Four Million never heard these names before. of Us (Another thing I forgot to mention Reprint of the Mural of a is that I left the Memorial unfin- Refugee brochure from the Jordanian Pavilion of the 1964 ished. There is space to add more World’s Fair names.) Comissioned by the Queens Six months after completing Museum of Art, 2002 the Memorial, the Queens Museum of Art invited me to participate in a show called “The Queens

Right and below International”. About three or four In this Building months before that, a friend of November 12, 1947 mine had done an exhibition in 33.8 x 10 inch photos 2002 the Queens Museum and part of Jewish Agency leaders study a it involved inviting people to spend map of the proposed partition the night inside the museum. When of Palestine. Left to right below are Dr. I spent the night there, I discovered Nachum Goldman, David that the very same building was Horovitz, Emanuel Newmann, itself the United Nations building and Rabbi Wolf Gold. Courtesy the Archive of the United in 1947, when the UN partitioned Nations Department of Public Palestine. I was completely shocked Information by this revelation and I knew that I had to exhibit the Memorial inside that space. I went to the United Nations (now located in a build- ing on Manhattan’s West Side) to do research for a couple of months before the exhibition and researched all the photographs in their archive of the day they par- titioned Palestine, all the delegates inside that building (which is now the Queens Museum) and inside those corridors. I was fascinated by the fact that they had all these photographs of all these delegates talking to each other, and if you know the history, then you know that the Americans had to twist the arms of many Latin American countries to get them to agree to with Alexandre Parodi, permanent partition Palestine. So you see all French representative to the these strange photos of delegates United Nations, and Roger Garreau. from Guatemala, Argentina, and The French, of course, voted yes, Columbia talking to the Americans and India was against. and speaking in corners. In this photo, Dr. Mohammed This picture shows David Ben Fadhil Jamali, the Iraqi delega- Gurion, executive chairman of tion vice chairman, talks with Dr. the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Alfonso Lopez from Colombia. chatting with Asa Ali, chairman of As I just mentioned, Colombia the delegation from India in the abstained. delegates’ lounge. Another shows Here is another photo from Jewish Agency leaders studying a after the vote was taken and the map of the proposed partition of decision to partition Palestine Palestine. was made. Here, Jewish Agency This picture shows Herman representative Rabbi Dr. Abba Santa Cruz, the permanent Hillel Silver is embraced by Marcus Chilean representative to the Wulkin. United Nations, talking with This picture is a real mafia- Jorge Garcia-Granados, the looking photograph: Rabbi Abba Guatemala delegation chairman. Hillel Silver receives congratulations Chile abstained from voting and from the Guatemalan delegates, as Guatemala voted in favour of parti- the General Assembly President, Dr. tion. Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil, looks on. By the way, I exhibited the pho- Here is an image of Aranha, tos in historical cases that already embracing the executive assistant existed in the Queens Museum. to the UN Secretary General The photographs appear as docu- Trygve Lie. mentation of a crime scene by the This is Wasif Kamal from the way the photographs were taken Arab Higher Committee for and the delegates were framed. It Palestine, Camille Chamoun from is incredible. Lebanon, Mrs. Alice K. Cosma from This picture shows Warren R. Syria, Najmuddin Rifai from Syria, Austin, permanent US representa- H.R.H. Amir Faisal al-Saud from tive to the United Nations, talking Saudi Arabia, and Aouney Dajany with Dr. Alfonso Lopez, Colombia’s from Iraq, all speaking in the cor- permanent representative and ridor. delegation chairman. Colombia In this photograph dated abstained from voting. April 1948, the man pouting over Here you see Dr. Mohammed his suitcase is Gen. Andrew G.L. Fadhil Jamali, Iraqi Minister of McNaughton of Canada while Foreign Affairs, with Dr. Jose Arce, Professor C. Jessup, the US alter- Argentinean delegation chairman. nate, explains to him the details of Argentina abstained. the Draft Trusteeship Agreement In this photograph taken right for Palestine, submitted by the US before the vote, B. Shiva Rao, alter- delegation. nate Indian representative, talks In this picture, Muhammad

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 105 Zafrulla Khan, the chairman of the Durra. It was a mural called Mural Pakistan delegation, Toff of the to a Refugee. It is a Palestinian Jewish Agency, and Mr. Rodriguez mother holding her child with a Fabregat of Uruguay, examine poem written by Salah Abu Zeid. the Palestine exhibit in Flushing, Some in the Jewish community Queens. in New York tried to pass a resolu- Here Mr. Mahmoud Kamal, the tion (and I am quoting from The Libyan advisor, his hand raised, New York Times here from Friday elaborates on “Ten Human Facts June 19, 1964) calling for “the on the Tragedy of the Palestine immediate removal of the con- Arab Refugees”. Mr. Kamal said that troversial mural in the Jordanian further aid for the refugees was Pavilion which acts as a daily and needed. constant irritant and a source of And lastly, in this photograph insult to millions of people in this dated May 11, 1949, members of city, the state, and the world”. the Israeli delegation are shown King Hussein defended the their seats in the assembly chamber mural and the official Jordanian immediately after the roll-call vote response was that they would which admitted the new state to rather close the pavilion then take the United Nations. down the mural. The controversy The other thing about being was on the front page of The New asked to show at the Queens York Times for months. Alex Rose, Museum is that the Queens the vice chairman of the Liberal Museum is actually on the grounds Party on New York’s city council, of the 1964 World’s Fair. Here is resigned when the fair refused to a picture of the Jordanian Pavilion act against the mural and he said and from what I have read it was the mural was “sheer war propa- one of the most magnificent build- ganda”. ings in the World’s Fair. One morning, when the mem- My mother, along with nine bers of the Jordanian Pavilion other women, lived in Queens arrived, they saw that someone for the summers of 1964 and had taken down the Jordanian flag 1965 to work as guides for the and replaced it with the Israeli flag. Pavilion of Jordan. All of them were In the America-Israel Pavilion Palestinians from the West Bank. they made a mockery of the A column from Jerash now marks mural by reproducing it and by the spot where the pavilion once altering the words of the poem. stood. King Hussein donated it to For example, the beginning of the the City of New York and today it poem in the Jordanian Pavilion stands as one of the oldest antiqui- read: “Before you enter, have you a ties in a public space in New York minute to spare to hear a word on City. Palestine and perhaps help us right My mother told me that during a wrong”. Harold Caplin changed the summers of 1964 and 1965 it to: “Before you enter, have you a there was a huge controversy with minute to spare to hear a word on this pavilion because of a painting Israel and enjoy seeing our Dream” by the Jordanian artist Muhanna for the America-Israel Pavilion. While researching the archives made the brochures an inactive, of the World’s Fair in the Queens dead object, which was not my Museum, I found the brochure that intention and thereby destroyed my mother and the other women the piece. were distributing to people in The director of the museum 1964. Inside this brochure is actu- allowed me to distribute the ally a picture of the mural with brochure only on the day of the the poem. I decided to reprint the opening but only if I personally brochure and re-activate it as an passed out the brochures and as object, with this strange 38-year long as they had a sticker on them time-lapse. The refugees are still not that stated: “I reprinted this bro- allowed to return home, more ref- chure as my artwork. Emily Jacir”. ugees have been made, and things have become worse. I reprinted Sexy Semite the brochure exactly as it was Before I tell you about the last Below and right distributed in 1964, and it was sup- piece, which is called Sexy Semite, I Sexy Semite posed to be passed out during this have to explain a little about a pub- Documentation of an interven- tion, 2000-2002 exhibition. My idea was that people lication in New York City called The Palestinians placed ads seeking would have this brochure in their Village Voice. This is a free weekly Jewish mates in order to be hands and then, when they would publication that has various articles able to return home utilising Israel’s “law of return”. leave the museum, they would be and listings for music, art, dance, walking through the exact same etc. In the back, there is a personals fairgrounds decades later. Once section in which, if you are look- again, 38 years later, there was a ing for boyfriends or girlfriends, controversy. After several people marriage or sex or whatever, you contacted the director of the can advertise yourself or describe museum, I was asked to cease what you are looking for in a small distribution, but I was allowed to ad. Usually, when I am bored, I have the brochures on display in read them just for fun. I decided a Plexiglas box. Unfortunately, this to do a piece where I asked 60

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 107 three times: once in 2000, once in 2001, and once in 2002. I wanted it to be threatening in a way. I wasn’t interested in the responses to the ads themselves. I was interested in polluting the paper, in taking over the personals section. (By the way, it’s free to take out these ads in the paper.) The last time I did this intervention was in 2002 and this very strange thing happened where the media actu- ally noticed and went crazy. This article appeared in The New York Post: “West Banky Panky in Personal Palestinians living in New York to all Ad Blitz”. They had no idea what it Sexy Semite send in personal ads at the same was. They thought it was a terrorist Documentation of an interven- threat from Palestinians who were tion, 2000-2002 time. I wanted to pollute the space Palestinians placed ads seeking of the personal-ads section so going to kill Israelis. Stories about Jewish mates in order to be that one issue of The Village Voice this so-called threat appeared in able to return home utilising three publications that I know of. Israel’s “law of return”. personals section would be full Photo: O-K Center of Palestinians looking for mates. I I will share some quotes from asked the people who participated some of the others. US News & in the piece to adhere to a couple World Report called it “Fear Factor: of simple guidelines. The guideline Palestinian Valentines or Ambush”: that was the main goal and point Love-Starved Jews desperate of the whole piece was to bring for a Valentine’s Day date should up the right of return. To bring up look sceptically on personal ads the fact that Palestinians who are offering long walks on the beach actually from the land, indigenous with Palestinians back in the to the land, do not have the right Holy Land. The reason, warn US to return to their own country officials: It could be a trap. That’s while any Jew on earth, from any right, Desperately Seeking Susan country, of any race, has the right is now a terrorist how-to movie. of so-called “return”. So in the ads “These appear to be some everyone was looking for a Jewish kind of setup, a hustle”, says mate. In this way we could return Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman back home through marriage. of New York. That’s because Another guideline was they had to they sound so much like the use the word Semite to describe ambush last year of sixteen-year- themselves. I wanted to address old Ofir Rahum allegedly after a the fact that in the American con- Palestinian woman he met on text “Semite” only pertains to Jews, the internet offered him sex. but we are Semites. Whenever you say anything critical about Israel This is from an article that you are immediately called an appeared in the Jewish Press called “anti-Semite”. I did this intervention “Romancing The Home(land)”: A new weapon may have emerged in the Palestinians’ battle against Israel: the “siren” call. Kenneth Jacobson, associ- ate national director of the Anti-Defamation League had this to say: “It’s as if some in the Palestinian world may be looking for ways to inject more and more Palestinians into Israel proper”. Ido Aharoni, the spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York said that the ads are a “kind of guerilla warfare that reflects negatively on those who placed them”.

Emily Jacir is an artist who divides her time between Ramallah and New York. She employs a variety of media in her work, including video, photog- raphy, performance installation, and sculpture. Jacir has shown extensively throughout Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. Her work was fea- tured in the 8th Istanbul Biennial, and she has held recent solo exhibitions at Debs & Co. in New York, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, and the O-K Center for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria. Jacir also conceived of and cocurated the first Palestine International Video Festival in 2002.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 109 Up in the Air

Moukhtar Kocache

Ritual smell of coffee and cinnamon. You Imagine yourself arriving via sub- head toward Tower One. The terranean transportation. Muffled mirrored architecture that leads loudspeakers announce destination, to each tower makes the journey doors open, you step over the gap confusing, even for a long-time and land on a platform. Crowds adept. Ahead, the bank of revolv- hurry past in all directions. You ing doors squeak rhythmically, and navigate a maze of tunnels, stairs, you feel the strong draft hollering corridors, and escalators, scepti- past their airtight openings, sunlight cal as to whether you are heading bouncing off glass and metal as in the right direction. Soon you you swiftly enter and find yourself emerge into a vast environment ejected into a massive lobby. The that looks like a transportation low, suspended ceiling gives way terminal but feels like a mall: The to a disproportionately gigantic artificial lighting, dizzying array of space, carrying your gaze toward a signage, and the hard floors and balcony above. The building begins walls make the space feel strangely to emerge. Flags representing the and utterly insulated, protected nations of the world hang from a from the natural elements. mezzanine into the lobby. Utopian Morning rush hour. An over- internationalism. We are the world. whelming hum reverberates The journey has so far been through the passageways; the horizontal. Electronic bells clamour of thousands of hurried repeatedly signal the arrival and footsteps, distinctly herd-like. You departure of elevators. Perfunctory need to move quickly or you will security procedures ensue: Wait in literally be swept away. As you navi- line at the desk for a pass or head gate the shop-lined space, littered straight to the elevator banks and with vendors and services, you use your WTC ID card. Elevators notice more ephemeral elements: arrive. You and a group of strang- someone’s perfume, a haunt- ers pack in and begin your vertical ing glance, the muzak that blasts ascent. The initial acceleration throughout the space, the homey triggers nausea; the pull contin- ues, strong and determined. The Profile chamber rattles and shakes and From the beginning, the World you hear the sound of wind again. Trade Center was laden with con- Before you know it, the elevator troversy and politics. The seeds for has slowed down, regaining a sense its construction were planted in of gravity. Doors open and you the post-war era of the late 1940s, crowd into the Sky Lobby, a transi- when the victorious country began tional room on the 78th floor with to prepare for unprecedented another set of elevator banks that economic growth. In the mid- will deliver each of you to your 1950s, David Rockefeller created final destination. Wait. The lobby the Downtown-Lower Manhattan is flanked by a row of windows, Association, which subsequently benches, and circular metal planters hired the firm Skidmore, Owings, with colourful flowers. It is sunny and Merrill to develop a plan for a and the Sky Lobby is so drenched new Lower Manhattan. Heralded with light that you have difficulty by Austin Tobin, the Port Authority opening your eyes. A short ride. director, the initiative picked up When the doors open, you are in a steam and in 1964, Seattle-born typical office building: long, narrow, architect Minoru Yamasaki unveiled carpeted hallways, drop-ceilings plans for the Twin Towers, estimat- with fluorescent lights. Doors lead ed then at $525 million. Despite to unexpectedly open spaces severe opposition by city plan- divided into cubicles. Windows sur- ners, business owners, community round the room on all sides the only separation from sky, air, and clouds. You get as close as you can to the pane and with trepidation you take in the astounding pan- orama, the landscape beyond, and Left the metropolis that lies beneath. World Trade Center Welcome to the World Trade Information Panel Center. Photo: Christian Nguyen

Left Signage of the World Trade Center Photo: Christian Nguyen

Below World Trade Center logo Photo: Christian Nguyen

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 111 groups, and politicians, on March custom-made steel grid of the tow- 25, 1966, demolition began, displac- ers contained windows that were ing, among many others, “Radio designed to fit the shoulder width Row”, which consisted of 26 build- of an average human, thus limit- ings that housed a concentration ing the sensation of vertigo. Over of electronic shops.1 Two quintes- the years, the World Trade Center sential New York populations, small struggled for financial viability. Many businesses and immigrants, were of its spaces remained vacant displaced as merchants and store and its concourse level remained owners had to relocate or go unattractive to shoppers and city 1 For a fascinating and in-depth out of business, and immigrants dwellers. Slowly, the neighbour- history and analysis of the World Trade Center, see Eric from the eastern Mediterranean hood began to change as more Darton. Divided We Stand (who had made their home on financial institutions moved to (Basic Books, 1999), as well as Manhattan’s lower west side, or Lower Manhattan and services for James Glanz and Eric Lipton. City in the Sky (Time Books, “Little Syria”, since the late 1800s) workers and commuters began to 2003). were moved to Brooklyn and New take root. The World Trade Center Jersey to give way to the “new” city. underwent several face lifts. In the In late 1970, tenants moved 1990s, a major effort was made into the northern Tower One to render its spaces and functions and, in January 1972, into Tower more corporate and to turn its lazy, Two. When completed, the build- terminal-like concourse into a first- ings, each at 110 stories, stood at class shopping mall. Owned and 1,353 feet (412 metres) tall. Using operated by the Port Authority a unique engineering technique, in of New York and New Jersey, the which the structures of the build- towers were leased in the spring of ings were also their skeletons, the 2001 to real-estate developer Larry Right Silverstein. A new future seemed Invitation to the Open Studios destined for both the World Trade

Below Center and the neighbourhood. The view from the World Trade Center Studios in the Sky Photo: Christian Nguyen The studio program was launched by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) as a temporary project in 1997. Following the vision of an artist who was seek- ing a window pitched high above New York to paint the city below, a group of “perceptual” painters were invited to work with the most inspiring views. Artists were provided unrestricted access to temporarily vacant, raw space in both towers, at various elevations. In the summer of 1998, I joined LMCC and, along with colleagues in the field, began to imagine this project in a new light. Amazed and space of exchange, learning, and baffled by the site and its multiple exposure. At the end of each cycle, sociopolitical layers, we recognised studios were opened to the public that it would be a fertile envi- and thousands of visitors were ronment for artists whose work able to experience the eccentric, related to issues of institutional alternative, and daring qualities that critique, architecture, modernity, characterised both the program supermodernity, globalisation, and the city in which they were urbanism, and popular culture. In embedded. November 1998, the residency This residency afforded artists program welcomed a group of the rare opportunity to experience emerging and mid-career artists the intense rhythm and environ- with diverse backgrounds and ment of the financial district and interests, working in a variety of produce work in situ in one of media. In addition to perceptions the world’s most renowned land- and views, the program’s emphasis marks; it also offered corporate had now evolved to encompass employees the chance for informal, the artists’ experience of the spontaneous engagement with environment and the aesthetic cultural producers and insight into dynamics created by the site. The their creative process. The Open program was conceived as an Studio events brought cultural artists’ colony: Participants shared producers, critics, collectors, writ- raw communal space with limited ers, and a variety of influential dividing walls on the 91st floor of Tower One, and they were allowed access to different spaces through- out the building for special projects. Left Isolation, contemplation, dialogue, Open Studios exchange, and collaboration were Photo: Moukhtar Kocache encouraged. In 1999 the residency Below expanded once again to include Open Studios artists working with new media Photo: Moukhtar Kocache and technology. Applicants from around the world proposed projects and a jury of art professionals, critics, artists, and curators selected approxi- mately fifteen artists for each six-month cycle. Consideration regarded the quality of the work, the actual proposals, and the need for this particular opportunity. Occasionally, artists were invited individually to pursue special proj- ects. Visits by critics, curators, art professionals, and students were organised to create a dynamic

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 113 and esteemed individuals to a realm (Richard Serra), and, to a site they would most likely not lesser extent, the gallery (Mel have explored otherwise. LMCC Bochner), where site and its speci- partnered with many museums ficities lie at the centre of the work. and arts organisations to expand Not all the artists in the program audiences and to help weave this created work that engaged with workspace program into the city’s the World Trade Center site; many cultural fabric. In promoting the chose the diverse opportunities Twin Towers as a contemporary the program provided to delve space worth experiencing for its deeper into their work, which was cultural relevance, the program often identity-based and personal. invariably helped thousands to A few produced site-specific work revisit, recontextualise, and recon- in the original sense of the term; sider the World Trade Center anew. these were place-bound and to As a site loaded with symbolism move them was to destroy them; and metaphorical meaning, the but most artists experimented World Trade Center provided an with the context the World Trade unparalleled vantage point from Center generated, where site and which both artists and others setting became both subject and examined and reflected on our stimulus. ever-expanding and rapidly chang- Using a variety of means ing global landscape. and media, the majority of art- ists engaged with the location, Lab exploring and extracting its formal We have traditionally come to characteristics, its sociopolitical rela- think of site-specific art as an tions, its layered historic narratives, artist’s specific intervention in a as well as the activities pursued particular locale in the landscape within it. Drawn from a common (Robert Smithson), the public site, their individual interpretations help to reposition our notion of “place” and demonstrate the Open Studios emergence of a variety of artistic Photo: Moukhtar Kocache and theoretical operations, includ- ing site-determined, site-oriented, site-conscious, site-responsive, and site-related.2 Most people experienced the Twin Towers as structures that dominated the skyline, and in most instances, they were critiqued as architectural objects and cultural icons. Three distinct conceptual areas or frameworks have emerged from my thinking about this place 2 Miwon Kwon. One Place After and the works produced within Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (MIT Press, it: supermodernity, vision, and the 2002) iconographic. These three notions combined to provide a broad human conditions of the space. matrix for understanding the Augé states that the con- research artists undertook while tradiction and accelerated in residence, and for reading the transformations of the contempo- works reproduced in this publica- rary world represented through tion. Meanings begin to emerge supermodernity “offer a magnificent from the confluence of the physical field for observation and, in the specificity of a site, the world that it full sense of the term, an object of inhabits, and the collective percep- anthropological research”.4 Many tions of it. of the artists in the program took on the roles of field researchers, Supermodernity: The Internal social surveyors, and investigators. In contrast to its iconic presence However, the artists’ experiences on the landscape, the internal of the World Trade Center were public spaces of the World Trade not transient; they were not simply Center were not special or unique. passing through. They inhabited the Apart from their own peculiarities space for an extended period of and specificities, they ultimately time and gained access to its many resembled spaces in which we layers, which in turn allowed the spend an excessive amount of place’s contradictions to challenge time: generic, soulless, transient their assumptions. It is obvious that spaces for commuting, communica- the artists did not pursue authentic tion, consumption, and commerce and exhaustive anthropological that have increasingly come to rep- research. Rather they presented resent late capitalism. In Non-Places: interpretative generalisations and An Introduction to an Anthropology of subjective contributions about this Supermodernity, Marc Augé defines place and its conditions. such spaces as emblematic of Many of the artworks complet- 3 Marc Augé. Non-Places: An supermodernity – a contemporary ed at the residency explored the Introduction to an Anthropology condition of general excess and social and psychological implications of Supermodernity (Verso, 1995) acceleration with an overabun- of the architecture. It is important 4 Ibid, p. 30 dance of events, space, and time.3 to note the spaces of supermo- If anthropologists have defined dernity; these non-places are not “place” as a space where there is entirely or irrevocably alienating. Basement Memorial Photo: Douglas Ross a strong and cumulative relation- ship between culture, society, and the individual, they have more recently begun to refer to a space that cannot be primarily defined in those terms as a “non-place”. A considerable number of artists in the program seemed to plug in to certain types of anxiety and alien- ation generated by these spaces. Others worked at uncovering what lay beneath the surface; the hid- den histories, political realities, and

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 115 There is much to be said about In other words, we do not simply the human spirit and individuals’ record landscapes; we interpret abilities to personalise their experi- and envision them as a reflection ences and mark their differences of our own state of mind. The dis- in a seemingly oppressive and con- tance constitutional to observing trolling system. Although forms of a landscape from above induces resistance were active throughout a kind of melancholy. It was com- the seamless and finished areas mon for the artists-in-residence of the buildings, they were mostly to endlessly stare out the WTC visible in its hidden and non-public windows. From the towers, the spaces: the staircases where act of looking became a gesture in employees smoked, the freight itself and produced a very modern elevators where smells and detri- form of solitude. Some artists pro- tus were found, the loading docks duced meditative projects, personal where a docker’s sharp tongue notions of how landscape has an ruled, the walls of the basement ability to connect us with our core. levels where graffiti ranged from The dominant form of percep- the base (sexual drawings) and the tion in a city is visual. Through benign (a calculus assignment) to looking we attempt to contend the personal (love declarations) with the built environment. While and the political (“This is hell” it is true one cannot intimately and “Eat the rich”). Often, it is in experience a city without being in such spaces that organic culture is it — navigating it horizontally and present and meaning is released. being immersed in its civic and Employees in the basement built cultural matter — the perspective their own private memorial in hon- from above provides us with the our of their friends who perished critical opportunity to unravel our in the 1993 bombing. This con- collective and cumulative ideologies, struction was a testimony to the traditions, plans, and visions. natural possibilities that lie beneath It is hard to imagine that views the surface of non-places and the provided by skyscrapers did not kind of rich human resistance that eventually become part of their is possible to counter the flattening function. Aside from traditional effects of supermodernity. associations of height to spiritual achievement, there is a connec- Vision: The External tion between the information A critical eye quickly reveals that and knowledge that such heights landscape imagery does not sim- imply — an authority of the view ply denote nature’s topography; seems to emerge. The gaze has it also represents how geography often been associated with power; is shaped socially and culturally not just the power to control one’s by human activity, as well as the surroundings and the destiny of ideology integral to the act of others, but also the power to have viewing. In the act of looking, there a sense of one’s domain and its is a convergence of the physical limitations. However, in New York, specificity of a place, culture at “to look down is not always to look large, and individual perception. down on”.5 Rather, it is a more intrinsic and collective experience of belonging to, and participating in, the metropolis. In Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas finds a direct correlation between New Yorkers’ geographical self-consciousness and the intense culture of congestion, between the creative energy and megalomaniacal goals of its citi- zenry.6 He attributes this dynamic to a constant desire for spectacle, not only from inside the skyscraper looking out, but also from outside looking at. Indeed, no other city in the world has been “looked at” and Believe re-imaged more than New York. Tim Hailand The mythic New York as it has Courtesy the artist been constructed in films and The towers came to represent popular culture — Gotham adds the United States’ dominant posi- an irrefutable ideological dimension tion in the global economy and whenever one attempts to come identified New York as the hub of to grips with New York’s skyline that power. Their extreme height, and its identity as a metropolis.7 their doubling, and their minimalist forms marked the city’s psyche at The Iconographic the end of the twentieth century Although it existed within New as we slowly became accustomed York City, in many ways the World to the shadows they cast onto us. Trade Center, which prided itself The towers became the monu- as being a city unto itself, was ment to “the system”; they were a separate from it.8 It was an internal modern version of the ziggurat, the universe for a select few. For most obelisk, the pyramid, or the citadel. who lived in (or visited) New York, Advertisers and Hollywood film- 5 Adam Gopnik. “A Walk on High Line”, The New Yorker (May 21, it was an icon to be observed makers harnessed these qualities 2001), p. 44 from afar, a symbol. As such, its and used the towers to illustrate 6 Rem Koolhaas. Delirious New potency as a sign was not only Machiavellian political strength, York (Monacelli Press, 1994), projected onto the world by those humankind’s victory over nature, p. 25 who conceived and built it, but its utopian idealism, and dystopian 7 For more on this, see James potency was imbued with aesthetic, vision. Critical representations of Sanders. Celluloid Skyline: New political, and cultural significance the Twin Towers began to emerge York and the Movies (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). from the outside. It is clear that the as artists and cultural producers Twin Towers were built to convey tapped into the content and meta- 8 The World Trade Center was marketed as a place where a certain ideology. The develop- phors they exuded. Many artists one could work, shop, transact, ers aimed at making a physical in the residency program worked and access transportation with- imprint on the New York skyline with the towers as signs, objects, out ever leaving its premises. It is interesting to note that the a bold statement about American and sometimes as surfaces. WTC had its own zip code, ingenuity and human possibility. 10048.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 117 Erasure following the attacks. The project, The attacks on the World Trade two powerful beams of light shining Center in September 2001 were upwards from Ground Zero, used unprecedented in the histories of light to create matter, referencing terrorism and architecture. The Albert Speer’s architecture. Its name horror and scale of the event will changed three times to acknowl- forever remain unfathomable to edge the discrepancy that emerged me. While most people around between the loss of the towers and the world experienced the events the individuals that perished within coldly and from a distance and their them. The project was first called comprehension of the attacks was “Phantom Towers”, then “Towers in a sense neutered and mediated of Light”, and finally “A Tribute in via television screens and ideological Light”. It was as if the towers were prisms, to us who were there, the more significant than the thousands experience was utterly guttural and of lives that had abruptly been lost visceral. My friend Michael Richards within them. To most people, the was working in the studio on a new monumental erasure that occurred sculpture, part of his series on the in the city was more real, more Tuskegee airmen, African American concrete than the disappearance WWII pilots who never received of all those lives. It is intriguing their heroes’ welcome. He perished that for culture at large, the tow- with thousands of others. The piece ers eventually took centre stage, he was working on depicted a pilot and in the months that followed cast in his likeness, riding burning 9/11, they were fetishised endlessly. debris and falling at great speed; Their destruction in material form man, metal, and elements merging furthered their iconographic and into one. Other artists who were in symbolic states; experts, philoso- the building managed to escape just phers, and media critics worldwide minutes before the towers collapsed. jumped at the task of analysing, Past resident artists Julian deciphering, and critiquing them. In a Laverdiere and Paul Myoda con- strange way, the residency program ceived one of the most celebrated and its objectives gained consider- commemorative public art works able legitimacy and weight following the attacks. Perhaps this was due Phantom Towers to the fact that the World Trade Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Center’s destruction was perceived Myoda, architects John Bennet and Gustavo Bonevardi of not as a mere attack on an architec- PROUN Space Studio, archi- tural space, but rather an attack on tect Richard Nash Gould, and a value system with its ideological, lighting designer Paul Marantz political, and economic trappings. It was an attack on supermodernity, and the Twin Towers represented the quintessential archetype of that concept. In his book, Augé notes that non-places — airports, aircrafts, big stores, and railway stations — are particular targets for terror- ism, not only because of the large empire that brought them to us, number of people who frequent clearly their destruction must beg them but because “in a more or less the question: What will become of confused way, those pursuing new this empire, what comes next and socialisations and localisations can in what form? see non-places only as a negation of their ideal. The non-place is the Conclusion opposite of utopia: It exists, and it The World Trade Center’s atmo- does not contain organic society”.9 sphere gave artists many views to In an article about peculiar per- reflect on our contemporary land- sonas and activities at the World scape, our city, and our notions of Trade Center that appeared in America while instigating a critical The New York Times a few months and playful look at urbanism, cor- before 9/11, I was quoted selec- porate and consumer cultures, and tively to say as though admiringly: global politics. Most importantly, “We no longer build things like though, this residency program this”.10 What I had been talking gave us insight into artists’ creative about was that we no longer need process and encapsulated the many to build structures like the Twin methods and manners that artists Towers, just like we no longer need use to record, examine, display, and to put a man on the moon; that the reinterpret the world we live in. modernist era and state of mind I carry with me the memories which culminates in such endeav- of this great adventure and the ours is over. Following the attacks, I many anecdotes and experiences stumbled upon the Harper Collins that emerged from this program. Atlas of World History, printed in I witnessed so many spectacular the early 90s, and hardly a politi- sunsets in our studios, feeling like cally correct edition. I noticed that Saint-Exupéry, when as on clear each chapter was illustrated with days, I swear I could see the cur- an iconic photograph, a symbol of vature of the earth. I smile when that civilisation. The first chapter I recall the wonderful exchanges featured Stonehenge and the last with tenants and workers in the chapter, titled “20th Century and building and the many private and Modernity”, featured a picture of ephemeral moments that they the World Trade Center with the held; like the time when standing Statue of Liberty in the background. in Tower One, I waved at someone If the Twin Towers came to repre- staring out the window from Tower sent modernity and the American Two and they waved back at me.

Moukhtar Kocache is a curator, arts manager, and the former director of visual and media art at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, where he developed residency programs, public art projects, and exhibitions. He has worked with numerous galleries, museums, and non-profit organisations 9 Augé, p. 111 throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North America. He is currently the 10 Shaila Dewan. “Twin Peaks program officer for media, arts, and culture for the Middle East and North Make a Vertical World of Their Own”, The New York Times Africa at the Ford Foundation. (February 27, 2001)

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 119 An Apology for Curiosity: An Imaginary Conversation Between Two Editors at Cabinet Magazine

Sina Najafi

phers, instead of envisaging the A: When we started Cabinet in aesthetic problem from the 2000, there was a quote from point of view of the artist (the Nietzsche that we discussed, which creator), considered art and the in part framed how we were think- beautiful purely from that of the ing of the project as a whole. It’s “spectator”, and unconsciously a passage from The Genealogy of introduced the “spectator” into Morals where Nietzsche complains the concept “beautiful”. It would that aesthetic theory is never not have been so bad if this framed from the perspective of “spectator” had at least been the artist. It’s instead based on sufficiently familiar to the phi- the perspective of the spectator losophers of beauty — namely, who is isolated from the condi- as a great personal fact and tions of making an artwork and so experience, as an abundance harbours a distance that Nietzsche of vivid aesthetic experiences, condemns. Maybe it’s worth quot- desires, surprises, and delights ing the text in full here: in the realm of the beautiful! Schopenhauer made use of the But I fear that the reverse has Kantian version of the aesthetic always been the case; and so problem — although he certain- they have offered us, from the ly did not view it with Kantian beginning, definitions in which, eyes. Kant thought he was as in Kant’s famous definition honouring art when amongst of the beautiful, a lack of any the predicates of beauty he refined first-hand experience emphasised and gave promi- reposes in the shape of a fat nence to those which establish worm of error. “This is beauti- the honour of knowledge: ful”, said Kant, “which gives impersonality and universality. us pleasure without interest”. This is not the place to inquire Without interest! Compare with whether this was essentially a this definition one framed by a mistake; all I wish to underline genuine “spectator” and artist is that Kant, like all philoso- ­— Stendhal, who once called the beautiful une promesse de The American empire has presum- bonheur. At any rate he rejected ably fallen apart by then and the and repudiated the one point elements have eroded all the presi- about the aesthetic condition dents’ faces. All we are left with which Kant had stressed: le dés- is a semi-recognisable, uncanny intéressement. Who is right, Kant image of faded hubris. Alongside or Stendhal?1 this image, Buckingham offers an elegant text outlining the fractious I think Cabinet has always history of the Six Grandfathers, 1 Friedrich Nietzsche. On the implicitly assumed that Stendhal’s the Native American name for Genealogy of Morals, translated definition is of greater value than by Walter Kaufmann (Vintage, the mountains that house Mount Kant’s. One of the simple ways in 1969), pp. 103-104 Rushmore. About a spiritual loca- which this has manifested itself is tion for Native Americans, the that we encourage artists to write, The Six Grandfathers, text provides a background for Paha Sapa, in the Year or people to write from a per- us to understand how contingent 502,002 C.E. spective of the artist, which simply Matthew Buckingham and contested Mount Rushmore means establishing a relationship to Courtesy the artist and Cabinet is. Clearly, this is an artist’s project magazine the abundance of experiences that the artwork calls for. This would presumably mean occupying the position of the maker or at least a good spectator. The bad spectator has a different relationship to the work; one of abstinence, distance, universality, impersonality, whereas the good spectator or artist would be engaged, involved, and open to all the fascinations that traditional art history and art criticism dis- pense with. The artist’s bookshelf today looks very different than it did 50 years ago. It might have books about heraldry, spider webs, lunar craters, dermatology, intellectual property law, or nurses’ uniforms. In fact, almost anything can become a legitimate object of inquiry. And the artists that we’ve published in Cabinet are exemplary of this new diversity, the worldliness of artists today. For example, in issue seven, we published a text-and-image art project by Matthew Buckingham, which is composed of two parts. First, there is a poster; an image of Mount Rushmore as it might look 500,000 years in the future. Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 121 commentary on these projects?

B: In contrast, at Cabinet we have this idea that engaging artists in the writing process reduces the level of false impersonality, activat- ing the kind of involvement which Nietzsche’s argues make for a bet- ter sort of spectator.

A: This should be distinguished from nepotism, which is a lack of distance from the mechanisms of the art world, the social environ- ment, and the market. The ability that can no longer be reduced to to sidestep nepotism is traditionally aesthetic concerns, or even some the promise of the independent notion of the familiar and the critic, someone who is not a cura- strange resulting in the uncanny. It is tor or an artist. all those things and also political in the most direct sense of the word. B: This is probably the place to Or, for example, take Elizabeth bring up an interesting essay Photo and diagram for DeMaray’s project in issue twelve, by Boris Groys called “Critical Elizabeth Demaray’s proposed proposing how to make artificial, Reflections”, about the history artificial shell for homeless her- and improved shells for homeless of the critic, in which he points mit crabs unable to find natural abandoned shells hermit crabs unable to find shells out that the location of the critic Courtesy the artist and Cabinet to take refuge in. With designs has changed fundamentally since magazine based on fascist architect Terragni’s Baudelaire invented the genre in concepts, it turns out that crabs the 1840s.2 The critic was originally massively prefer the artificial shells on the side of the public, whom to the natural ones. Again, here we he was trying to educate (albeit have a set of fascinations that refuse sometimes contemptuously), and to be neatly placed in one category. had no involvement with the artist. DeMaray’s text could be published Groys claims that at some point in a biology book, but it also com- the critic abandoned his affiliation ments on architecture, ill-fated with the public in order to befriend environmental policies, and consum- the artist. The problem was that er culture. Its interests spill over too the artist didn’t want the critic much to be addressed adequately as a friend. And so the critic has by any of the traditional concerns of since been left homeless and in art criticism. Which leads us to ask, limbo, despised by the artists, and do Buckingham and DeMaray’s proj- no longer trusted by the public he ects need art criticism in order to betrayed. The fact that the critic is fully exist? They openly offer com- marooned, of course, means that mitted and passionate perspectives. his or her texts are not read by 2 Boris Groys. “Critical Reflections”, Artforum (October What would be the function of a anyone (except perhaps by other 1997) supposedly distanced and neutral critics). The public doesn’t care and nor does the artist. the potential.

A: Certainly artists are not so inter- A: I think this sense of being ested in these texts. I’ve seen artist marooned is not an unfamiliar one friends flipping though art maga- for us at Cabinet. Some people zines; after looking at the ads to think of the magazine as a kind of see who is exhibiting where, they artists’ project, but we’re not artists, flip to the back and read a couple we’re making a magazine. At the of reviews of shows that colleagues same time, we don’t do the typical have had. Those long articles in the things that magazines or critical middle, which the editors pored organs do; we don’t review shows, over, are usually left unread. This we don’t write about artists in that may be somewhat exaggerated, but way. So in terms of the way people as Adorno said of psychoanalysis, perceive the magazine, this is a only the exaggerations are true. strength. But it’s also a weakness Art magazines are typically or a challenge for us, in terms of made from the critic’s perspective, what — for lack of a better word relying on the notions of judg- — might be called branding the ing, evaluating, excluding, canon magazine, because it’s in between building, and myths such as “criti- these spheres. cal distance”. It is true that artists’ books still plod on, but at this point B: We don’t have a natural, pre- they are usually only available in existing constituency. Since we the ghetto of super-specialised do not poll our readers or ask stores, either at exorbitant prices them to humiliate themselves by in editions of 50 or in cheap, pho- confessing their salaries, their hob- tocopied editions that are stapled bies, and so on, it’s always been together. But why are art maga- hard for us to know who our zines no longer a primary venue for readers are. But one place where presenting ideas that artists will find interesting for their work? Who is the intended reader of these glossy publications that travel the world?

B: There is a surprising twist at the end of Groys’s article, though. Groys finally reads the lack of audi- ence as a potentially interesting way out of the conundrum of art criticism today, insofar as having no audience allows you to write the A map of Cabinetlandia, Cabinet’s 1/2 acre of desert things that you want, to take risks, land in New Mexico and to be daring. It allows you a Readerland is composed of space where you can abandon the 6,700 parcels of land, each exactly the size of a copy of usual safety nets. I don’t think he Cabinet and offered to readers imagines that art criticism is doing for one penny each. that, but he says that it at least has Courtesy Cabinet magazine

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 123 pened to be exactly the size of the magazine. On our online interactive map of Cabinetlandia, each of the more than 1,000 people who have claimed land can write a little bit about themselves. And it turns out our readers include dentists, rocket scientists, shoe designers, firework technicians, the head lawyer for The New York Times, and supermarket managers, in addition to artists, cultural critics, academics, and his- torians. Somehow, a wide variety of people feel “hailed” by the maga- zine as its intended reader. And

Above and right the project has now acquired a life Photos of Cabinet National of its own. Just last month, three Library, designed and built on somewhat insane readers went to Cabinetlandia in the summer of 2004 by Cabinet reader New Mexico and spent a week on Matthew Passmore with help Cabinetlandia building the National from three friends Cabinet Library. Such a grand, Courtesy Matthew Passmore and Cabinet magazine extravagant, and inefficient project makes you hopeful that the desire for community is still alive in the US, even if it usually negated by the self-serving rhetoric of capitalism.

A: We’ve often discussed the idea of writing the readers into existence — again this is from Nietzsche — that we’re working in a terrain which doesn’t already our diverse and motley audience exist in a prefabricated way, that became visible was when we did you have to make it up as you go our New Mexico land project in along. I think this is part of the issue ten. We purchased — sight appeal for all of us who work on unseen — half an acre of scrubland the magazine. In our other lives, outside Deming, with the idea that we all have access to or involve- we’d give part of it away to all our ment in these other spheres. We readers and then designate various make things or we write in more other uses for the rest. We created traditional critical environments a map of Cabinetlandia showing or we teach. But the magazine these functions and regions, and is, quite intentionally, in between the issue came with a contract these things. I think this is part of that readers could return to us its appeal. with a penny in order to claim their parcel of land, which hap- B: We wander from place to place, and the only firm criterion curiosity that Foucault puts on the seems to be if what we’re examin- table is discouraged. It produces ing unravels a little of the world jacks-of-all-trade. And in English, we around us and shows our relation- say: “Curiosity killed the cat”. It’s ship to it. This is why I like the assumed that a serious intellectual quote of Foucault’s that we some- would be driven by a logic that times smuggle into our mission is internal to the discipline, one statement: which keeps him or her within the bounds of the field. Curiosity is a new vice that has been stigmatised in turn A: This is part of the modernist by Christianity, by philosophy, approach, this establishment of dis- and even by a certain con- ciplinary boundaries, and this sense ception of science. Curiosity, that you can’t write from the posi- futility. The word, however, tion of the generalist. pleases me. To me it suggests something altogether different: B: So if you’re studying something it evokes “concern”; it evokes and you can see these interesting the care one takes for what routes that lead you out of the exists and could exist; a readi- discipline, you’re not encouraged to ness to find strange and singular pursue them. what surrounds us; a certain relentlessness to break up our A: This would suggest a lack of familiarities and to regard other- focus, a lack of discipline. wise the same things; a fervour to grasp what is happening and B: I hadn’t thought about the dual what passes; a casualness in meaning of the word discipline regard to the traditional hierar- before. Discipline is a very different chies of the important and the register of word than, say, happi- essential. I dream of a new age ness, which is the word Stendhal of curiosity. We have the techni- introduces to the discussion. Even cal means for it; the desire is if you disagree with Stendhal, it there; the things to be known makes for a stronger statement are infinite; the people who can when compared to the idea of dis- employ themselves at this task interestedness that Kant proposes. exist. Why do we suffer? From And once pleasure and interested- too little: from channels that ness are admitted, then curiosity are too narrow, skimpy, quasi- becomes a kind of compass to monopolistic, insufficient. There guide you. This does not suggest is no point in adopting a protec- selfishness or a lack of care for the tionist attitude, to prevent “bad” world, however. On the contrary, it information from invading and means caring about the world very suffocating the “good”. Rather, much, as Foucault points out. 3 Michel Foucault. “The Masked we must multiply the paths and Philosopher,” Foucault Live: the possibilities of coming and Interviews, 1961-1984, edited A: I don’t think Stendhal means by Sylvère Lotringer, translated goings.3 happiness in the simple sense of by Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston (Semiotext(e), 1996), In academia, this notion of being jolly or joyous. p. 305

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 125 B: There is a utopian dimension tional sense — encourage more that also implies engagement. I risks. The word essay etymologically think that in the US, the notion of goes back to the French for “a try”, happiness is always read through meaning you try out something. the anaemic pursuit of material It’s the same with the word project, goods, which allows some measure which is related to projectile. You of autonomy and independence throw out something and you from others. Being happy almost don’t really know where it’s going means not caring for the world at to land and you don’t care where large. But to get back to curiosity, it’s going to land; it’s a project. I think part of the frustration of We’ve had more failures than reading art essays is that artists we can possibly list, and some are very curious about the world of them constitute the proudest around them — they are “worldly”, moments of the magazine. In issue as it were — but the critical appa- four, we launched the “Travelling ratus around their work doesn’t Interview”, an idea that we imag- allow for curiosity to be staged and ined would become a central appreciated. statement of the magazine. The idea was simple: We’d pick some- A: So maybe this is an argument one, A, to do an interview with for a more belletristic writing, rath- someone else, B. A would have er than a theory-based writing. In carte blanche to choose B. In the practice and theory, the belletristic next issue, B would choose another approach allows you to bring in the person, C, to interview, and so stuff of the world, more so than on. Every issue would have some you would be able to in any kind of content over which we’d have no theoretical framework. I think that’s control. We were very happy to the balance we are always going pick Dean MacCannell, the founder for in the magazine, to know there of tourist studies, to kick off the is a theoretical framework for the series. He picked Lucy Lippard, kinds of discovery that goes on in and we published the interview the magazine, but not to have the in issue four. Lippard picked a magazine wear it on the sleeve, to second person for issue five, but let it emerge from the unexpected this person broke her promise collision of things, from following and the whole thing fell apart, per- the pathways you might not feel as haps in instructive ways. Another free to explore in another context. interesting failure was when we decided that we would interview B: And that’s why I think there a philosophy professor at West should be room in every publica- Point Military Academy, the college tion for failure — and there usually where America’s future generals isn’t, given the economic conditions are trained. The interview turned of the industry, especially in the US. out to be two parallel monologues, We ourselves have been scared but even this failure of communica- of failure many times, but certain tion could be read symptomatically, kinds of writing — the belletristic if you wanted to be generous. mode or the essay in the tradi- A: And the sense of an open project does not only exist within the context of single pieces, either. It also exists in the way we try to order the magazine, the way the content is combined with the various parts of a particular issue. It’s the writer’s responsibility to produce these effects within the piece, but it’s our job to put them all together. It’s like montage and the idea of producing a third state. That’s a very chancy thing because we don’t telegraph it. We don’t try to create a frame that highlights these relationships, although our themes are meant to produce certain readings of how things are put together. But at the same time, I think there’s a lot of room for individual impressions based on adjacencies and collisions and con- nections that are set up between pieces.

Sina Najafi is editor-in-chief of the New York-based magazine Cabinet and director of Immaterial Incorporated. After studying comparative literature at Princeton and Columbia, he worked as editor of the magazines Index in Stockholm and Merge, based in Stockholm and New York. Najafi recently curated “The Paper Sculpture Show” at New York’s Sculpture Center and is currently at work on an exhibition devoted to the work of Gordon Matta- Clark, in collaboration with White Columns and the Queens Museum. At present, Najafi is also preparing an anthology on the cultural history of colours.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 127

Performances

The Room, Amal Kenawy Looking for a Missing Employee, Rabih Mroué The Room

Amal Kenawy

Amal Kenawy was born in Cairo in 1974. She studied fine art and has shown her paintings and performances at numerous exhibitions and festivals through- out Egypt. Since 1996, she has collaborated with her brother, fellow artist Abdel Ghani El Kenawy, on nine projects involving sculpture, installation, and video. In 2002, she created a video installation called Frozen Memory and in 2003, she presented The Room at Cairo’s Ismalia International Festival for Documentary and Short Films, where it won a prize. It has since been shown at Dak’art 2004, Senegal’s international biennial, and the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels.

The Room explores a room that to exist in the abstracted emotions hides behind the physical body. This fluctuating between memories room reflects larger, less obvious and dreams, and to comprehend rooms that exist outside the body, the reality we experience. That such as society, its customs, and its understanding approaches me and conditioning. Kenawy approaches appears as my true self, as that these rooms through the institu- which I can see clearly beyond the tion of marriage. In more ways narrow confines of the body”. than one, marriage is an arresting experience, the moment when Produced by the Young Arab Theatre Fund a woman’s personal and social situation changes. Although often considered the beginning of a new life, it is also an overwhelming event that dilutes a woman’s world, altering even her face, of which nothing remains but a memory. In The Room, Kenawy represents these alterations in visceral fashion, as a lone performer on stage assessing the physical changes that marriage has impressed on her body.

“I might have a beating heart, a heart that functions regularly, but I cannot confirm that I am alive. Emotions inhabit this human frame and make of it a vessel, a form, a liminal space that lies between inte- rior and exterior. I attempt to tailor my understanding, to perceive the human self within a wider context, Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 131 Looking For A Missing Employee

Rabih Mroué

Rabih Mroué was born in Beirut in 1967. He studied theatre and started producing his own projects in 1990. He has acted in, directed, and written several plays, performances, and videos which have been presented in Beirut and in many cities in Europe, among them: L’Abat-Jour (1990), The Lift (1993), The Sand Prison (1995), Extension 19 (1997), Come In Sir We Are Waiting For You Outside (1998), Three Posters (2000), Face A/Face B (video, 2001), and Biokhraphia (2002).

Written and directed by Looking for a Missing Employee ance and disappearance of the Rabih Mroué is a play that investigates the image are accompanied by a faint circumstances surrounding the dis- sound of breathing. Set design appearance of R. S., an employee in The projection of the flashing Samar Maakaron the Ministry of Finance in Lebanon. image begins before the performance and Talal Shatila The play stages the conflicted and continues as the audience is political, social, judicial, and security allowed into the theatre and as spec- Assistant director complications that accompanied tators take their seats. Maya Zbib the proceeding of the case, based When the seats have been filled, on a daily register of what was the lights are turned off; the image Actor 1: Rabih Mroué made public in newspapers, includ- continues flashing on the middle Actor 2: Hatem Imam ing news reports, articles, analyses, screen, while the two large screens interviews, commentaries, and pro- on either side of the stage are Interview recorded by nouncements. drowned in darkness. Mohamed Soueid and Actor 1 enters the theatre by the Pamela Ghoneimeh The Set same route as the spectators. He is Two large screens are placed toward carrying notebooks pertaining to the Produced by the back of the stage; they are of performance and a remote control Ashkal Alwan, November 2003 equal size, divided by a black void. device. He walks toward the stage One, screen 1, is placed to the left and with the remote control he stops Duration edge of the stage, and the other, the projection of the flashing image 2 hours, 20 minutes screen 2, to the right. In the middle on the middle screen. of the stage stands a wooden desk, At the same instance, a light pro- rectangularly shaped, painted white. jector is directed on two seats in the A wooden chair, painted white, is audience. The first seat, where Actor 2 placed behind it, facing the audience. is seated, is to the right of the stage, Behind the chair, in the middle of the among the front rows of the theatre. stage, hangs a medium-sized screen The second seat, where no one is sit- at the level of the desk. ting, is to the left of the stage, among An image of a face without fea- the back rows. tures flashes on the middle screen repeatedly, ceaselessly. The appear- * A note of clarification: A camera is placed in front of Actor 1, to Actor 1 walks toward the empty the level of his head, captur- ing his face and projecting his chair and sits. In front of him is a portrait on the middle screen small table on which he lays his throughout the performance. papers and notebooks, and an image Actor 1 looks into the lens of the camera affixed in front of In front of Actor 2 is a small table of them appears on screen 1. On the him. As he talks directly to the with a white board placed on top middle screen, the image of Actor 1 lens, his image on the middle of it. Actor 2 puts coloured pens on appears*, as if he were sitting on the screen appears as if he were looking straight into the eyes the board, and an image of them is chair in front of the desk, facing the of the spectators, addressing projected on screen 2. audience. them.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 133 Actor 1: I have been collecting photographs of missing persons as they have appeared in newspapers since the year 1995. I cut them out and keep them in a special notebook. It was not clear to me why I was doing this, but I felt somehow intrigued by the issue. It confused me, occupied my mind, and I always found myself asking the same question: Where could these individuals disappear to, particularly in a country like Lebanon, so small, where it is said that everyone knows everyone else, where the least said on its society is that it is confessional, communitarian, tribal, and so on and so forth… It seems that no matter how strongly control and authority are established in this country, or any country for that matter, there are always cracks and fissures into which individuals disappear. To them, they escape; in them, they elude, get lost, maybe even commit a crime. All this without leaving behind a single trace for us to find. In all cases, the disappeared has a singular attribute that dis- tinguishes him from everyone else. He is absent, absent with the promise to come back, meaning, he is present here and not pres- As Actor 1 is going through the ent, present and not seen, he is not dead yet he is not alive… He presentation of the performance, catches tears welling up in eyes, but prevents them from overflow- Actor 2 begins to write on the board ing to roll down his cheeks. Everything is suspended, postponed, placed in front of him. His text in a state of waiting… Expectant… Waiting, and waiting for what? appears on the large screen: What could anyone wait for except a happy ending? But often, the end has been sad, gruesome, dragging in its trail crime and death. This performance does not Death, death… Yes, death. attempt to search for the truth, The death that interests me is the death of the idea not the nor any other truth… Nor for death of the body. What I mean by death is that which relieves us the accused, nor the innocent… from the pain of waiting, the idea of waiting, the idea of searching… Nor for the criminal, nor the That which will liberate us from “looking for the missing”. That is a victim… It is not motivated death that can only happen inside the head. A death premeditated, to flatter anyone, nor does a death pursued with purpose. it intend to insult anyone… Doesn’t the law say that any person absented for more than Between truth and lies there four years is declared dead? These four years might as well be four is a hair, and I am trying to pull hours or four centuries, four hundred centuries, or less, or more… that hair. A verse by al-Akhtal al- The missing is a manifestation of latency, whether purposefully Saghir rings in my head: يبكي وي�ضحك ال ًحزنا وال فرحا -or not, he represents the fertile grounds for narrative, fiction, imagi nation, storytelling… كعا�ش ٍق ّخط �س ًطرا في الهوا ومحا... Actor 1 opens his first notebook and shows it to the camera, com- “He cries, he laughs, not from menting on its contents. The notebook contains newspaper cuttings sadness, nor from happiness / of persons missing since the end of the Lebanese civil war, as well as like a lover who has drawn a reports relating the circumstances of the disappearance. The photo- line in the air and then erased graph and report appear on screen 1, in full view for the spectators. it”. The First Notebook Actor 1: Disappearance of young man: Jean. Here is the picture of Ahmad. Ahmad went missing in Beirut. Pema worked as a house maid and ran away. Ali has a speech impediment; he can’t speak intelligibly: he is missing without any identity document. Sami was in the Rawdah Café, he left and a day later he has not come home yet. Hala left without her young daughter. Artin, Su’ad, Farid… Huh! By the way, regarding that young man, the Sukleen Company has lost him. Faten, Suleiman, Jamil, and many, many others…

On screen 1, hand-drawn images attempt to reproduce the style of photographs of missing persons from newspapers.

Actor 1: And here there is supposed to be a picture of R.S. and a news piece about him, a fourth-level employee in the Ministry of Finance. In truth, R. S. was never the object of a report in the paper; like all the other people in the notebooks, his wife published a plea urging the government to reveal the fate of her husband. The plea was published in the newspapers in September 1996. It was a very small piece in the paper, and the next day, another small piece came out related to the disappearance of the employee. The third day, another news report came out, and on the fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on and so forth… As for me, since I was already collecting reports on missing persons from newspapers, I began to follow this story as well. So I would cut out stories and stick everything I found in a special note- book. I cut and pasted, cut and pasted. Until I found myself with two complete notebooks, all on the case of this missing employee. These news reports I collected from the newspapers as-Safir and an-Nahar. In the year 2000, I read them and felt there was some- thing incomplete, missing, with this story. That is why I resorted to the newspaper ad-Diyar. At the offices of ad-Diyar, I was allowed into their archives. I burrowed and searched for this missing employee and I found a lot. They photocopied everything I found. I cut and pasted it all into a third notebook. I cut and pasted, cut and pasted, and that’s what I kept doing until I had this notebook filled with news of the missing employee, the same one. After a while, I read the three notebooks and came to the deci- sion that the time had come for me to tell the story so I could rid myself from its hold, kill it, and bring closure. Looking for a missing employee.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 135 Actor 2 flips the board over to show its clean white face and begins Actor 1 opens his second book and begins displaying newspaper following the details of events. He cuttings. He reads from some of them, summarises, comments, digress- sketches a diagram in order to clarify es, edits, hides, and improvises others when he feels he needs to. complexities of the case: He tries his best to be neutral, in other words, he tries not to imper- In black, toward the top of the sonate the characters he is reading about or imitate their voices. He board, he draws a line to quantify tries not to exert any physical effort.. the articles on the subject that have appeared in newspapers, along with the date of publication and size of The Second Notebook the article. Actor 1: The first report appeared in both as-Safir and an-Nahar In the middle of the board he Translation: draws the figures of the chief missing ”زوجة تنا�شد الر�ؤ�ساء الثالثة ك�شف م�صير زوجها“ :under the title “Wife Appeals to the Three Presidents to Reveal the Fate of Her persons in the case. Husband”. As you can see I am not a certified translator, nor am I In blue, he draws a broken line qualified, and I choose to speak in English, a language that you might that tallies the amounts of money understand, so we can skip the subtitles. This will allow me to look stolen that were rendered public. into your eyes, and you into mine. In red, to the right of the board, he writes all the names of those Actor 1 looks into the lens, and in the projection on the middle implicated in the affair, noting the screen, he appears to be staring at the audience. date of their arrest and release in the last case. Actor 1: Now we start again. Looking for a missing employee. The In green, toward the bottom of first report appeared in as-Safir and an-Nahar on Monday, September the board, he notes all the scandals 30, 1996, a plea from the wife of a missing person appealing to the in the state institutions. three principal chiefs to investigate the fate of her husband. She said: In black, he notes the attributes of “To those who have rescued the country from all the tragedies that the chief missing person in the case. have befallen it, to those who have steered Lebanon on the road In red, he draws lines extending to liberation and reconstruction, to those instituting a state of law from one end to the board to the in lieu of the law of the jungle, rescue me from my tragic predica- other, in different directions, following ment that will not go away. In the afternoon of this past Wednesday, the places and locales to which the September 26, 1996, my husband disappeared, leaving behind a fam- chief missing person was claimed to ily. If the authorities have him, it is my right to know, and if any other have escaped. faction disposes of him, it is also my right to know. His disappearance In black, to the left edge of the is the hardest of sufferings, an extreme case of disregard for human board, he lists all the names of politi- life and citizenship. All I ask for is my natural right to know, I beg of cians that have commented directly you to grant me that right”. The next day, another article reads… or indirectly on the case. Notes

Considering the length of the text and the legal complications per- taining to laws of printing and publishing which I cannot handle, I have decided to publish only the first part of this stage-play, despite the fact that the text is based, principally and directly, on news reports, articles, and cuttings collected from three newspapers, as-Sa- fir, an-Nahar, and ad-Diyar, from September 1996 to February 2004.

There is no physical human presence on stage throughout the entire performance.

As the missing person in question is declared dead, his body dis- covered, and a few minutes before the end of the play, during a screening of a prerecorded interview with the sheikh — a relative of the missing person — Actor 1 swiftly, and without attracting any- one's notice, leaves his seat.

When the interview is finished, the image of Actor 1 appears again, this time replaced by a recording on videotape, suggesting to the audience that the actor has not left his place or the theatre. He summarises the events quickly, the room is lit announcing the end of the performance, and the image of Actor 1 is still staring at the audience while Actor 1 is nowhere in sight. The audience discovers the absence of Actor 1.

On screen 1, there are no traces of the notebooks, while screen 2 is busy with numbers, names, and diagrams. Actor 2 paints the board white so that it too becomes white like screen 1, yet remains soiled with traces of the story…

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 137

Exhibitions

The Containment Re-Contained: A Xurban Collective Project, Guven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal Lasting Images, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige Zoorkhaneh, Peyman Hooshmandzadeh Beirut Caoutchouc, Marwan Rechmaoui The Containment Re-Contained: A Xurban Collective Project

Guven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal

Guven Incirlioglu is an Istanbul-based artist who studied architecture, photography, and art theory. His many installations using photographs and computer technology have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibi- tions throughout Turkey and the US. He is currently a faculty member in Yildiz Technical University's faculty of art and design in Istanbul.

Since 1997, Guven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal have been involved in a number of web-based projects with an urban emphasis, includ- ing the Xurban Collective (www. xurban.net). With members spread across different geographic loca- tions, Xurban poses a challenge to notions of site-specificity and globalisation. Its members explore what is desolate, neglected, ruined, or derelict in various urban envi- ronments. They juxtapose the contemporary and archaeological layers that exist in cities, extracting objects and photographic evidence for their artworks. As a collective, Xurban’s purpose is to find alterna- tives to oppressive regimes and reveal a civil means of existence. Hakan Topal was born in Turkey in 1972. He studied civil engineering as well as gender and women’s studies at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Now based in New York, he works as a freelance web designer and programmer. Since 2000, has been the new media coordinator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His artworks include photo-based essays, installations, performances and videos, all of which have been shown in solo shows and group exhibitions throughout Turkey.

In the recent past, almost all A major issue for Xurban is the flows (of bodies, languages, and of the trucks transporting flow of information over various expressions in general) are con- goods between Turkey and networks, while the physical move- trolled or made possible within a Iraq were equipped with ment of its members is not been defined territory. If violence rages special steel tanks (custom necessary. Along the globalised within this closed and contained built to fit underneath the systems of transfer existing today, system, it is opposed by armed trucks) used for the off- goods of high value (such as oil) force. Language is constrained, but the-books transportation have an overwhelmingly high priori- every so often a product is left of diesel fuel back into ty, while people are restrained from free for trade. The nature of the Turkey. Now outlawed and international mobility as subjects of containment becomes a curfew, hence useless, these tanks “containment”. Xurban appropriated a self-imposed martial law. In the lie sprawled along the an object that traveled long dis- meantime, trade routes continue highways as the remnants tances, across borders, in times of to facilitate the existence of check- of a once-prosperous bar- customs control and containment. points. The container itself is the ter economy of sorts. The The journey was a reflection on object that can penetrate, while Xurban Collective conduct- geography and the impoverished the contained is the thing restricted ed an archaeological field existence of people. Nevertheless, within an economy of inhibition. survey of these vessels and it was illuminated with empathy. For The archaeological layering of brought back a chosen one 21 days and over 7,000 kilometres political and circumstantial evidence as an object of high plastic- in Turkey during July and August blended together as the collective ity and veneration. 2003, Xurban members tried to travelled east. Unlike the Western gain a sense of this chosen object’s inheritance, unrecorded histories of terrain, its contents, and the condi- fusion and reversal (oppression and tions acted upon the lives of the resistance) require in situ observa- people around it. Xurban’s travel tion and excavation. Instead of the itinerary, along with the photo- structural differences characterising graphic documentation it collected artistic production, Xurban concen- along the way, covered a number trated on the observable side of this of Neolithic and archeological sites, layering — how layers fuse together Project Team: Guven Incirlioglu, following ancient trade routes. and whether observation is possible Hakan Topal, Atif Akin, Mahir Yavuz, Akin Gulseven, Simge The principal sign of contain- among members of the collective Goksoy, and Zeki Aslan ment was the checkpoint, where who live in the East and the West.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 141 Lasting Images

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Both born in 1969 in Beirut, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are filmmak- ers, artists, and university teachers. Together, they have created installations and videos such as Wonder Beirut, Don’t Walk, and The Circle of Confusion. They have directed features such as Al-Beyt al-Zaher (Around the Pink House), shorts such as Ramad (Ashes), and documentaries such as Khiam and Al-Film al-Mafk- oud (The Lost Film). Amongst their publications are Beyrouth: fictions urbaines, OK I’m Going to Show You My Work, and A State of Latency. They’ve just finished their second feature, A Perfect Day.

“In March 2001, we stumbled across are accompanied by a Dolby 5.1 the archives, photographs, and films surround-sound system, playing that once belonged to Khalil’s uncle various sources such as broadcast who was kidnapped during the noise. The individual sounds can Lebanese civil war on August 19, hardly be identified or located, but 1985. He is still officially reported together they produce articula- missing today. Among his things we tions of meaning, suggesting a found one ‘latent’ film, a Super-8 presence and creating a virtual as yet undeveloped. It had been centre in the space. One of the stored in a yellow bag for fifteen six cases presents a continuous years, surviving the ravages of the loop of the three-minute Super-8 war and a fire that devastated film. A second case features images the house where it was kept. We of the envelope in which it was considered for a long time whether found. The four other cases show or not to send the film to be texts: Chapter 3 of the Lebanese developed, whether or not to take law on missing persons, pertain- the risk that these latent images ing to those kidnapped during the might reveal nothing. After much war; an excerpt from Jalal Toufic’s hesitation, we decided to send it book (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay to the lab. on the Undead in Film, 2nd ed.; a “The film came out veiled and quote by Nadar from When I was a white, with a barely noticeable Photographer; and a text inspired by presence that vanished immediately an article by Philippe DuBois enti- from the screen. We searched tled ‘The Body and its Phantoms’, within the layers of the film itself, which was published in La recher- attempting to create the reap- che photographique, no. 1”. pearance of a presence, of lasting images. “The installation consists of six luminous cases presented in a dark room. Each seems to be floating in space. These cases Title Three: Provisions relating to missing persons

Article 33: The missing person is the person whose whereabouts are unknown and of whom no one knows whether he is dead or alive.

Article 38: Should the missing person reappear within a period of five years as of the judgment declaring his death, he shall recover all his estate from his heirs as well as any inherited shares or bequest remaining in abeyance.

When the ghost is banished or repressed, people turn into zombies, act insouciant in the weirdest and most alarming of situations. Henry Miller: "Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos" (the opening lines of Tropic of Capricorn).

Therefore, according to Balzac, each body in nature is composed of a series of spec- tres, layered and endlessly superimposed, a folio of infinitesimal pellicles. And so, every daguerian operation, every photograph, comes to surprise, detach, and retain, by peel- ing away and onto itself, one layer of the objectified body.

In 1870, the physician Vernois, a member of the Society of Forensic Medicine of Paris, undertakes a series of researches seeking to prove that the retina of assassinated people does retain an image of what they saw last, namely the image of their assassin. According to the physician, it is then possible to obtain the image of the assassin by simply developing the retina.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 143 Zoorkhaneh

Peyman Hooshmandzadeh

Peyman Hooshmandzadeh was born in 1969 in Tehran. He studied photog- raphy and has worked as an editor and photojournalist for nearly fifteen different publications. He is a founding member of the 135 Photos agency in Iran, and he has penned two short story collections: Two Dots and When Sundays Meet. Hooshmandzadeh has shown his work in some twenty group exhibitions worldwide.

These photographs explore the serenaded me with ‘I saw a man space of the zoorkhaneh, a tra- who looked like a ray of sunshine’. ditional gymnasium where men “I resisted taking up my place gather for sport, exercise, and lei- until 2000, but then the ‘ray of sure time. Each zoorkhaneh has four sunshine’ took the better of me. iwans, one cupola, and two gouds, or Previously, I had managed to gymnasium pits. Once a fixture of publish a piece here, a text there. Iran’s social and cultural landscape, But afterward I was saddled with it is an institution that has recently donkey work in various snooze become almost obsolete. newspapers. “My mother is grateful even for “In the beginning, my mother this. Rosary in hand, she blesses was determined to send me to a her daughter-in-law with the words, school for gifted children. But later ‘Thank you for tolerating my son!’” she would pray, ‘Please lord, let him pass his diploma and I won’t ask for anything else!’ I finally received my diploma in 1987, without failing any exams, only to be told: ‘A diploma? Scratch a dog and he will shed two of them!’ “Then my mother began talk- ing about university. At first, she wouldn’t hear of anything less prestigious than medicine or elec- tronics. But gradually she took pity on me and settled for art. I took the entrance exam thirteen times before finally getting into the Open University in 1993. When my name was published in the list of success- ful university entrants, my mother Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 145 Beirut Caoutchouc

Marwan Rechmaoui

Marwan Rechmaoui was born in Lebanon in 1964 and studied fine art in the United States before returning to Beirut, where he now lives and works. As an artist, Rechmaoui has participated in a number of exhibitions and projects, including Contemporary Arab Representations and the 1998 Cairo Biennial. He has also shown his work throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Australia, in exhibition venues and public spaces.

Modern Lebanon is a small republic, composed of two rugged mountain ranges that run parallel to the Mediterranean coastline. The western range slopes toward the sea, at times in sharp declines, fracturing the coast into small and isolated fragments. The city of Beirut falls within the largest of these parts, splitting the otherwise thin coastal strip in two. Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 147

FILM

Chronicle of a Disappearance, Elia Suleiman Of Conversations, Elia Suleiman Chronicle of a Disappearance

Elia Suleiman

Elia Suleiman was born in Nazareth in 1960. After twelve years in New York, he moved to Jerusalem, where he initiated the department of film and media studies at Birzeit University. He has directed several short films and videos, including Introduction to the End of an Argument, Homage by Assassination, The Arab Dream, and Cyber Palestine. His first feature, Chronicle of a Disappearance, won the award for best first feature film at the 1996 Venice Film Festival. His second, Divine Intervention, won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2002. Suleiman is a recipient of the Rockefeller Award.

reminiscence and present. An investigation of the liminal 35mm film, 88 minutes, 1996 zone between narrative, history, and autobiography, Chronicle of Disappearance transgresses the boundaries of many genres. After living in New York City for many years, Elia Suleiman returns to Palestine to film the quotidian routine of Palestinians living in Israel and under the occupa- tion in the West Bank, after the launching of the peace process. Lucidly structured with a scath- ing critical lens, Suleiman weaves a chronicle made of vignettes, anecdotes, and conversations charged with humour. He casts himself as the principal protago- nist and moves from character to spectator, mediator to narrator. At the same time, the film shifts among documentary and fiction, Of Conversations

Of Beginnings is also a voyage; it is never pre- It is pointless to look for a start- determined. The script guides ing point. My films are never this voyage, and eventually I find driven to embody a central idea myself engaged in a poetic mon- or theme. Beginnings are born tage. Only then does a direction from myriad small moments, begin to emerge, and I discern recorded in notebooks, some- where I am going, how the wan- times as briefly as in a single line. der will end. The only constraint The moments can themselves be that binds me is the fact that a mere sound. feature films have to fit within an Notebooks accompany me approximate length of time, so wherever I go; at some point I know I cannot go on forever. they become a hefty pile, from Therein a script emerges. which I extract a structure. The To believe there is an over- collection of these moments all, all encompassing narrative does not mean that my films requires an act of faith; accidents are factually autobiographical. constitute narrative. In my case, If I am the witness of these narrative is in effect my “self” as moments and the author of I am the guide to the voyage in the notes, my “self” is present the process of crafting the film. only in so far as the trace of a From within the larger disorder, being in the world. The scribbles I manufacture an order by shift- transform into tableaux; they are ing elements and putting them worked and reworked, gradually together. There is an instance thickening with layers until they however, where if you throw have enough gravity to stand elements in a “space” without on their own, until the image gravity, they will fall into a certain holds together and can unravel order. I have faith in that order. into a scene. And scenes follow I think it was Antonioni who one another. This is the process once said that if there were no I can consciously describe. There constraints binding time spent in

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 151 an editing room, a lifetime could appear and that the shooters be spent on a single film. It is would be euphoric about the true in my case. Things need to fact that the figure has become be carefully gauged but accord- real, and that in the manner of a ing to what principle is hard parody they would shoot at the to determine, in other words, human being after their training whether what works for me will was completed. work for the spectator is not sci- Later still, the image took on ence. Rather, it’s a poetic sense another dimension. I began to of temporality, in addition to the add more layers, with humour magic of communication. Images, in the second degree, and or visual compositions, that are symbolism. In the making of not inscribed in temporality are that particular sequence I had also produced from within this yet a third motivation, entirely sense of poetics; their manu- unrelated the story of the film. I facture and gradual cumulative wanted to challenge the distinc- layering reaches an instance of tions that compartmentalise open-ended achievement, where the film production industry, its conclusion is in itself another between what auteur filmmakers departure. The departure is are expected to do, and what a new lease on the signifying “commercial” filmmakers are power of that image, it endows it expected to do, and the fact that with a life of its own, allows it to complicated actions sequences play by itself. The presence of the are prohibited to auteur filmmak- spectator is the predicate for the ers. The financial considerations film to be continually remade. are such that an action sequence The original impetus behind would consume 25 percent of drawing an image is not at all the total budget of an auteur intent, rather it is a fascination, film, and the production cannot a desire. Something in the real- handle the equation because ity I witness and live sparkles. it would never “earn its money The ninja sequence in Divine back”. It is a risk producers never Intervention, for instance, was want to take. With commercial born from a moment during blockbusters, it’s a simple for- the first intifada. I was driving on mula for entertainment, and the a highway in Tel Aviv and saw action sequence always appears a huge billboard advertising a in the trailer, “coming soon to a shooting range with the slogan theatre near you”. I wanted to “Come to Shoot” and an image make a film that had weight and of a Palestinian clad in a kaffiyeh. I wanted to transfer that weight I took a picture of that billboard, in the action sequence. That’s horrified that human figures why I always say I wanted to were used to represent targets. “Bressonize” The Matrix, make it The idea came to me later that work and make it entertain. a real human being would step out of the image as in a parody Of Absence and Presence — ie, that the real person should I don’t really cast myself, I get cast. There is a difference. In the choosing the contemplative initial drafts of the script I put allows for action to take place the initials E. S. In the notebooks outside the image, because the I use the first-person singular instant action is enacted is when all the time because I am not a a linear mode comes into play, character in my real life. As the and the film begins to dictate work evolves and a structure what must be. The contemplative begins to emerge, it is the script mode provides the possibility that either draws me in or not. for interrogation, for diffusing At least that has been my expe- the frame into several clusters rience so far, I cannot say for and several points. With Divine sure what the next film will do Intervention there was a summon or whether I will consciously cast for action because in the realm myself. It may happen because all of real life, when the overall the notes I have so far have me circumstances become intense, wandering in streets, hotels, and when daily life is interrupted, airports. Moreover, there are a when an outside force causes lot of things that I want to tell a rupture, no one can sustain and for which I want to use my a mode of contemplation. In body in front of the camera as a the realm of cinema, however, mediator. it is possible to circuit aggres- The representation of myself sion and create another realm, that appears on the screen is from dream and fantasy where certainly one manifestation of another sort of action happens, a my plural “selves”. It is entirely sort of counteraction. an extension and identification of who I am, projected on the Of Fiction and Fantasy screen. I am not a protagonist; I Doing what is not expected is have no psychology. I am trans- never intentional. Desire car- lucent, a present absence and ries within it the promise of the an absent presence, depending unexpected. Otherwise how else on where you stand. I am a see- would one secure the terrain for through body, an element in the love to not tire, expire, or lose frame, a reference to the direc- interest, except by constantly tor, a hint, a guide that does not attempting to renew oneself to instruct what should be seen, but surprise one’s lover, to escape what can be seen. the predicament of the predict- My cinema seems to remain able, the expected? In some contemplative, action remains respect, the spectator is a lover outside the image. There was an waiting to be seduced. And attempt in Divine Intervention for that may not seem always the my character, or my presence, rapport I seek to establish with to take action, but it stayed in the spectator. Rather, my driving the realm of stasis, because all motive is: How can I bring a sur- the acts the character performs prise, something new? And more unravelled in the realm of fan- specifically, how can I tell anew tasy. In retrospect, I surmise that the story of Palestine? Or how

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 153 can I cast it in a new frame? — in terms of time — the sub- This is what brings the sto- sequent sequences. The yellow ries of my film into a “here and slips stuck to the wall are the now”, a present tense. On the elements that mediate the blur- other hand, going against the ring. By the middle of the film, grain of the predictable, or the they suggest a flashback, shortly expected, allows, structurally, for thereafter, they read “Father dies” a profound questioning of reality. and “Father gets sick”, suggesting Are my films not a reality? The they are the script. Are they the fact that they have been made script? Are they the memory? makes them a reality. The general Is that father real? The seamless presumption claims that docu- to and fro between both realms mentary filmmakers represent is also obvious in the sequence reality, but is whatever remains with the explosion of the tank, outside their frame deemed a clearly a fantasy, which merges reality, or not reality? Are they without rupture or interrup- not denying it to their spectator? tion into the narrative, as the What is it in the choices they protagonist is next seen in the make that determines their film hospital. There are no “dreamy is not fiction? These questions blurry” effects to indicate the are among the reasons why I do end of the fantasy and return to not make documentary films. I reality. When imagined fantasy is could not stake the claim that made to merge with the invent- I am able to envision a reality, ed reality and to intermingle in because the process of envision- the same realm, the spectator is ing is the first step in a departure granted the freedom to decide from reality. I could write an for her/himself what is real and essay, but I could never make what is not. And that remains an a documentary film, because open question that cannot be ultimately the composition, answered. montage, and manufacture of a film are potentialities of a reality, Of Silence perceived by the filmmaker, that If language is not spoken by attempt to capture that reality. characters, it does not mean One could also ask the ques- there is no dialogue in the films. tion: What is fantasy? In real life, There is, in fact, a lot of dialogue; when one is driving and dream- movement speaks with sound ing, or thinking about things and movement speaks with that need to be done, is not images. This movement that the totality of the experience a enters and exits, all of that I reality? Is the act of dreaming or consider dialogue. There are two thinking not integral to the reality reasons for “silence” in my cin- of the experience? These distinc- ema. The first has to do with my tions are purposefully blurred own biography as a filmmaker in in my films. In Divine Intervention, that I never really studied cinema. the sequence of Nazareth is I did not come to the métier consciously structured to parallel with a conventional academic training. It occurs to me some- being said, one is told what is times that because of that, and being told, asked only to accept as I have only just started mak- what is being told. An elitist pos- ing films, my approach has been ture. Not only has the spectator like the pioneers of filmmaking, paid the price of a ticket, they namely, a minimalist approach are also forced to hear what is where I try to say things using being said rather than engage in images, as with silent films. a coproduction, a collaborative I am also fascinated by how participation, an experience of silence can speak, or leave space sharing — and of dreaming. to be filled, blank strophes to be spelled out, defined and rede- Of Love, War, Humour, and Irony fined. Dialogues underscore the Love and war, the most intense linear construction of a frame and charged contradictions. Love and take attention away from is poetic, undefined. Love can- contemplation and meditation not be assigned an identity card. on an image. Especially when Love cannot be controlled. Like dealing with the layered compo- poetry, it leaks, it has no material sition of a tableau, a profound, form with defined outlines and undivided concentration allows edges. Love threatens regimes for multiple readings. It is not a of control, soldiers, people question of strategy; it is more a who build checkpoints. Love sensibility, especially, for instance, frightens because it cannot be when the sequence depicts a confined, locked in a ghetto. In moment close to death, the Divine Intervention, I specifically image has more force without cast this intense contrast, two dialogue. Silence is more respect- people who love each other at ful of death. In silence, death a checkpoint. There emerges seems less frightening, it indicates the power for transgression, the an acceptance. potentiality and possibility to In Hollywood films, charac- actually allow a crossing. That’s ters babble on endlessly, to the exactly what happens in the point where dialogue, mostly film. The two characters may meaningless, produces a pol- not be physically able to do it lution of language and creates at every instance, but they have enough noise to confuse the the force to dream it as a pos- possibility for contemplation, or sibility, empowered by love. Love coming to terms with change. I is a poetic realm that cannot be usually become confused when determined or located. A human a film has non-stop dialogue being’s bones can be broken, his — preaching — tirelessly point- body can be thrown in a cell, but ing to a linear construction. It his heart can never be captured is profoundly a political choice, entirely. because the spectator is not I don’t know if the under- allowed to stake their claim on pinning of humour is invariably the image they see. The specta- despair. I can say that irony and tor is bombarded with what is humour are too often found in

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 155 the homeland of tragedy and come to terms with itself. The despair. Humour has the abil- Santa Claus from America and ity to unburden — as in the Western countries that appears “unbearable lightness of being” — with so much “happiness” and a heavy load weighing on certain “gifts” for children is particularly circumstances in life, endured or enraging. I just wanted to stab witnessed. the guy and chase him out of But this is not the exclusive Nazareth. I chose that vulgar function of humour, nor are image, using specifically a kitchen such circumstances its exclusive knife to make it funnier. As you residence. Humour comes in notice I did not kill him, and he genres, but I am not vested escapes — just in case I would in categorising them. It comes be prosecuted for murder, I in colours as well, black. The thought. fiercest humour is born in ghet- tos. Be they urban ghettos or Of Chronicling concentration camps, they are Most titles hold a note of fundamentally enclosures, where humour in the second degree. humour brings a cathartic relief With Divine Intervention there is from stasis. Barriers, barbed wire, also poetic license, because the whether real or illusory, are bro- film is not about anything holy, ken with humour; self-mockery but something I consider close allows a space for the fantasy to being holy, namely, imagina- of transgression to be dreamed. tion. The idea being that in the When one is in stasis, when one most cloistered of all spaces in feels it is impossible to break the world, imagination is free- the barbed wire, one can sit and dom, hope, and the potentiality laugh at it. Laughing at it might of something happening. The just break it. prisoner imagines his freedom; I have had a deep yearning the person who cannot cross to stab Santa Claus for a long a checkpoint imagines he can. time. I hate Santa Claus, and I And that is the “divine interven- say it plainly. I hate Christmas. tion”. And if you consider the It depresses me. Nazareth, my film director in the film who has hometown, has a syrupy sweet lost his father and his lover has biblical and holy aura that I hate, deserted him, he imagines her because in reality, it is a dump, a returning to him, victoriously, a ghetto, a provisional city, plagued heroine. She is his imagined femi- with unemployment, frustration nine, aesthetic, violent otherness. to unimaginable extent. Children That is exactly his own “divine are not naïve, and Santa Claus intervention”. These are two comes back year after year, and scales to the title, there are most it’s so nauseating. The candy probably a few more. he brings is awful, cheap, and Chronicle of Love and Pain miserable. He is in fact an image is the second title. I added it manufactured and reproduced because I was not content with from a world that has not just one title on its own, and that second title has its own presumption being that if a film story. My first feature, Chronicle is about Palestine then, de facto, of a Disappearance, was also it will be political. I am a film- a document, a chronicle, and maker because I am politicised, this second feature is in some and Palestine is not the exclusive ways its sequel. The first was residence of the political. And about a specific time bracket, politics in Palestine are not about the “silence before the storm”, how cinema is manufactured, and the second is about another, nothing in the technique is itself “all things broken loose”. The political. It’s the construction of chronicle continues, the tableau the image. It’s not in the camera, is a chronicle. I enjoy the tension it’s everywhere else. between the notion of “divine intervention” and the notion Of Lineage and Authenticity of “chronicle”, because conven- I do not feel a particular filiation tionally one is not supposed to with Arab cinema, it has not be able to chronicle a divine influenced my approach to film- intervention, or chronicle imagi- making, and this is not said in jest nation. The film attests to the with provocation. Rather I have opposite, that imagination can been influenced by Asian cinema, be chronicled. The second title particularly cinema from Japan complements the first; it grounds and Taiwan. I absorbed it like a it; it chronicles it. sponge, ironically because it felt so Arab. The first time I watched Of the Political a film by Hou Hsiao-Hsein I If cinema is not political, that remember being amazed by how means life is not political, and Palestinian the film’s characters whatever we do to improve it, seemed to be. the hope we have in making it Take Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo more bearable, is not political. Story, for example, or his other Politics and cinema, political cin- films, men and women seem to ema and cinéma politique, are all be gazing at scapes, alienated one and the same. They are as by the sight of modernity. Their intimately knit as are form and calm, contemplative passivity, content. Form and content are faint smile, these were all things politics and cinema. The way we I watched my uncle do sitting in wake up, talk and walk, eat and his garden. It just seemed very exercise, all that constitutes our familiar to me. I saw reflections everyday is political. The way we of myself in the visual sensibility love is political. of frames, the body language and When people ask if a film is mannerisms of protagonists. political, they don’t realise that Just recently someone the film embodies the politi- observed there was something cal. I am often asked if my next about the character who comes film — and it is always about the out of his house to throw next film — will be political, or away a bag of garbage in Divine if it will be about Palestine, the Intervention, something about the

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 157 way he walks, that is reminiscent of the way characters in Tsai Ming Lian’s films walk. I have seen these films only a couple of years ago. I could not have been inspired by Tsai, but it is uncannily true. The manner in which the actor drags himself to perform the act is exactly the manner in which I had asked him to drag himself. Perhaps I am in the same realm of poetics as these film- makers. I can consciously claim to have been influenced by liter- ature, more Western than Arab. I can think of one or two Arab authors that I have absorbed completely, and there was noth- ing specific to their “Arabness” that attracted me to them. I can name one, Adonis, a Syrian poet whose critical purview fascinated me from the second I started reading him. The attraction was precisely that he was not “authentic”, in the negative sense of the term. Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 159 video

This Day, Akram Zaatari Here and Perhaps Elsewhere, Lamia Joreige Mounzer, Samar Kanafani Chic Point, Sharif Waked Letters to Francine, Fouad Elkoury The Lost Film, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige Untitled for Several Reasons, Roy Samaha Paradox: A Story About Phobia, Rita Ibrahim Mon Corps Vivant, Mon Corps Mort, Ghassan Salhab Saving Face, Jalal Toufic Pilot for an Egyptian Air Hostess Soap Opera, Sherif El Azma This Day

Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari was born in Saida in 1966. An artist and curator who lives and works in Beirut, he has made more than 30 videos, including In This House, How I Love You, Her + Him Van Leo, Crazy for You, and All is Well on the Border. A cofounder of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, Zaatari has produced a number of exhibitions and publications, includ- ing Hashem El Madani: Studio Practices, cocurated with Lisa le Feuvre, Mapping Sitting, in collaboration with Walid Raad, and The Vehicle.

The outcome of a three-year long “There’s a camel in the picture “Grandpa’s [J. Jabbur’s] rela- research on the circulation of images in and there’s a broken down tionship with the camel, Syria, the the Middle East, This Day is at once an extroverted voyage in geography and jeep, white? I mean beige? Light desert, and everything comes an introverted voyage in the recording coloured jeep. And the jeep is from something personal. It of everyday. It uses video and photog- broken down, clearly broken comes from a very happy child- raphy to communicate the states of mobility and closure in the contempo- down because it’s being looked hood or one that anyway… rary divided geography of the region. into. So the picture is a perfect he talked about his childhood It starts in the desert, where presum- picture of the East meeting the devoid of any negative content ably Arab civilisation(s) originate, and unfolds into a reconstruction of desert West because the Western to it. So he has this relation to landscapes. This Day is conceived as a jeep breaks down in the desert the place he comes from. He laboratory for the study and produc- and taking photographs of the had also affection for it, then an tion of images. desert and of the camels is look- intellectual interest. I think these ing at an Eastern object with a two overlap, even aesthetically, Desert Panorama Western optic — a camera. if you live in al-Qaryatayn, you Akram Zaatari, 2002 Based on Manoug and Jibrail Jabbur’s develop an aesthetic sense for photographs of the Syrian Desert in the desert”. —Norma Jabbur the 1950s AIF/Norma Jabbur Left Photographs by Manoug and J. Jabbur in the 1950s in Al-Qaryatayn, Syria

Top to bottom Women with jars From right: Jana, Kawthar, Aafifeh, and Najibeh From right: Jana, Kawthar, Aafifeh, Najibeh, and Hoda

AIF/Norma Jabbur

“The atmosphere of early “Either clay jars or tin over morning in a rural place; it is their heads, carrying water pre- suggestive and it’s pleasant. It’s sumably. They are dressed in long a picture, again of less vaguely typical dresses, with headdress as defined women, but it’s the same well. Their hair is covered. Their ones, carrying… You could see shadows are perfect. And it is one tin, and you can see one jug, early morning. Though perfectly and there’s a third figure that you symmetrical in the middle of the can barely see. It’s taken under- photograph, because there is not neath trees so the effect of leaves a central figure, the photograph showing through is very intense is not monotonous. and the lighting…rather than “And she is carrying a tin jar the four figures, being very well but she’s unable to carry it on lit with sharp shadows; they are her head she has it posed on already in the shadow of the tree. the shoulder with her two arms; And the light streams in long one arm curling around her to lateral streams across the picture. her right, and the other one And…again the good thing about across her shoulders. Therefore, the photograph is that the eye and I think her head is slightly first seems to narrow in, at a tilted. She looks added on to the point about one third over, but photo.” —Norma Jabbur then it looks out again.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 163 Opposite page Perfect Timing “Camels. The second thing he “Two of my three favourite Akram Zaatari, 2003 photographed most. He likes paintings of his is a portrait of a them. They are a good symbol of moment in the life of a Bedouin Below This Day the environment in which they in the desert: a moment of Akram Zaatari, 2003 come. They represent a whole standing still, but a moment of video stills atmosphere and environment. his life. The other one is a small The desert meant a great deal painting only of the head of a to him. As the camel, the whole camel, and I call it portrait of a context of Arab civilisation, which camel. I think he probably liked is the desert, was what he stud- the creature. I think if you live ied, what he was interested in. with creatures you miss them He believes that Arabic culture afterwards. You do. stems from Bedouin life, and that “The photograph of my grand- they are linked to understand- mother with aunt Hoda, who is ing something that is vanishing; also Jibrail’s niece, wearing the the sources of this culture. You clothes of the Shaalan’s wife. have a living lens to look at what They look like they’re children the sources of such a culture trying on clothes. Because if is. And they are what remain of you don’t know them you have the Bedouins, and their way of no idea that that’s not what it life, their way of speaking, their is, that they are actually trying way of their morals are the basis somebody’s clothes and their of Arab civilisation, and there smiles are radiant”. is something whole and noble —Norma Jabbur to them. It was important to document them. He saw them as vanishing. “ Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 165 Opposite page Beirut 2003 Akram Zaatari, 2003

In 1970, Palestinian resistants grew their beards in mourning for Gamal Abdel Nasser. They went to get photographed in Studio Hashem El Madani in Saida. Photographs by Hashem El Madani Pro-Palestinian and Syrian militants Saida, Lebanon, 1970 Keep the weapons at hand, AIF Ready, ready If the whole world goes to sleep I wake up, With my weapon at hand My weapon at hand Ready day and night Calling: Rebels! Our enemy is perfidious Keep the weapons at hand Ready

—“Khalli e Selah Sahi”, lyrics written by Ahmad Shafik Kamel, music com- In 1982, while watching an air posed by Kamal al-Tawil battle over south Lebanon, I saw an Israeli plane launching a The dark days of fear Increased my faith missile onto a Syrian one, which Every time it rains bombs exploded immediately. That was Lebanon stays steadfast. the most spectacular scene I saw —Ronza in my life.

We are unafraid to die in Since then, I have tried to pho- The roaring sound of war We are unafraid to die in tograph attacking planes when The roaring sound of war possible, and to audio-record Unafraid, unafraid sounds that relate to war and If after our deaths Unafraid, unafraid its news. If after our deaths Someone will hold the arms Three Syrian MiG fighters entered Continue the struggle the sky over the Bekaa, where they Someone will hold the arms fought for five minutes against the Continue the struggle Israeli air forces over Dahr al-Baidar. And carry the revolution Two Syrian strikers crashed; the first To victory over Aammik in the Bekaa and If we find others, the second over Daraoun valley in Then we will never die Kesrouane. Two pilots parachuted to safety. A few moments ago, the —“Ma Hamma”, lyrics written by Israeli chief of staff, Rafael Etan, Che Guevara, music composed by confirmed the loss of the two Syrian Walid Gholmieh MiG 23s following an air battle with the attacking Israeli air force. Militant songs played frequently on the radio during the Israeli invasion Radio news report, Radio Monte of Lebanon in 1982. Carlo, 1981 Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 167

Saida, June 6,1982 Akram Zaatari, 2003

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 169 Opposite page June 6, 1982 October 24, 2000 Book of All Accounts 01 Akram Zaatari, 2003 Today air strikes continued heav- The helicopter felt like it was ily, starting at 6:15am on Darb in the room with me and I felt Below al-Sim. At noon, the Israelis like I was in a game of Russian Samples of subversive images distributed for mobilisation purposes advanced on the Lebanese bor- roulette. What is their next tar- by email during the Israeli invasion der. Air raids continued to target get? Will Dheisheh be on their of the West Bank, 2000-2002 the Palestinian presence in the list tonight? Will our house get South and Chouf areas, with one bombed? Should I get out of raid every five minutes. Nabatieh bed and try to hide somewhere? was bombed at a rate of fifteen Where? shells per minute. In the after- Type my fingers, type. Hurt noon, Saida was bombed from my heart, hurt. Throw up, my the sea, [and] so were all the stomach, throw up. Throb my coastal roads; air strikes hit Awaly, head, throb, and get used to Charhabil, and the Zahrani oil it. This is only the beginning of refinery. more days and more weeks to come. January 28, 1983 I cheat just now. I can’t stand This morning, we heard that the keeping my ears away from the French actor, Louis de Funès, had sound the helicopters and I get died. tired of running to the window whenever I hear a sound. So I February 18, 1983 put the headphones on and play We woke up today with cloudy some gay music really loud. Oh weather that soon transformed hello gay music! I’ve missed you. into a storm. Wind speeds You resemble a normality I no reached 90km/hour, which longer know. You resemble what kept the Lebanese delegation real life should be like but is no in Netanya. The glass broke in more. our classroom due to the wind. Count, Muna, always count. I watched my third film of the Count so you don’t forget how year, Serpico. to add the numbers. Soon you may not know what one plus June 18, 1983 one adds up to. Count and Today we bought a Mercedes throw up. Throw up and count. 250, 1977 model. Lose weight. Lose your mind too, if you dare. This is just the begin- ning. They haven’t killed enough of us already. Hello. Are you there? This is Palestine calling… P-A-L-E-S-T-I-N-E

Excerpt from the daily accounts of Mona Hamzeh Muhaissen, distrib- uted during the Israeli invasion of Translated from the personal note- the West Bank, 2000-2002, by Inad books of Akram Zaatari, 1982 and Theatre, Beit Jala, through the Free 1983 Palestine Network Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 171 Opposite page Book of All Accounts 02 Akram Zaatari, 2003 Left Desert Panorama 02 Akram Zaatari, 2003

On her twentieth birthday, A girl from the Land of Palestine Stood meditating her present In a land covered with mud Behind barbed wire, She has lived for days, years Between the dark past And a heart-buried nostalgia. Behind barbed wire, She has lived for days, years Between the dark past And a buried nostalgia. I challenge you, my future. I will return back home Wipe my mother’s tears Put a knife in her hand Bring life back to her brother Put a gun around his shoulder To grant him the shining hope My hope that one day we’ll return To the beloved land, my land To the dewy roses, to the flowers Force doesn’t terrorise me anymore For I have it in my own hands.

—“Fi Zikra Al Milad Al Ishrin”, lyrics written by Zayn Elabidin Fouad, music composed by Sheik Imam

Video, 86 minutes, 2003

Commissioned by Musée Nicéphore Niépce (France) Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 173 Here and Perhaps Elsewhere

Lamia Joreige

Born in 1972 in Beirut, Lamia Joreige studied painting and cinema at the Rhode Island School of Design. In addition to the video installations Objects of War, Objects of War 2, Untitled 1997-2003, Replay, and The Displacement, she made the short fiction video Replay (bis) and Houna Wa Roubbama Hounak (Here and Perhaps Elsewhere), a feature documen- tary on the subject of the disappeared during the Lebanese war. She also wrote a short story on the same subject, Ici et peut-être ailleurs, published in 2003. Her most recent publication is Time and the Other.

“My grandfather. Not here. In Karantina, he disappeared. Some say Sodeco passage Photo: as-Safir he was killed. Some say he was left for dead. His name was Mustafa Ahmad Daou”. “If you want precise names, you should go directly to the source, to the militias. They each have lists. But unfortunately, three-quarters of those kidnapped…no one ever admitted having them. So as not to admit their crime, they committed an even bigger one. They liqui- dated them, killed them”. “His name was Mustafa Daou. He took down the mill wall, and helped about 70 percent of the Arabs from Maslakh to escape. But finally, they caught him. His mother was on his shoulders. He was carrying his mother on his shoulders. They made him put down his mother. They let his wife, the children, and his mother go. And they took him”. “Here, in this neighbourhood, I don’t know of anyone who was Ring checkpoint Photo: as-Safir kidnapped.” “Would you know in other places?” “In other places, I know… Yes. But here, I don’t know of anyone”. “Where, for example?” “I know in Dora, for instance. I know in the mountains. I know my son, killed during the troubles… They slaughtered my son. These things I know. He was at my sister’s. They slaughtered him. They drew him out and slaughtered him”. “Who? Why?” “I don’t know. I don’t know. We smuggled him out of here, from Achrafieh. We sent him up to Beit Mellet in Akkar. And they killed him up there. Because he was from a different sect. That’s the whole story”. “How old was he?” “Fifteen years old”.

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 175 “I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I forget a lot”. “How could there be no kidnappings? There were so many. Here in Achrafieh so much happened…so much…so much. But as to remem- ber who kidnapped who!”

“I have a brother who was kidnapped. He was about 23 years old”. “He was a civilian?” “Yes, a civilian… Look, there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t involved in a militia. But he was a civilian, not a soldier or such”. “You and your family still have hope?” “Of course we have hope. No one ever gives up. Look at Imam Moussa Sadr, how long has he been missing? People still have hope. Who ever gives up? Our hope is with God, not with the kidnappers. What God wants will happen”. “There are many stories, but I can’t tell you here”. “You’re scared of them being recorded?” “No. I’m not scared of them being recorded. But there’s no reason to record them, because they may be true or they may not. You see? Because they won’t give you the answer you’re looking for”.

“He was kidnapped during the troubles, during the Israeli attack. His family name is…his father’s name is Abbas. His house is over there, at the bridge. One of my brothers went missing as well. It was during the days of the resistance. He was in the resistance”. “What’s this about?” “She’s asking if you have anyone who went missing”. “No…no”. “I told her I lost my brother”. “What channel are you filming this for? Television? Television?” “No, it’s an independent film”. “Ah. Okay. When are you going to broadcast it? It's not going to be broadcast on TV? Ah. Okay”.

Video, 54 minutes, 2003

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 177 Mounzer

Samar Kanafani

Samar Kanafani was born in Lebanon in 1976 and studied sociology and anthropology at the American University of Beirut, graduating in 1998. She worked for three years as a reporter for The Daily Star before returning to AUB to pursue a master’s degree in anthropology. She has since been involved in a number of social and developmental research projects. Her first video work was entitled Street-Play.

Seen through a webcam, a man linity (both Palestinian and Israeli) from occupied Palestine, a casu- are shaped and renegotiated. alty of Israeli attacks, reveals his In hegemonic terms, war is an scars and recounts the episodes ideal site for the making of men: that caused them. Emerging from death-threatening Mounzer is a fictitious perils, they wear their scars like interview with a constructed medals of honour and tuck their character dealing with issues pain under their skin. inspired by real conversations Some of the central issues with former Palestinian combat- that are tackled in this work ants. In this work, the simulation are: What happens to the men of a webcam image is used as a who do not emerge as victors means to generate a discourse and who do not manage to on the relationship between the infiltrate the vast body of images damaged male body and male of “manly man” or “war heroes”? subjectivity. The aim is to critique How do we create redeeming hegemonic notions of masculinity, images about the physical and whereby dominant discourses emotional defeats of these men? associate or equate physical What kind of masculinity is con- and/or emotional injury with structed in the process of such veritable cultural emasculation. image making? Masculinity here is taken to imply the constellation of meanings Video, 13 minutes, 2003 that a given culture attributes to biological males, which in turn shapes their experiences and self-presentations as men. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has inspired the production of an abundance of images. It is also the site where notions of mascu- Chic Point

Sharif Waked

Born in Nazareth in 1964, Sharif Waked is an artist and designer who studied philosophy and fine art at Haifa University. He has participated in the Venice Biennial, Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, “Construction in Process” in Lodz, Poland, and the Art Focus 3 International Biennial of Contemporary Art in West Jerusalem. His mixed-media installations include This Is How It Was, This Is How It Happened (1999) and Jericho First (2001).

Chic Point is a seven-minute another lifts his shirt, robe, or film that ponders, imagines, and jacket. Some kneel topless, oth- interrogates “fashion for Israeli ers naked, with guns poised at checkpoints”. Set to the back- their skin. Men in Jenin, Ramallah, drop of a heavy rhythmic beat, Bethlehem, Kalandiya, Jerusalem, men model one design after Hebron, Nablus, and Gaza City another in an exploration of are shown wrangling with the the form and content of torso- Israeli state’s security apparatus. bearing clothing. Zippers, woven Chic Point brings the catwalk nets, hoods, and buttons provide and checkpoint together in a for the unifying style of exposed reflection on politics, power, flesh. Body parts — such as the aesthetics, the body, humilia- lower back, chest, abdomen — tion, surveillance, and nudity. peek through holes, gaps, and The world of high fashion is an splits that are sewn, torn, or built interlocutor for the stark reality into readymade silk and cotton of imposed closure. The body T-shirts, robes, and shirts. Raw of the Palestinian, understood materials and standard items of by the Israeli state as a danger- clothing are transformed into ous weapon, is brought to the pieces that follow normative viewers’ eyes in the flesh. Chic fashion trends while calling them Point reveals the loaded politics into question at the same time. of the gaze, documenting thou- As the sight and sound of sands of daily moments in which the catwalk presentation close, Palestinians are forced to denude the viewer is transported to the themselves in the face of inter- West Bank and Gaza. A series of rogations and humiliations while video stills, taken between 2000 trying to move through an intri- and 2003, display Palestinian men cate and constantly expanding as they approach profoundly network of Israeli checkpoints. violent but very mundane Israeli checkpoints. One man after Video, 7 minutes, 2003

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 179 Letters to Francine

Fouad Elkoury

Born in 1952 to Lebanese parents in Paris, Fouad Elkoury studied archi- tecture in London and then turned to photography, where among other projects, he captured the details of daily life in Lebanon during the civil war. Elkoury produced a number of landmark books, including Beyrouth aller-retour, Beirut City Centre, and Palestine, l’envers du miroir. In 2003, he returned to Beirut and now focuses his efforts on filmmaking.

my impressions, relating situa- tions I experienced during my stay, eventually revealing suffering and my inability to carry on. Then there is life in Paris. Capturing conversations among friends during my illness, the second framework consists of scenes shot from home (buildings seen through the window, a tree) and the hospital (the room at night, the ceiling of a corridor). “The two frameworks weave together and overlap. The scenes seem disconnected at first, the voices detached and superficial. Then images blend together and “As a photographer for the with the diagnosis: ‘We have the the voice-over runs parallel to Rapho agency, I went to Istanbul. results of your biopsy, the biopsy the conversations among friends, I knew nothing about Turkey. I is positive, this means that you fusing a story more telling than wanted to escape from Paris and have cancer’. Straight away, one the journey itself. its daily routine, learn another is thrust into the reality of severe “Letters to Francine ends with language, work, and discover a illness. Through the interrogations the enigmatic yet hopeful line: new world between West and and torments of sickness, one ‘Listen, you are going to recover East. The trip was set as a two- senses the patient is alone. and we’ll take care of the house year challenge. Unexpectedly, “There are two framing in Var; you’ll have a convales- it changed the course of my devices at work. There is the cence place. I want a red-stone life. This film is the story of that journey itself, the black-and- house’”. journey but also of an illness I white pictures I took in Turkey, was diagnosed with at the end and my voice-over, extracted Video, 43 minutes, 2002 of my trip. from emails I sent to a friend “Letters to Francine begins (Francine, hence the title), telling The Lost Film

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Both born in 1969 in Beirut, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are filmmakers, artists, and university teachers. Together, they have created installations and videos such as Wonder Beirut, Don’t Walk, and The Circle of Confusion. They have directed features such as Al-Beyt al-Zaher (Around the Pink House), shorts such as Ramad (Ashes), and documentaries such as Khiam and Al-Film al-Mafkoud (The Lost Film). Amongst their publications are Beyrouth: fictions urbaines, OK I’m Going to Show You My Work, and A State of Latency. They’ve just finished their second feature, A Perfect Day.

“It all began with an email, on the evocation, slow motion, black day marking the tenth anniver- pictures. sary of the reunification between “Neither an analysis of Yemen North and South Yemen, telling nor an accurate attempt for us that a copy of our first feature knowing and interpreting, The film has disappeared in Yemen, Lost Film is a wandering, a search on a bus going from Aden to for ourselves, a search for the Sana’a. way we, as filmmakers in the “The disappearance raised here and now, relate to our a question: Who in Yemen was history and to this part of the interested enough in our first world. It articulates the notion feature film to steal a copy of the anecdotal, in the etymo- weighing 35 kilograms? logical sense of the word, as ‘the “A year later, we decided to thing kept secret’. As Hannah go to Yemen to trace the lost Arendt describes them, anec- film. During our investigation, dotes are ‘moments of truth… we followed and recorded the moments [that] arise unexpect- trail of the film — the cinemas edly like oases in the desert’”. where it had been shown, the film archive where it had been Video, 42 minutes, 2003 deposited, the bus route on which it had travelled from Aden to Sana’a. “After that trip, we were unable to return to Yemen again. We continued the search, basing our work on location scouting and the few images we collected. With these documents, we tried to palliate for absences and the lack of images, we resorted to

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 181 Untitled for Several Reasons

Roy Samaha

Born in Beirut in 1978, Roy Samaha received his bachelor's degree in fine art from the University of the Holy Spirit in Kaslik. He is currently working on his master’s degree in film studies, specialising in video art. The video works he has made over the past three years include Super Attractive Black Device, Apartment Stories, Motion at Dawn, and Pharmakon.

Serge Daney said: “It is not because the remote-control pad generalised zapping that it invented it”. In this flux, the attempt was to reinvent the use of zapping for it to be an aesthetic medium and not only another control tool. That is when and how one learns to insert the intention between a news broadcast and a porno- graphic film.

Video, 11 minutes, 2003 Paradox: A Story about Phobia

Rita Ibrahim

With a background in theatre and short film, Rita Ibrahim studied directing and acting at the Institute of Fine Art at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. After graduating in 2002, she trained and worked for two television stations: Future Television and Zen TV. Ibrahim is cur- rently writing and directing short films.

Though she decided to live alone, the cocoon she created could not protect her solitude. The shadow of a male was invading her small universe. Was he a creation of her phobias? Or was he the product of the weight of her solitude? Did he want to increase her fears? Disturb her calmness? Or was he just offer- ing his companionship? Duality or duel?

Video, 21 minutes, 2002

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 183 Mon Corps Vivant, Mon Corps Mort

Ghassan Salhab

Ghassan Salhab was born in Dakar in 1958. He moved from Senegal to Lebanon in 1970, and then to France in 1975. He currently lives in Beirut. Salhab has directed two feature films, Beyrouth fantôme and Terra Incognita, as well as numerous videos, including La rose de personne, De la seduction (with Nisrin Khodr), Baalbeck (with Mohamed Soueid and Akram Zaatari), and Narcisse perdu. He is finishing his third feature film.

Body: The main part of a plant of animal body distinguished from limbs and head; the main, central, or principal part; the nave of a church; the bed or box of a vehicle on or in which the load is placed; the organised physical substance of an animal or plant either living or dead; a corpse; a human being; a person; a body of water, celestial body, body of evidence; legislative body; text; force; fullness of flavour; reso- nance of musical tone.

Video, 15 minutes, 2003 Saving Face

Jalal Toufic

Jalal Toufic is the author of Distracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003), (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), Over-Sensitivity (1996), Forthcoming (2000), Undying Love, or Love Dies (2002), Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell You (2005), and ‘Âshûrâ’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins (2005). His videos and mixed-media works have been presented internationally, in such venues as Artists Space in New York, Witte de With in Rotterdam, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. He has taught in Amsterdam, California, and Lebanon (www.jalaltoufic.com).

Were all the candidates’ faces posted on the walls of Lebanon during the parliamentary cam- paign of 2000 waiting for the results of the elections? No. As faces, they were waiting to be saved. Far better than any surgi- cal face-lift or digital retouching, it was the accretions of posters and photographs over each other that produced the most effective face-lift, and that proved a successful face-saver for all concerned. We have in these resultant recombinant posters one of the sites where Lebanese culture in specific, and Arabic culture in general, mired in an organic view of the body, in an organic body, exposes itself to inorganic bodies.

Video, 8 minutes, 2003

Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 185 Pilot for an Egyptian Air Hostess Soap Opera

Sherif El Azma

Sherif El Azma graduated from the United Kingdom’s Surrey Institute of Art and Design in 1997. In the same year, he made the short film Satellite City. Since then, Azma has made a number of videos, including Donia: Amar, Interview with a Housewife, Prayer to the Sound of Dogs, and Fish Soup.

Using the code of the soap opera, Pilot for an Egyptian Air Hostess Soap Opera is a drama that attempts to depict the lives of young Egyptian women within their modern work envi- ronments. The focus is on the process of initiation, the every- day life of a small group of young women working as airline atten- dants. Using true accounts and diaries from real-life attendants, the video merges the objective and subjective realms of young women in Egypt today, while it deconstructs the soap opera for- mat, blurring the lines between protagonists and antagonists. The video attempts to engage with the various connotations of “women’s liberation” with its con- tradictory implications in modern day Egypt.

Video, 58 minutes, 2003

Produced by the Young Arab Theatre Fund and Ashkal Alwan Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices 187 The Journal of Illustrated Niceties Author: Samer Abou Hawach

Translated from Arabic: Masha Refka Editor: Ghenwa Hayek Copy editor: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie Artwork and design: Maya Chami and Ali Cherri Publication director: Lina Saneh Produced by: The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan, in conjunction with the second edition of the Home Works Forum

Copyright © 2003 The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan

Globalization and the Manufacture of Transient Events Author: Bilal Khbeiz Translated from Arabic: Walid Sadek Editor: Ghenwa Hayek Copy editor: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie Artwork and design: Maya Chami and Ali Cherri Publication director: Lina Saneh Produced by: The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan, in conjunction with the second edition of the Home Works Forum

Copyright © 2003 The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan

The Eyeless Map Author: Tony Chakar

Editor: Ghenwa Hayek, Mona Abou Rayyan ,Warren Singh-Bartlett Copy editor: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie Artwork and design: Maya Chami and Ali Cherri Publication director: Lina Saneh Produced by: The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan, in conjunction with the second edition of the Home Works Forum

Copyright © 2003 The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan جورنال اللطائف ّالم�صورة ت�أليف: �سامر �أبو ّهوا�ش ترجمه عن العربية:ما�شا رفقة تدقيق: محمد حمدان ت�صميم وتنفيذ: مايا ال�شامي و علي �شري مدير المطبوعات: لينا �صانع النا�شر: الجمعية اللبنانية للفنون الت�شكيلية، �أ�شكال �ألوان، �ضمن �إطار منتدى »�أ�شغال داخلية 2« كافة الحقوق محفوظة 2003، الجمعية اللبنانية للفنون الت�شكيلية، �أ�شكال �ألوان

العولمة و�صناعة الأحداث الزائلة ت�أليف بالل خبيز ترجمه عن العربية:وليد �صادق تدقيق: محمد حمدان ت�صميم وتنفيذ: مايا ال�شامي و علي �شري مدير المطبوعات: لينا �صانع النا�شر: الجمعية اللبنانية للفنون الت�شكيلية، �أ�شكال �ألوان، �ضمن �إطار منتدى »�أ�شغال داخلية 2« كافة الحقوق محفوظة 2003، الجمعية اللبنانية للفنون الت�شكيلية، �أ�شكال �ألوان

الخريطة المتح�س�سة ت�أليف طوني �شكر ترجمه عن الإنكليزية: �سامر �أبو هوا�ش تحرير: بالل خبيز تدقيق: محمد حمدان ت�صميم وتنفيذ: مايا ال�شامي و علي �شري مدير المطبوعات: لينا �صانع النا�شر: الجمعية اللبنانية للفنون الت�شكيلية، �أ�شكال �ألوان، �ضمن �إطار منتدى »�أ�شغال داخلية 2« كافة الحقوق محفوظة 2003، الجمعية اللبنانية للفنون الت�شكيلية، �أ�شكال �ألوان