“The question of a music/drawing duo has been persistent since the early stages of my artistic relation with Mazen Kerbaj, but how to frame it?
In 2008, Mazen came to me with a new system he had developed, that could allow him to perform in a live setting. It consists of drawing on a glass table, using a wide array of ink, water, solvents, brushes and various unidentified objects. With this setting, both sound and visual elements are improvised and exist only during the timeframe of the performance. Nothing is permanent or even fixed, the lines have their own life, they are constantly modifying. As I can stop the sound of my guitar by muting the strings with my hand, Mazen can erase his entire drawing with one move. The possibilities for interaction have increased considerably.
Wormholes is an attempt to alter a specific segment within time and space, hoping to open a corridor between two artistic disciplines, allowing them to give each other meaning. It is in many ways the outcome of over 12 years of artistic collaboration and understanding.”
Sharif Sehnaoui
Sharif Sehnaoui is a free improvisational guitarist from Beirut.
He moved back to Beirut after more than a decade in Paris, where he started his career as an improviser in 1999, playing at Instants Chavirés, and where he was a member of several orchestras. In Beirut, he has actively contributed to the emergence of an unprecedented experimental music scene. Along with Christine Sehnaoui and Mazen Kerbaj, he created the “Irtijal” festival in 2001, which is, at the moment, the only improvisational and new music festival in the Arab World. He also runs the Al Maslakh label, created by Kerbaj, and devoted to "publish the unpublishable" in the Lebanese musical scene. The main groups he has been in include the “A” Trio, Rouba3i and BAO. He has widely toured Europe and the USA and performed in numerous festivals worldwide.
Mazen Kerbaj was born in 1975. He lives and works in Beirut. His main activities are comics, paintings and music. He published 10 books and many short stories and drawings in anthologies, newspapers and magazines in Lebanon, Europe, and the USA, and exhibited his work both in solo and in collective exhibitions in Lebanon, France, England, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and the USA. Mazen Kerbaj is also one of the founders of the Lebanese free improvisation scene, both as a trumpet player and as an active member in the MILL association that organizes the annual Irtijal festival (www.irtijal.org) in Beirut since 2001. In 2005 he launches Al Maslakh, the first label for this music in the region (www.almaslakh.org). Between 2000 and 2009, Mazen Kerbaj played in solo and with various groups in the Middle East, all around Europe, and in the USA.
