Aftercinema

jumana manna · la ribot · kamal aljafari

Beirut Art Center presents Aftercinema, an exhibition that revolves around utilizing film and cinematic images as raw material for exploring, reconstructing and sharing inaccessible histories. The title, Aftercinema, does not suggest a temporal succession to a moment in cinematic production in order to deem it past, but rather reflects a common preoccupation among the artists with what is at the back of the image, on its sides or in the margins. There, life takes a different course and shapes our perception in a way that does not show in the foreground.

Aftercinema offers its own interpretation of Jean Luc-Godard’s statement: “Cinema is not a reproduction of reality, it is the forgetfulness of reality. But if someone records this forgetfulness, remembering is then possible and perhaps it would allow us to achieve the real.” It does not looks at films with the intention of knowing how they were made, but in order to measure their potential effect on us and on our lives. In The Remembered Film, the artist Victor Burgin examined the kaleidoscope of film sequences that our memory carries across our perceptions and thoughts in the course of our daily life. The exhibition takes one step further, and looks at the way films could be a vehicle for making the real even more alive. The public will walk in a space that is neither a white cube, nor a black box, where cinema is present not as a fabricator of myths, but in the way it reveals reality. Cinema here is a means to rearrange memory: to share perceptions and reconstructions of life, to share oblivion and record it. While bringing together three extremely different artistic practices, this exhibition is the meeting point where the artists explore the way specific films reorganize the processes of remembrance and the effect it has on the real.

Jumana Manna develops three-dimensional and solid spatial “projections”, namely sculptures, inspired by one of her videos, Blessed Blessed Oblivion. Kamal Aljafari’s project consists of a photographic series, a film and a book, drawn from existing feature films, taking us back to the history of his hometown, Jaffa, and making an Album of the Palestinian Community. La Ribot makes social and choreographic commentary on certain feature films, by re-filming them using their secondary scenes in the background.

Aftercinema is with the support of Yola Noujaim and Anonymous.