Immaterial collection ii, forum 2: Liminal Space

Thus ‘liminal’—though marking a threshold state—is not a boundary, or a limit; it is an in-between space or state of mind and body which, though characterized by ambiguity and indeterminacy, impacts upon the physical expression of emotion and affect.
Lalita Pandit Hogan (2012)

How do we experience traversing the liminal spaces in between? In the ambiguity between departure and destination how do we narrate the potential for serendipity, transgression and new orientations towards one’s surroundings? This second forum explores the borderless potential of the liminal, the embodied experience of non-space, and the figure of the traveler as narrative in both fictional and auto-ethnographic video works.

Part 1: Open Call 50m
Alican Durbaş – SOIL
Ieva Saudargaite Douaihi – Dedicated to you but you weren’t listening

Break

Part 2: Media Library 22m
Emre Huner – Boumont
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige – Rounds

Immaterial Collection II: Forum II brings together video works by the acclaimed artists in Beirut Art Center’s Media Library with new works selected from our open call to artists from the MENA region, creating forums for conversation between two unique collections of artworks.

Over 100 established and early career artists submitted work, inspiring connections with works in our Media Library. Selected videos from each will be screened in a series of four distinct forums to stimulate conversation and debate over drinks on the terrace afterwards. A fifth forum of video works, From Syria, considers some of the ways in which the continuing war is being discussed and represented through video.

This second installment of Immaterial Collection is curated by BAC’s visiting researcher Joy Stacey.

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Biographies and Synopsys, Part 1: Open Call

SOIL (2017) 0:17:20
Alican Durbaş

Soil narrates the journey of a young man carrying a handful of soil into the grave of a deceased soldier who happens to be burying his own dead body. With the form integrated into narrative, it is possible to watch every phase of his journey synchronically. Wherever he goes the smell of the soil remains the same.

Alican Durbaş was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1986. After graduating from Arts Management at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, he received his MA degree in Arts Management at the same department. Durbaş predominantly works on film and video, making short films which have screened in various film festivals. He has participated in many exhibitions in Turkey and abroad, and attended the Berlinale Talents (in Sarajevo Film Festival) in 2011. Durbaş has worked as an assistant director on feature films, and currently lives and works in Istanbul.

Dedicated to you but you weren’t listening (2017) 0:37:00
İeva Saudargaitė Douaihi

Dedicated to you but you weren’t listening is a film produced and edited during a road trip from Silute in Lithuania, the town where I was born (but had never returned to since), to the town of Bayreuth in Germany, a town that has a very similar spelling to the French word for Beirut, a city that I now call home. Together, the episodes form a sort of travel journal, exploring how the concepts of home and identity are projected onto landscapes that we think we relate to.

Ieva Saudargaitė Douaihi (b.1988, Lithuania) is a Lithuanian-Lebanese artist based in Beirut, who grew up between Lithuania, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. Ieva studied architecture at the Lebanese American University in Byblos and École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. Usually site-specific, her practice spans different media and addresses the spatial and political context by examining the subject’s physical and/or virtual materiality.

Biographies and Synopsys, Part 2: Media Library

Boumont (2006) 0:14:00
Emre Huner

Born in Istanbul at 1977, Emre Hüner is an artist producing drawing, video and spatial works following different techniques. He now lives and works in Amsterdam as resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten after being in Milan for eight years and three years in Istanbul. Central to his oeuvre are over technological, industrial progressions and the concept of society of risk in this respect and the themes such as the affinities of the modern man with architecture and nature. Huner creates a common language in his works through using an archive he formed out of various sources such as internet, found out pictures and books.

Barmeh (Rounds) (2001) 0:07:30
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Barmeh/Rounds is a video featuring Rabih Mroue, who appears as a strangely familiar driver, filmed steering through the streets of the city. Beirut is mentioned, evoked through the driver’s stories and through sound, but never seen. Invisible in overexposed whiteness, Beirut escapes definition. However, its presence is confirmed through the ongoing discourse. Like his driving, Mroue’s stories spin in a circle. He seems a ghost, inseparable from his car, haunting the streets of a city where a reconstruction project is in progress. Underlying these thoughts about the car and the road system is also a reflection on the modernisation project undertaken in that strange postwar period.

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige collaborate as filmmakers and artists, producing cinematic and visual artwork that intertwine. For the last 15 years, they have focused on the images, representations and history of their home country, Lebanon, and questioned the fabrication of imaginaries in the region and beyond. Together, they have directed documentaries such as Khiam 2000-2007(2008) and El Film el Mafkoud (The Lost Film) (2003) and feature films such as Al Bayt el Zaher (1999) and A Perfect Day (2005).

Their last feature film, Je Veux Voir (I Want to See), starring Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mroue, premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2008. The French critics Guild chose it as Best Film Singulier 2008. Their films have been multi awarded in international festivals and enjoyed releases in many countries.