Belonging On Stage: Theatre As A Practice Of Belonging For The Syrian Diaspora In Turkey, Asma Hedi Nairi

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This article is a preliminary research focusing on the role of theatre as a belonging practice for the Syrian diaspora in Turkey. Based on a qualitative and narrative research methodology, the work analyzes the experience of the Theatre Scene group and their performance of the play Outside the Flock. Building on the belonging conceptual framework presented by Yuval-Davis (2006), the work offers an overview of how theatre served as both a space and a practice of belonging for the Syrian diaspora. It contributes to the growing scholarship on diasporic arts, highlighting the specificity of the Syrian theatrical experience.

Résumé …

Entretien Avec Roger Assaf. Théâtre Et Espace Public : Entre Immersion Et Divertissement, Roger Assaf, Marianne Noujaim

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In this interview, Roger Assaf perceives the constraints of contemporary Lebanese and Arab theatre through the lens of his reflection on the relationship between History — with its dark periods and revolutions — and theatre’s history. Contingent on its historical context, theatre has always oscillated between entertainment and immersion. Assaf evokes his Al-ḥakawātī theatre experience as well as the earliest Arab theatre festivals, drawing a comparison between their sociopolitical dynamics and production modes, on the one hand, and those of contemporary Lebanese and Arab theatres, on the other. He believes that the memory of such theatrical experiences, albeit lacunary, stands …

La Mort Par Les Yeux, Omar Abi Azar

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Omar Abi Azar témoigne de la naissance et du cheminement de la compagnie de théâtre Zoukak. Il met en relation le parcours de ses membres et de ses créations avec les crises et impasses historiques du Liban, d’une part, et avec les conditions de production imposées par les fonds européens et la réception des pièces en Occident, d’autre part.

Le Pire ?, Chrystèle Khodr

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Chrystèle Khodr, actrice, autrice et metteuse en scène, témoigne de sa pratique du théâtre aujourd’hui au Liban, des moyens qu’elle met en place pour pérenniser son travail, et des effets de la production sur la forme et le fond de ses spectacles.

Faire D’Avignon « Une Sorte De Grenade, De Ville Dans Laquelle Toute La Méditerranée S’Est Synthétisée ». Retour Sur La Programmation Arabe Du Festival D’Avignon 2022, Pauline Donizeau

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Arab artists had an important place in the 2022 edition of the Festival d’Avignon in France. This edition was the last one directed by Olivier Py, whose mandate was marked by the regular programming of artists from the Maghreb, the Middle East, and the Near East. This article analyzes the different performances directed by Arab artists on the stages of Avignon in 2022, with a particular focus on issues of representation (especially female figures on stage) and production.

Résumé

L’édition 2022 du Festival d’Avignon a donné une place importante aux artistes arabes. Cette édition fut la dernière dirigée par Olivier …

Repenser Le Théâtre D’Objets : Témoignages, Réflexions Et Retours D’Atelier Au Théâtre Tournesol De Beyrouth, Yassaman Khajehi

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Les manifestations de 2019, dites la Révolution ou thawra, la pandémie liée au Covid, l’explosion du port de Beyrouth, la gravité de la crise économique, les élections législatives de mai 2022, les questions d’immigration et d’émigration trouvent leur place sur la scène contemporaine libanaise.
Cette présence très évidente de ces éléments confirme une fois encore la réciprocité entre théâtre et société : une synergie devenue de moins en moins perceptible sur la scène occidentale. La situation théâtrale et sociétale libanaise ouvre alors aux études théâtrales de nouvelles pistes de réflexion sur l’interaction entre politique, société et création scénique.
Cette …

The School Of The One: A Mystery On Canvas, Noah Salomon

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In late 20th century Sudan, a new school of visual art emerged that sought to bridge what it saw as a gulf between contemporary Islamic renewal and the arts. Lamenting that the latter had gone in the direction of secular life, while the former had taken on a deeply anti-aesthetic bent, the school looked to Sufism’s aesthetic archive to revitalize Islamic artistic practice for the 21st century. Calling itself “The School of the One” (Madrasat al-Wāhid), its artists sought to harness the power of beauty inherent in Islamic theological and ritual traditions while suturing it to new ends …

Imagining Lebanon With Islamic Art: The 1974 Exhibition At The Nicolas Sursock Museum, Sarah Sabban

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Focusing on the first exhibition of Islamic art in Lebanon, organized by the Nicolas Sursock Museum in 1974, this article shows how the construction and the operationalization of the concept of Islamic art overlapped with postcolonial endeavors to foster national identity. By closely examining the making of the art exhibition and tracing material histories intersecting in Beirut, it elicits constructions of the national, the secular, and the spiritual via the notion of art. It contributes to the growing scholarship on the historiography of Islamic art, regional museums, and nation-building in the second half of the 20th century.

Résumé

S'intéressant à …

"This Is Not An Exhibition. And This Is Not Beirut" A Free-Format Curatorial Platform Exploring The Space Of Beirut In The Aftermath Of The August 4 Explosion, Philippa Dahrouj

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This is not an exhibition. is a platform for experimentation in the public spaces of the city through timely interventions in the form of installations, performances, discussions, walks, etc. These interventions aim to question and contest established artistic and curatorial practices by transgressing the normalization of social, political, and urban dynamics in the spaces in which they take place. They invite the audience to participate in the production of the works.
The pilot version, This is not an exhibition. And this is not Beirut., engages with Beirut in the aftermath of the August 4 explosion through artistic interventions in …

"In This Place: Reels Of Beirut" Une Installation Filmique De Hady Zaccak, Entre Nostalgie Et Amertume, Yara Nashawaty

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“My Government Did This”: Exploring The Erasure Of The Beirut Port Wall, Lara Sabra

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This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to examine the affective and agentive power of graffiti in Beirut after the August 4 Beirut explosion, specifically the graffiti on the port wall: “My government did this.” The paper investigates the whitewashing of the port wall, the erasure of this phrase, and the subsequent policing that took place.
It studies how graffiti holds an emotional or affective grip on civilians and is intrinsically tied to the practice of agency. In short, the paper discusses how graffiti opens a space for the transgression of dominant or hegemonic systems of power.

Résumé

Cet article s’appuie …

"Hady Zaccak: 'In This Place: Reels Of Beirut'" La Scénographie Comme Chassé-Croisé Entre Plusieurs Espaces/Temps, Joanna Raad

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Ce compte-rendu tente d’inscrire l’installation de Hady Zaccak, In This Place: Reels of Beirut, dans un concept théâtral de « scénographie d’exposition ». L’article conjecture un dialogue entre l’espace-temps des films et celui de l’observateur/spectateur. Pourquoi la fiction peut-elle jouer le rôle d’archive ? Comment le passé dialogue-t-il avec le présent ? L’ancien Beyrouth, la « Suisse de l’Orient », est-il un mythe ou une réalité ? Autant de questions abordées dans un langage interdisciplinaire.

Theorizing The Spiritual-Secular Binary In Modern And Contemporary Art Of – And By Artists From – The Swana Region, Valerie Gonzalez

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The present article critically examines the spiritual–secular binary in modern and contemporary art from the SWANA region and by artists with heritage from that region who live or have lived elsewhere. Given this binary’s origin in the European Enlightenment’s view of religion, and its epistemic canonization through post-Enlightenment ideas on art and culture in the colonial era, this examination is carried out within the framework of current decolonizing art historical discourses and their postcolonial background.
The reflection begins with a key moment of global modernism, underpinned by the colonial diffusion of secularism. It then proceeds to explore the cultural shifts …

Introduction – Whither The Spiritual? Rethinking Secularism’S Legacy In Post-Ottoman Art, Hannah Feldman, Kirsten Scheid

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This dossier seeks to pinpoint hazards emerging on the globally redrawn map of art and culture. It was conceived to expose and navigate the mines laid when the ostensibly methodologically secular discourse of art history turns to art made outside Euro-American cultural centers – art often considered out of sync with Euro-American modernity.¹ As commonly approached, the pinnacle of that modernity corresponds roughly to what one of us has referred to as the “decades of decolonization,” in an effort to avoid reaffirming the Eurocentrism inherent in labeling the period as ‘post-war’...

Revolutionary Reenactment: Militant Futures Past In Rania And Raed Rafei’S “74 (The Reconstitution Of A Struggle)”, Judith Naeff

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This article analyses how innovative narrative techniques operate in the movie 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) by Rania and Raed Rafei (2012). The film is a reenactment of an historical event: the student occupation of the American University of Beirut one year before the start of the Lebanese civil war. The use of improvised reenactment, testimonials and the voiceover all strengthen the film’s approach to the event as an embodied transformative experience, even as it descends into its defeat. While a cynical spectator might argue that the focus on “revolutionary becoming” reduces collective action to individual experience, the article …

Le Cinéma Politique Et Engagé Turc, Mehmet Ozturk

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This article is about Turkish political cinema. The cinema, which began with the authorization of the state during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, did not have an important political role during the construction of the Kemalist Republic. In the 1950s, it entered its golden age in pro-American Turkey. At the end of the 1960s, especially in the lead years (1970), political cinema was used on several occasions as part of the ideology of the far right and the revolutionary left. After the violence of the military coup of 1980, it remained rather cynical and disengaged. Political interpretations represented the …

Introduction – Le Cinéma Militant Dans Le Monde Arabe (Des Années 1960 À Nos Jours), Joseph Korkmaz

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Le cinéma militant dans le monde arabe, des années soixante du siècle dernier à maintenant, est tributaire d’un contexte historique marqué par le conflit israélo-palestinien et, par induction, israélo-arabe. Ce contexte s’inscrit à son tour dans la Guerre froide et le bras de fer entre le bloc communiste, mené par l’URSS, et le bloc occidental, parrainé par les États-Unis...

Usages Du Ciné-Tract Dans Le Film « Demande À Ton Ombre », Camille Leprince

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Lamine Ammar-Khodja's first feature film, produced in 2012, Demande à ton ombre (Ask your shadow) is part of the so-called "creation" documentary. A diary and political chronicle, this film which runs from January to March 2011 plunges us into the news of the Arab uprisings seen from Algeria. While distinguishing itself in several respects from a militant cinema, Demande à ton ombre does not deny certain processes of the tradition of cine-tracts. In order to measure this distant, even distanced, proximity to the resources of militant and engaged cinema, it is proposed here to analyze their function and …

From Classroom To Gallery Floor: A Processual Exploration Of Rene Saheb’S (Meta)Physical Engagements With Clay, Kasper Tromp

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This article presents a case study detailing the creative process of Iranian artist Rene Saheb. It analyzes the various stages, developments, and challenges Saheb went through while she explored the medium of clay, which was new to her artistic repertoire. Rather than focusing on outward properties of ceramics such as style or technique, the artist’s inward experiences of her medium and creative process are foregrounded by means of interviews.
As Saheb frequently turns to Islamic mysticism and poetry as conceptual anchorage throughout her creative process, her engagements with the ceramic medium will be discussed in light of relevant Islamic discourses …

Liberating “Khatt” From Calligraphy: Samir Sayegh On Art, Religion And Spiritualit, Kristen Scheid, Hala Shoucair, Saleh Barakat

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The eminent Samir Sayegh has contributed substantially to Arab modernism as a critic, historian, and artist himself.¹ His writings in Arabic are well known, through numerous journal articles, interviews, and most notably his 1988 book, Islamic Art: A Speculative Reading of Its Philosophy and Aesthetic Particularities.²
Further, his thinking impacted scores of students and colleagues in architecture or graphic design from the American University of Beirut, where he lectured from 2003 to 2007.
However, his voice has not been heard loudly in English. This transcript amalgamates multiple sittings with Sayegh, between 2009 and 2022. He kindly allowed us to …

History Or Project? The Double Life Of Islamic Art Since The 1970s, Hamed Yousefi

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This article argues that since the 1970s a duality divides the concept of Islamic Art. On the one hand, we have Islamic Art as the subject matter of a modern mode of historical inquiry, invented and developed in the colonial period in Europe but then taken up by scholars from around the world, including Muslim academics. This is the Islamic Art of Islamic Art History as a field of secular scholarship.
But then, in the decolonization period, and more pronouncedly since the 1970s, we witness the birth of another concept of Islamic Art that is not focused on the past. …

The Nonidentical Identical; Or, Notes On Violence And Escape In Basel Abbas And Ruanne Abou-Rahme’S "Oh Shining Star Testify", Ruslana Lichtzier

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A review of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s installation Oh shining star testify at the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022), where the artists present Palestinian lives and deaths by disrupting the progressive chronologies of Palestine’s ongoing obliteration.
The essay considers the representation of racist epistemologies through recourse to the work of Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten, while also situating the installation within a lineage of cultural productions that respond to the histories of genocide.

"All Is Not Glitter" Review Of “Beirut And The Golden Sixties: A Manifesto Of Fragility” Berlin, Gropius-Bau, 25 March – 12 June 2022 Lyon, 14 September – 31 December 2022, Nadia Von Maltzahn

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The exhibition Beirut and the Golden Sixties: A Manifesto of Fragility highlights what the curators argue is the fragility of the narrative surrounding Beirut’s “Golden Age” – the period leading up to Lebanon’s civil war.
This review traces the genesis of the exhibition and presents its displays at Berlin’s Gropius Bau and the MAC Lyon. Several works are showcased to demonstrate how the curators constructed the exhibition’s five sections, which focus on place, body, form, politics, and the Civil War.
The review offers contextualization for an exhibition rich in diverse artworks and archival materials that contain a multitude of narratives.

Crossings Of Heritage, Memory And Archives: A History Of Moroccan Cinema In The Bouanani Archives, Sarah Dornhof

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This article interrogates archival forms and practices in relation to remembering the “lost archives” of Moroccan cinematographic history.
It presents the Bouanani Archives — a private, fragmented, and still largely uncatalogued collection located in the Bouanani family apartment in Rabat, comprising a variety of texts, visuals, and objects connected to Morocco’s cinematographic and cultural memory.
The archive is the personal legacy of filmmaker, writer, and artist Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011), his wife Naïma Saoudi (1947–2012), and their daughter Batoul Bouanani (1969-2003), all of whom worked for Moroccan cinema.
Today, it is preserved and cared for by his daughter Touda Bouanani and …

Towards A Decentered History Of Palestinian Revolutionary Cinema? Case Study Of The Film “Tall El Zaatar” In The Audiovisual Archives Of The Italian Communist Party, Hugo Darroman

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The film Tall El Zaatar (1977, Abu Ali, Pino, Chamoun, Palestine/Italy), a co-production between the Palestinian Cinema Institute and the Italian Communist Party’s (PCI) audiovisual company, was considered lost for three decades and finally rediscovered in 2011.
Beyond the dramatic stories surrounding this film, Tall El Zaatar reveals the importance of considering the transnational dimension of Palestinian militant cinema.
In this article about Tall El Zaatar, I approach the history of Palestinian revolutionary cinema through the traces left within the archives of an institution with which the Palestinian filmmakers collaborated.
On the basis of a set of interviews and …

Iraqi Cinema Beyond The Screen And The Archives Of Leisure, Pelle Valentin Olsen

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The emergence of new forms of leisure in Iraqi urban landscapes, such as cinemas, nightclubs, and theaters, unleashed debates about the dangers and potentials of leisure.
The result of this process is a vast, albeit scattered, archive of texts that deal with practices and institutions of leisure.
The archive of leisure, as it pertains to cinema, can be located across a variety of texts including memoirs, short stories, student essays, police records, official discourse, medical texts, and works by Iraqi historians.
Given the limited access to Iraqi film and cinema archives, the archive of leisure can offer an important addendum …

Ciné-Archivistes And The Metaleptic Archive Of Lebanese Cinema, Claire Launchbury, Marilyn Matar, Max Silverman

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The article considers three Lebanese films – Il était une fois, Beyrouth (1995) by Jocelyne Saab, the short Le Liban à travers le cinéma (2003) and the documentary Cinéma de guerre au Liban (2003), both by Hady Zaccak – to explore the archival impulse in their composition.
We suggest that this impulse takes two major forms: the use of a montage of sequences from Lebanese films, or films about Lebanon, and crossovers between narrative thresholds and between fact and fiction.
We draw on Gérard Genette’s version of metalepsis to analyze the nature of these crossovers, and on the notion of …

سيميولوجيا جمالية الفضاء في فيلم: "السنونو لا يموت في القدس" لرضا الباهي, Abdel Salam Shaaban

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In this study, we aim to conduct a perceptual experiment and a semiological reading of the aesthetics of space in the film El Sounounou La Yamoutou Fil Kods by Tunisian director Ridha Behi.
This film, produced in 1994, came as a response to the accusation that Tunisian cinema ignored the Palestinian cause. It also combines three genres of cinematic practice: fiction, documentary, and political.
The film tells the story of the search for a mother who has been lost since 1948. A daily newspaper publishes a recent photo of this mother. The director takes her story as a starting point …

Le Cinéma Maghrébin Entre Traçabilité Coloniale Et Déterminations Nationales, Malika Gueddim

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This article focuses on the beginnings of cinema in the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia), which suffered the same process of enculturation in favor of the culture of the French occupier.
From the end of the Second World War, the colonial authorities understood the importance of cinema, through fiction or newsreels, and the urgency of creating cinematographic centers: in Morocco in 1944, and in Tunisia in 1946.
Algeria, considered a French department rather than a protectorate, was provided with a cinematographic service by the Algerian governorate in 1947.
Then comes the period of independence, in which directors from these …

برهان علوية – اللقاء المتواصل, Haddy Zaccak

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With the passing of Borhane Alaouié, Lebanese cinema loses one of its most prominent directors and spiritual fathers.

ملخص

.مع رحيل برهان علوية، تخسر السينما اللبنانية أحد أبرز مخرجيها وآبائها الروحيين