Simon Berger is an artist who works with a hammer and glass. He has figured out a way to crack the glass so precisely that it creates an image of a face. It’s a delicate process that has taken him three years of trial and error to get right. Sometimes it takes him one try, but other times it can take him five. And an expensive series of mishaps could cost hundreds of Swiss francs. One wrong hit, and he’ll have to start all over again.
In Lebanon, a country where the LGBTQ community still faces extreme discrimination, a scene is emerging that celebrates the identity, flamboyance and passion of its queer community. It’s voguing, a dance style created in New York City in the 80s to create a safe space for LGBTQ people. We meet dancer Hoedy Saad in Beirut to discover how, in the face of adversity, he's building a vogue scene in the Middle East to fight for freedom. Graded with FilmConvert. 2 Credits Nougie Film DP/editor Michael McCormack
Lebanon is home to over 250,000 migrant domestic workers (MDWs), who come from African and Asian countries and work in private households. The vast majority of these workers are women. Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon are trapped in a web woven by the kafala system, an inherently abusive migration sponsorship system, which increases their risk of suffering labour exploitation, forced labour and trafficking and leaves them with little prospect of obtaining redress. All migrant domestic workers are excluded from the Lebanese Labour Law and are governed instead by the kafala system, which ties the legal residency of the worker to the contractual relationship with the employer. This video is part of a campaign that demands that Lebanon extend labour protections to migrant domestic workers.
Le Grand Théâtre des Mille et Une Nuits is a historical landmark in the center of Beirut. Built in the late 1920s, it played host to international performances, films and was an icon of contemporary Middle Eastern culture. After the 1975 civil war, the building suffered structural damage and was eventually boardd up and forgotten. There was no attempt to revive the theater until the people’s revolution of 2019, which led to its barriers finally being pulled down... Musician: Anthony Sahyoun Soprano: Monà Hallab Cinematographer/editor: Nader Bahsoun Set designer: Whard Sleiman Installation Designer: Aya Atoui
A series of striking film narratives from the streets of Lebanon mark almost a year to the Beirut port blasts. Rana Haddad of Beirut based studio 200 Grs puts our eye to The Human Lens at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021. One of the most intriguing installations in the Pause series is Piiiiissssst, which packs the struggle for survival and escape into a moving suitcase with protruding human limbs
Mona Hatoum's first solo exhibition in Finland opens on 7th of September 2016 in Kiasma. In this video, the artist talks about her work, Hot spot. The exhibition is organized by the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in collaboration with Kiasma and Tate Modern, London. The video is made in Centre Pompidou.
"Fragments" Part extracted or preserved, broken or detached , in this case decontextualized and modified for the adoption of new concepts. A language that Javier Martin has been researching and developing for more than a decade, an extension of his "blindness" concept where he explores through the appropriation of advertising images and icons, apparently perfect symbols of a standard of beauty in contemporary society, deconstructing these images to create a contrast between consumption and technology. In appropriation of fragments, Martin uses the space to create a dialogue between the individual fragments and their collective composition that forms the whole, transforming the gallery into a theater filled with fragments, representing the information overload of our time. A society created of fragments of information driven by advertising, technology and social media, questioning the veracity of what we recognize, through the use of appropriation, cutting, alteration and reflection, accentuating their emptiness; including the viewer in the scene and transforming them into a part of the fragments that invite self-reflection. This exhibition is composed of three different body of works, where we can find a journey that shows the interdisciplinarity of the artist. From the installation Alma, part of the permanent collection of the Seoul Museum, which consists of a cube covered with mirrors where the viewer is reflected through the appropriated images stamped on them and illuminated by neon, a material appropriated by Martin who considered it a form of public writing, unassociated with art, and traditionally associated with popular culture. He invites the viewer to step into a room where he has conceptually removed the walls, replacing them with unlimited light and space. Eliminating the barriers society imposes, which fill our minds with banal and insignificant thoughts, keeping us trapped and unable to realize the potential that exists beyond. In contraposition to the installation, the body of work “CUT” first presented by the artist in Shanghai in 2015, a thought-provoking series that challenges our preconceptions about the power of celebrity and the way we consume media. Creating iconic hand-cut photographs, technique inspired by The Chinese tradition of paper cutting, giving importance to the use of the negative space and the contraposition between wholeness and emptiness.
Vartan Avakian 2015 Video Courtesy of the artist Produced by The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts (Ashkal Alwan) He bought a video camera in 1983, and nothing has been the same since. “Films are reality”, he told me. Some years later he asked for Nicole Ballan’s leaked sextape.
The content of this film is based on testimonies from girls living in Lebanon, narrating their experiences with child marriage. The storyline is a collection of verbatim from interviews with Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian child brides under the age of 18. Despite their unique experiences, the film also sheds a light on the collective experiences they shared with violence. Illustration & Animation David Habchy, Hussein Nakhal, Roy El Khawand and Christina Skaf
Vimeo
One of the largest rooms of dOCUMENTA (13) is dedicated exclusively to the work of German artist Thomas Bayrle. Bayrle, born in 1937 in Berlin, has already participated in Documenta 3 in 1964 and in Documenta 6 in 1977 in Kassel (Germany). Nearly 50 years after his first participation Thomas Bayrle is now celebrating his impressive comeback to one of the most important art events of the world. At the center of his exhibition at Documenta are 8 kinetic works. These sculptures are engines that are cut open. If you ever wanted to know how the motor of a Porsche 911, Moto Guzzi bike or the radial engine of an airplane works: It can be seen here.