By Omar Kholeif
Joe Namy, Automobile (2013), performance documentation
Since it was founded in 2002, Homeworks has taken place every two or three years in Beirut. Organized by Christine Tohme, the powerhouse director behind the non-profit Ashkal Alwan, the event describes itself as ‘a forum on cultural practices’. This is not a biennial with an infinite number of collectors and curators rushing around with different coloured VIP badges, nor is it parcelled into different chunks – separate tours for press, cultural tourists, museum directors, and so on. In fact, for this first-time visitor, it seemed like there were no tickets at all: Homeworks 6 was free and open to anyone; the most reliable means of access was one’s enthusiasm to push through the crowds. Programmes were divided into different sections: projects, performance, performance-lectures (of which Lebanon is surely the spiritual home), plain old lectures, film and video screenings, dance, theatre, literature and, of course, an exhibition.
Entrance to Madina Theatre before Boris Charmatz’s performance Flipbook (2009)
Every time I have passed through Beirut I’ve been taunted with tales of Homeworks past. I was often told that it was the platform that helped artists reclaim the city’s public space after the end of the Civil War in 1990. It was also suggested that Homeworks was single-handedly responsible for bringing together a whole generation of Lebanese artists, and that it was Homeworks which laid the foundations for the independent scene in the city today, which includes the Beirut Art Center, 98weeks and the Metropolis Art Cinema.
Zeynep Öz, ‘Plastic Veins’, Metropolis Art Cinema
While some of this hype may well be myth, it’s difficult to deny the forum’s influence. Its first edition, 11 years ago now, explored the theme of dislocation. Taking place a year after 9/11, the event pioneered a new kind of interest not only in Lebanon as a cultural centre, but also in the wider Arab world as a meeting point for various cultural practitioners. Soon after, publications such as Parachute dedicated entire issues to Beirut, while Lebanese artists became familiar fixtures on the biennial circuit. Before long, we witnessed the birth of initiatives such as the first Art Dubai in 2007, the prominent rise of the Sharjah Biennial, the Marrakech Biennial founded in 2005, to name but a few examples. In the UK, Suzanne Cotter curated ‘Out of Beirut’ (2006) at Modern Art Oxford.
For Homeworks 6, the first edition since 2010, Tohme elected to shift the format from its traditional five-day duration to a sprawling two weeks. Some thought that this was an attempt to avoid the forum becoming colonized by globetrotting cultural tourists. Indeed, every day was packed with unique programming, which meant that only locals or the most dedicated of participants could attend anything close to all of the events. This year’s theme was announced only a few weeks before the opening. A tongue-in-cheek statement of ambiguous verbiage, which discussed verdicts, trials and annexes of history, formed the thematic text for the programme. In this statement, Tohme ends with an emphasis on the ‘tinkerings’ that occur in informal spaces such as rooftops, classrooms and hallways. This seemed most clearly manifested in a number of sporadic events that revealed the tensions between institutions, the city and its public.
This could be seen in the ‘X-Apartments’ series, a number of curated projects by participants of the Home Workspace programme – a recently established independent study programme based at Ashkal Alwan. Produced in partnership with students of Phil Collins at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, ‘X-Apartments’ – which was curated by Matthias Lilienthal – saw participants presenting projects in different apartments in the industrial Armenian-dominated suburb of Bourj Hammoud. Although the project was over by the time I arrived, some complained that the notion of taking art into poor neighbourhoods had the neoliberal whiff of European urban regeneration projects. Istanbul-based curator Zeynep Öz’s project ‘Plastic Veins’ explored a different set of tensions. This collection of talks and new commissions studied the motivations behind cultural heritage, using Turkey as a dominant case study. The significance of such a project in Lebanon, where cultural heritage is consistently being eroded in favour of new residential developments, couldn’t have felt more apt.
A reading by Rayanne Tabet, as part of ‘Our Lines Are Open’
Walking home after dinner one night, I stumbled across a shopfront in Mar Mikhael, where the 98weeks project space had organized a sub-forum called ‘Our Lines Are Open’. Developed in partnership with London-based artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan and curator Nora Razian, this series of talks and readings, which were broadcast as radio recordings, sought to explore the ‘politics and poetics of language’. It achieved this by presenting regular readings – from works of banned Arabic literature and autobiography, as well as the genre of Arab Science Fiction. Participants included artists and writers such as Rayanne Tabet, Tarek El-Ariss, Ahmed Naje, Yazzan L. Al Saadi, as well as Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.
The performance programme boasted several works, my personal highlight being Boris Charmatz’s Flipbook (2009), a 40-minute free interpretation from the photographs in the book Merce Cunningham, un demi-siecle de danse (1997). This meta-narrative manifests publically, as a woman stands on stage holding the original monograph that inspired the piece. She flips through every page, literally illustrating the transposition from page to stage. Formally, the six dancers’ movements were riveting – shifting from gruelling acts of repetition to loose and vulnerable association.
Installation view, curated by Tarek Abou El Fetouh
Officially, Homeworks 6 was host to only one curated group show, which was organized by Brussels-based curator Tarek Abou El Fetouh. The exhibition, which didn’t have a formal title, took as its starting point a desire to re-enact three significant exhibitions that took place at ‘transitional moments in history’. This exciting prospect saw the exhibition divided into three re-enactments: the first Arab Biennial in Baghdad in 1974; the first Biennial of the Mediterranean in Alexandria in 1955; and the exhibition ‘China/Avant-Garde’ in Beijing in 1989. Rather than attempting to mirror, transpose or re-create these shows, the curator sought to evoke the spirit of the three projects into three newly organized and simultaneously presented, interconnected exhibitions.
In this context, Cao Fei’s Shadow Life (2011) surprised with its reminiscent take on folklore and communist festivals. Pilar Albarracín’s Long Live Spain (2004) comically revealed the stereotypes of Spanish identity, and Walid Raad presented a new commission, Preface to the third edition and Preface to the fourth edition (2013) – continuations of ‘Scratching on Things I Could Disavow’ (2007–ongoing). In these iterations, museological objects (perhaps real, perhaps imagined) are presented as living components of a burgeoning economic and political boom in the regional art market of the wider Middle East.
Khalil Rabah
My personal highlight here was Singapore-based artist and performer Ho Tzu Nyen’s mesmerising single-channel film, Earth (2009). Here, 50 people can be found shifting between consciousness and unconsciousness in a world that seems to have been subsumed by an overwhelming catastrophe. This stunning tableau of filmed sets soon starts to effervesce with colour before dissipating into darkness. Gradually, we witness the artist re-assembling his subjects to resemble a collage of historic European paintings by the likes of Caravaggio and Girodet. Underscored by a soundtrack composed by Yasuhiro Morinaga produced out of a collage of different film soundtracks, this single-channel film leaves the viewer entranced to the end.
Tony Chakar, One Hundred Thousand Solitudes (2013)
Still, there were numerous experiences I would have relished that I had to forego. I heard good things about Ghalya Saadawi’s tour of Solidere – the eponymous real estate firm’s reconstruction of downtown Beirut. Equally, there were rave reviews of the brilliant architect and writer Tony Chakar’s One Hundred Thousand Solitudes, a performance that correlated images from the Arab uprisings of 2011 with the Occupy movement, linking them both together around notions of ‘messianic time’. I was also sad to have missed performances by Haig Aivazian and Marwa Arsanios, but such was the structure of this forum – it was filled with breathless moments, many of which will only exist in the imagination of its participants. As a visitor, I constantly found myself negotiating whether Homeworks was intended for me to experience, or whether I was intruding on something that should be preserved for the local community. Indeed, it was this sensibility that made the ensuing conversations some of the most intimate and gripping ones about art and culture that I may have ever had.