Past Events

DECEMBER 2014 

 

Wednesday, December 10th, 7 - 10.30pm

Färgfabriken, independent cultural foundation based in Stockholm, in collaboration with Mansion, present an evening of screenings and discussion around the theme :
Patchwork of Urban Narratives: Re-visiting urban failures / Beirut, Mostar and Stockholm


Deconstructing the urban space through artistic Interpretation,apprehensionn and assimilation. Patchwork of Urban Narratives is an exploratory project that revolves around the city mental infrastructure, cities as culturally conditioned patchwork in which narratives, symbols, stereotypes and expectations are interwoven with the material infrastructure. This investigation takes place in three cities: Mostar, Beirut and Stockholm. Although they are cities with different experiences and conditions, they are all placeses that contain expectations for the future. But whose future, whose visions, whose memories will be transported into the future identities of these cities? In approaching this investigation, the Patchwork aims to give a voice to those who wish to reflect about their urban content in Mostar, Beirut and Stockholm.


*Screenings

Cities of Beirut Purgatory of anticipated ruins
A Tryptic made by Rania Rafei and Jinane Dagher about Beirut (50 min)
Becoming Beirut or the becoming of Beirut. A random citizen passes in a specific street in downtown at a specific time of the day, he looks up and waits for a sign, for a calling, for a visitation. A random jogger by the sea, looks west and wonders how far can he swim. The city mirrors endless cities, in the glasses of broken houses, in the puddles of water after the first rain, a random citizen walking steps on the city in the reflection. a friend asking her friend: to see Beirut better should we go up, up, up? or should we travel side, side, side? And while we seem to be waiting for the calling of the city in the holes of an old ruin, Beirut is becoming, in the space of a suspension and another. The asphalt sighs: many you are, mine you are, other you are. A purgatory, a ruin and a mirror is it possible to become a city?

Three cities
Video by Rania Rafei and Jinane Dagher showing Stockholm (20 min)
Lara from Beirut. Kristina from Stockholm. Ines from Mostar. Lara in Stockholm. Kristina in Beirut. Ines in Stockholm. But we cannot link cities. Unless we count our footsteps while walking from a city to another. In the mud. Across the water. In the ruins. In the metro. Unless we accumulate stories that becomes those footsteps.


A short video by Ali Beydoun about Beirut (15 min)
“if people stay like this, there will be no future”, a random and frequent statement that you hear while going through the streets of Beirut. Entering the city can be suffocating from the first moment, a lot of human-made layers, from buildings, noise, love, and disturbed souls. How to proceed in that unidentified urban metropoli? between its random towers and its shore.


* Performance by Ghassan Maasri, artist and Mansion founder
Performance All that Waste. An approach to storytelling where discarded materials, left behind, forgotten, recuperated and reclaimed, now produce an access point from where we can re-engage with their innate quality as a link to see the past in a different mode. The story to tell is that of Beirut at two pivotal moments in understanding the urban development of the city: Beirut, 1982 vs Beirut, 2008.
 
* Panel debate with
Daniel Urey (Färgfabriken
Arna Mackic (architect based in Amsterdam, part of the core design team of RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances]
Qaisar Mahmood (Cultural Heritage Strategies: how can the past inform the present/futur
Walid Sadek (artist, reflecting on sociality in a context of protracted civil war

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Thursday, December 11th, 7 - 11 pm


Urban Stories screenings and party 

To celebrate the final event of Pop-up Studio-X Beirut @ Mansion, we will be screening 3 short films : 

Memories of a Neighborhood by Karin al-Hakim                                                 
Under the Bridge by Nora Niasari                                                                        
Playgrounds by Zein el Cheikh

Followed by a q&a with
Amber Fares, filmmaker/Speed Girls,
Hani Asfour, Polypod partner,
Ghassan Maasri, Mansion founder.


and we'll continue with food and drinks in Mansion big hall & garden
 
 ___________
CONCERT
Saturday 6th December

As part of Beirut and Beyond music festival, Mansion would like to invite you to a concert by Daniele Camarda on Saturday 6th December at 7:30pm.

Daniele Camarda
Born in Sicily, Daniele Camarda relocated in the United States then travelled extensively playing with a variety of musicians from all around the world. Daniele blends the many traditions relating to string instruments with modern electronics, a natural attitude toward improvisation that led him to collaborations and work as a sideman in the fields of contemporary jazz, multimedia projects, studio musician for major labels in international projects and solo performer. Daniele performed with renowned musicians such as George Russell Orchestra, Dave Samuels, Lionel Loueke, Keith Carlock, Shin'ichi Isohata, Jojo Mayer, Bob Moses, John Abercrombie, among many others.


http://www.danielecamarda.info/

BBIMF is a music showcase festival based in Beirut. We invite musicians from various backgrounds to perform to a wide-ranging audience. For the full programme, check on : http://www.beirutandbeyond.net/
FILM SCREENING
Mansion is happy to announce a special screening of two films by

Ana Naomi de Sousa, filmmaker from London,

Thursday 4 December, 8pm.

 Ana will be present with us during the evening for those of you who would like to engage in conversations about the movies.

Santi Ciruegda : Guerilla Architect, 2014 (23 min)

Guerrilla Architect is a documentary following the charismatic self-build architect Santi Ciruegda as he works on three different projects across austerity-stricken Spain. With his architectural practice Recetas Urbanas, Cirugeda uses his professional credentials to test and exploit planning laws, gain access to land and get projects built for groups who could never normally afford an architect. We follow him as he takes on his biggest task yet, saving a huge abandoned cement factory, and negotiating with the authorities to let his National Architects’ Collective turn it into a vibrant cultural centre.


Eyal Weizman : The Architecture of Violence, 2014 (25 min)

« Architecture and the built environment is a kind of a slow violence. The occupation is an environment that was conceived to strangulate Palestinian communities, villages and towns, to create an environment that would be unliveable for the people there », says Israeli architect, Eyal Weizman. In the Architecture of Violence Weizman takes us on a journey across the settlements and roads of the West Bank and along the Separation Wall, a landscape where everything is designed to ensure the separation of two peoples, while simultaneously maintaining control and surveillance. From Nablus and Jenin, Weizman discusses the role of architecture in modern urban warfare and the tactics adopted by the Israeli army. But Weizman has found a way that architecture and architects could resist; his latest project, Forensic Architecture, is way of turning a building's military wounds into evidence to be used against the state for the investigation of war crimes, with the aid of innovative visual technologies. 



NOVEMBER 2014
FILM SCREENING


Pop-Up Studio X Beirut, in collaboration with Mansion,

presents the third of four film screenings

in the series entitled : URBAN STORIES: Individual Narratives from the City
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky


Thursday, 27 November 19:00 (7:00pm)

Immediately following the screening will be a discussion with q & a :
Halla Younes, Beirut based artist/architect
Ghassan Maasri, Mansion funder/animator
Liz Martin-Malikian, Pop-up Studio-X curator


Jennifer Baichwal’s film MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES involves the photographs and videos of photographer Edward Burtynsky’s trip through landscapes that have been altered by large-scale human activity, captured with Super-16mm film. While some would some call the work beautiful, his main goal was to challenge notions while raising questions about the interplay of environmental ethics and aesthetics. The footage was compiled from a trip to China where Burtynsky visited factories which Western society has come to rely on for most of its appliances, including a factory that produces most of the world’s supply of clothes irons and mobile phones, which is one kilometer in length and employs 23,000 workers. Unlike most documentaries, there is very little commentary, which allows viewers to take in the images and try to make sense of what they’re seeing, while at the same time the film “tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it”.

Winner of Sundance Film Festival, Human Rights Film Festival, Genie Award and Toronto International Film Festival for best documentary.

------------------------------

How do we build the city of our dreams?

The screenings are a springboard to discuss the future of our cities while shedding light on global issues that Beirut also shares, including: a) refugees, population growth; b.) gentrification, loss of neighborhood; c.) land-grab real estate ventures; and d.) urban ecology, it's not just the lack of water.


Pop-up Studio-X Beirut is a temporary think-tank curated by Liz Martin-Malikian aiming to create a dialogue about urban life, a public platform bringing together creative minds to connect in Beirut. As the newest hub within Columbia University's vibrant global Studio-X network, Beirut seeks to tackle the crucial questions facing the future of our cities through a multidisciplinary perspective of the urban narrative. http://www.arch.columbia.edu/studio-x-global/about-studio-x


Inline image 2


FILM SCREENING
Pop-Up Studio X Beirut, in collaboration with Mansion, presents the second of four film screenings in the series entitled :

                               URBAN STORIES: Individual Narratives from the City


My Brooklyn : Unmasking the takeover of America's hippest city

by Kelly Anderson and Allison Lirish Dean                         

 Thursday 20 November 2014 @ 19:00

Immediately following the screening will be a discussion with q & a:
Hisham Ashkar, CARTOGRAPHER
Cythnia Mynitti, NEIGHBORHOOD ACTIVIST
Liz Martin-Malikian, MODERATOR

 




FILM SCREENING  
Pop-Up Studio X Beirut, in collaboration with Mansion,
presents the first of four film screenings in the series entitled:

                                 URBAN STORIES: Individual Narratives from the City

                                                   Sierra Leone’s REFUGEE ALL-STARS

                                                      Tuesday 11 November 2014 @ 19:00

 

Immediately following the screening will be a discussion with q & a:
 
Abir Saksouk-Sasso, URBANIST
Ahmad Khouja, MUSIC PRODUCER 
Farah Azrak, ARTIST  
Ghassan Maasri, MODERATOR 

 How do we build the city of our dreams? The screenings are a springboard to discuss the future of our cities while shedding light on global issues that Beirut also shares, including: a) refugees, population growth; b.) gentrification, loss of neighbourhood; c.) land-grab real estate ventures; and d.) urban ecology, it's not just the lack of water.
Pop-up Studio-X Beirut is a temporary think-tank curated by Liz Martin-Malikian aiming to create a dialogue about urban life, a public platform bringing together creative minds to connect in Beirut. As the newsiest hub within Columbia University's vibrant global Studio-X network, Beirut seeks to tackle the crucial questions facing the future of our cities through a multidisciplinary perspective of the urban narrative. http://www.arch.columbia.edu/studio-x-global/about-studio-x
.

PERFORMANCE
                                                       

   

ON ALIENATION  

Mattin

Thursday 6 November, 7pm


Part of the series On Alienation hosted by 98weeks at Mansion

 

On Alienation is a doctoral research in different chapters and formats on the concept of alienation. For each chapter, Mattin will do a performance in which abstract, theoretical ideas are explored in a concrete situation. Mattin is interested in collapsing scientific experiments and experimental music, and in reconsidering the connection between cause and effect when particular factors and concepts become manipulated in real life.

‘…The concept of “alienation” is both intrinsic to the development of modernity and closely connected to aesthetics. My research seeks to synthesize the theoretical resources that deal with alienation in order to develop new techniques for a contemporary use of alienation in aesthetics, and more specifically in the practices of noise and improvisation, a field I work in.’                                                                                                                                   

Biography
Mattin is an artist from Bilbao, Spain (currently living in Stockholm) working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental sonic artistic production through live performance, recordings and writing. He is currently doing a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of Ray Brassier and Josu Rekalde.


This event is part of the series On Alienation hosted by 98weeks– three interlinked events taking place in various spaces in Beirut on 5th, 6th and 7th of November 2014, the other events are:
Wednesday 5 November, 7pm
Ray Brassier & Mattin
Non-idiomatic Improvisation (Guitar and drums)
AUB Byblos Bank Art Gallery

Friday 7 November, 2pm
On Alienation A Talk by Mattin Artiach
Art History Department, AUB. Bldg. 37 (behind Lee Observatory)

The talk is hosted by FAAH (Department of Fine Arts and Art History) and AHI (Art and Humanities Initiative).



SEPTEMBER 2014


Exhibition: On Lost and Mutable Things

Sep 27,28,29, 30
4-8pm


What does it mean to be an artist and cultural producer in times of uprising and crisis? How does the political and social changes affect artistic and cultural practices? And which promises or stories would artists like to preserve with their work for future?
»On lost and mutable things« is a five days meeting in the Villa Mansion in Beirut, between ten Syrian artists and cultural producers from different disciplines, such as theater, performance, literature, archiving, visual arts, curating and design.
The meeting deals with the »artistic and cultural practices« during the Syrian uprising and crisis and seeks through discussions to create a space for self-reflection and for the exchange of experiences. explore the role of arts and culture in these times, their abilities of telling, and the problematic of the institutional reduction of arts and culture to commentary on recent events.
The meeting will be followed by a »presentation« of the material, that came up from the discussions and the workshop


معرض: عن الأشياء لاضائعة و المتحولة 
    
 سبتمبر ٢٧،٢٨،٢٩،٣٠
٤-٨ ب.ض
ما معنى أن تكون فنانًا ومنتجًا ثقافيًا في زمن الإنتفاضة والأزمة؟ ما هو تأثير حدوث التّغيرات السّياسية والإجتماعية على الممارسات الفنية والثقافية؟ أي قصّة يرغب الفنّان أخبارها أو الإحتفاظ بها للمستقبل؟
»عن الأشياء الضائعة والمتحولة« هولقاء لمدة خمسة أيام في (القصر) منشن يجمع »فنانين ومُنتجين ثقافيين سوريين من تخصصات مختلفة كالمسرح، فن الأداء، الأدب، الأرشيف، الفن التشكيلي, تنظيم المعارض والتصميم لمناقشة :موضوع »الممارسة الفّنية والثّقافية« خلال فترة الإنتفاضة والأزمة في سوريا، من زوايا وأبعاد مختلفة، ومحاولة خلق فُسحة للإنعكاس الذّاتي ومكان لتبادل الخبرات، وذلك من خلال طرح أسئلة نقدية حول طبيعة تلك الممارسات في فترة ما قبل، وخلال الأزمة في سوريا، حول دور الفّن والثقافة في أزمنة التغيرات الكبرى، قدرتهما على الإخبار والصعوبات والأشكاليات المرتبطة بإختزال الموقف الفنّي والثقافي على الحدث السياسي الآني.
اللقاء سيناقش تللك الممارسات في سياق المسؤوليات الجديدة الثقافي الإجتماعية والأخلاقية للفنّان والمنتج الثقافي ودورها في خلق فضاءات بديلة للمشاركة في التغير السياسي والإجتماعي.
يعقب اللقاء »عرض« لمدة أربعة أيام في (القصر) منشن يُظهر نتائج الحلقات
النّقاشية وورشة العمل.





The Immortal Sergeant, a film by Ziad Kalthoum
75', English subtitles.

Monday 29sept 
8pm


My mandatory military service was done. I was then held in the army reserve with the revolution in my country. I was stuck for a whole year, waiting for my discharge, with no hope in sight. My military rank was sergeant. I was assigned to run Bassel AL Assad theatre that hasn’t screened a film in 15 years. I go back to my house in the middle of Damascus, take off my military suit to return to my city and to my normal life. I work with my friend Mohammed Malas on his feature film as an assistant director. I hold my small camera and try to document our daily activities where all the technicians, mainly from the opposition, tell me their stories. Some of them had their houses shelled, some of them emigrated and doesn’t know where they are going next and some of them had their friends killed and their families displaced. I got back home, I sit and watch the news about destruction, violence, shelling… The sun rises anew, I wake up once more and put on my military suit, and go off to my military base to start a new day.

عند انتهاء خدمتي العسكرية تم الاحتفاظ بي عند بدء الثورة السورية. بقيت عالقاً في هذا الوضع لمدة سنة كاملة بانتظار تسريحي ولكن بدون أمل. كانت رتبتي العسكرية رقيب. تم تعييني في سينما باسل الأسد العسكرية التي لم تعرض أي فيلم لمدة ١٥ عام. أعود يومياً إلى منزلي في وسط العاصمة دمشق وأخلع الملابس العسكرية لأعود لحياتي الطبيعية. أعمل مع صديقي محمد ملص كمساعد مخرج في فيلمه الجديد. أحمل كاميرتي الصغيرة وأصور حياتنا اليومية والأنشطة التي نقوم بها حيث يخبرني التقنيون والفنيون بقصصهم. تم تدمير منازل البعض منهم وآخرين هاجروا ولا يعرفون الآن ماذا سيفعلون وآخرين فقدوا أصدقاء لهم وتهجر أهلهم. أعود إلى المنزل لأشاهد الأخبار، أخبار الدمار والعنف والقصف ... تشرق الشمس من جديد و اعلن عن انشقاقي من الجيش و رفضي لحمل السلاح



MAY 2014


CONCERT 

Mansion and Lieues, in the context of their collaborative week, are glad to welcome a concert initiated by YAZAN for Film, Music and Performing Arts,

Saturday, May 10th, 7 pm : save the date !

Anas Maghrebi and Abou Gaby are Syrian singers living in Beirut.
They're also CHARACTERS of a DOCUMENTARY by Nour SHAMMAA about a few Syrian artists and writers.
Nour is part of YAZAN for Film, Music and Performing Arts a collective of artists and filmmakers based in Beirut. We needed to FILM BOTH SINGERS in concert, so we just did it: organize a concert.
Mansion is hosting us, Lieues (Lyon, France), is collaborating, and all our friends are welcome.

With the participation of:
Anas Maghrebi (singer)
Abou Gaby (singer)
and the beautiful gorgeous voice of Sandy Chamoun
+ special guests!

Cooking by Dima Hashisho (open bar and kitchen at 7.00 PM)
Concert at 7:30 PM.

FREE ENTRANCE
FILMS

 8.05 
8.30PM

We will be showing two movies that could revolved around those words / themes / feelings : a country - a city - a neighbourhood - a home - a place. Bodies at work inside, bodies taking action outside, vice versa, in between destruction, reconstruction, construction.                        A room - which becomes a house - which becomes a neighborhood - which becomes a city - which becomes a neighborhood - which becomes a house - which becomes a room, in which dancers, we are at work. The floor, the walls around, the neighborhood around, just outside.
Bodies engaged at each of these thresholds.


Please join us to watch :
Mapping Place Narratives: Beyhum street, Nadine Bekdache et Juma Hamdo (38min)
followed by a discussion with Nadine Bekdache
 "The urban fabric of Beyhum Street has been organically developing since the end of the 19th century, and part of this alley has been continuously inhabited since the 1940s. It is both a place of residence and of work. A number of adjacent plots within the alley now make up a huge construction site for a residential tower. Depicted in the futuristic image as complete and ready for habitation, the scale of the building – besides being unrecognizable by the residents – begs for answers as to what it replaced and how it became a reality."(arabic and english)

Lives of performers
,
 Yvonne Rainer (90min)

"A stark and revealing examination of romantic alliances, LIVES OF PERFORMERS examines the dilemma of a man who can't choose between two women and makes them both suffer. Originally part of a dance performance choreographed by Rainer.
Radio Mansion LIEUES 

every morning from Monday 5th to Friday 9th //  8.30AM in Lyon, 9.30AM in Beirut
A homemade, created, improvised "morning program", with different columns about our activities this week at LIEUES and at Mansion :  a daily focus on our actions here and there / a meeting with Mansion's residents / music / jingles / special guests / readings .. 
A 30 minutes morning program, recorded at the two places, thanks to Skype, Live Stream and other magic tools. 
Follow us, live or on podcast, on new.livestream.com and look for Radio Mansion LIEUES.

"To talk to each other across places. Exchanging news on how we live a space, a house, a city. How loneliness and living together, privacy and publicness, solo work and collaboration revolve around our practices. Enjoy the magic of radio to play with geographical distances and close voices, use imagination to feel the gaps and travel with the waves."  


TRAININGS 
at the end of the days
5th - 9th of May
6.30pm - 8pm
10$ / day or 40$ / week

with Bérengère Valour, Marie Lise Naud, Marie Papon and Sandra Iché

Sharing our box of tools, we would like to invite you to share a precious time of listening, a time to dance and play together, a time to transform space and time, being present at the moment :

We will begin the classes with a collective warming-up. Starting from simple anatomical ideas, we seek to bring the movement nearer to our imagination and to reach a playful state. Through exercises based on the body, the breathing, the consciousness, and through games with the others and with the space, we will explore gestural, rhythmical, and spatial territories


The four of us will be giving the workshop alternately. Each of us will bring a special taste to the daily dance practice. Borrowing tools from dance, martial arts, theater, music, improvisation, we will involve our bodies in differents experiences to find our "own dance".

There will be set exercices, impros, games, times to dream, stretch and breath.
Open to dancers and everyone




APRIL 2014


Evening of Iraqi Maqam

With Amir ElSaffar (Santur, trumpet)
and Omar Dewachi (Oud)


Thursday 10 April
8pm

An evening featuring an intimate, yet dynamic, rendering of Iraqi Maqam music. Performing on santur, oud, and vocals, ElSaffar and Dewachi breathe new life into the centuries-old tradition of Baghdad.

Iraqi-American trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a command over disparate musical styles and a singular approach to combining aspects of Middle Eastern music with American jazz, extending the boundaries of each tradition. A skilled jazz trumpeter with a classical background, ElSaffar has created new techniques to play microtones and ornaments that are idiomatic to Arab music but are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is an acknowledged performer of the classical Iraqi maqam tradition, and performs actively in the US, Europe and the Middle East as a vocalist and santur player. As a composer, ElSaffar has used the microtones found in maqam music to create a unique approach to harmony and melody, establishing himself as an important voice in an age of cross-cultural music making. ElSaffar is a recipient of the prestigious 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artists Award, and has received commissions and grants from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Newport Jazz Festival, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the Jerome Foundation, Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), and the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia.
Omar Dewachi is an Iraqi/Canadian academic and musician based in Beirut, Lebanon. Trained in classical Iraqi oud and Iraqi Maqam music, Dewachi has performed in numerous concerts and festivals in Europe, North America and the Middle East. In addition to Iraqi and Arabic music, he dwells in a variety of music improvisational genres including free-improv Jazz and experimental music. His recent album is Towers Open Fire with City of Salt, a collaborative trio re-frames tradition in a contemporary improvised context.




MARCH 2014



A Interloper

Short open studio talk / presentation by Nathan Witt

Monday 31March
6pm





Based upon a trip Palestine and Israel and an idea in 2002 that drew parallels between orthodox religion and conceptual art; focusing on resisting materialism, of resisting visual culture (idolatry) and representation; to simply state what ones motives are to avoid making an artwork. Witt’s work is part inspired by artists like Martin Creed and 70’s conceptual text based artists like Douglas Huebler, lettrism, OULIPO, Situationism and Ray Johnson’s letters. The work operates where each page/ notion is a counter-image and conceptually as light as possible – a concentrating on making direct links to the variety of unreliable and shifting motives we posses.

This project started working through a generic email calendar, set to Islamic Hijri, Persian Lunar, Christian Gregorian, Julian and Hebrew Ha’luach times, streaming onto a tumblr site. The project then set about to examine the notion that not just in Israel and Palestine there is a beautiful, crazy, abstract, collective religious and social disagreement on what the year is - and also what days to work and rest. Hopefully A Interloper is diffuse and outside of any critical understanding of displacement, usually consigned to research based collectives such as DAAR, Visualizing Palestine and Otolith Group. Instead this work has been seduced by abstractions of time and their geographical ruptures, such as England knowingly having the wrong time for 170 years during the reformation; Henry VIII deliberately failing to update the calendar to Gregorian due to Papal schism. Or the mathematical, natural, anarchic and romantic symbiosis in the almost digital calendar of the French Revolution in the 18th Century, which broke the weeks, hours and minutes into a metric system.

Recent shows include A Next Stopping Place Called Hearsing with Mounira Al-Solh, Pedro Barateiro, André Romaõ, Mark Luyten at 98 Weeks, Beirut (2013), in collaboration with Kunsthalle Lissabon and AIR Antwerpen; Points of Departure with Jumana Emil Abboud, Olivia Plender, Jeremy Hutchinson, Bisan Abu-Eiseh and Bashar Alhroub curated by Rebecca Heald, Al Mahatta Gallery, Ramallah (2013); The Really Wild Show, The White Building, London (2012); 128 kbps Objects curated by Marialaura Ghidini, Birzeit University, Palestine (2012) and The Anti-Library, [SPACE], London (2012).

Forthcoming group show On Concerning the Bodyguard at The Tetley, Leeds, a Creative Lab residency at CCA, Glasgow and attending Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program: Creating and Dispersing Universes that Work Without Working in Beirut. Witt has also completed residencies at Hospitalfield Arts in Arbroath, Scotland; Batroun Art Project, Lebanon; Delfina Foundation; Art School Palestine and [SPACE] Studios, Permacultures #13-16.

Witt currently writes for Through Europe and has written for Arnolfini, Or-Bits, Badlands New York, 98 Editions, Universe Magazine and Haroon Mirza. He has recently published NOOO with [SPACE] Studios, London; an e-book about ecology, madness and Object Orientated Ontology with Federico Campagna and edited by Lucy Mercer.







The Unease of Michel Samaha: An Intervention In A Court Case

By Chaza Charafeddine and Roger Outa

Friday 28 March
8pm



On August 9, 2012, former minister and deputy Michel Samaha was arrested on charges of plotting a terrorist act in North Lebanon. Given the overwhelming evidence for his involvement, he confessed to transporting explosives in his car from Damascus to his home in Ashrafieh, where he delivered them to the double agent Milad Kfouri who in turn was supposed to plant the explosives in determined locations in the city of Tripoli and in the Akkar region, in collaboration with a terrorist group.

During his interrogation the arrestee admitted having committed his crime out of the “unease” he felt towards Major General Ali Mamluk (Head of Syrian National Security Bureau), who asked him to plan the operation and transport the explosives personally. He also contended that he simply "went along" with double agent Kfouri, and that despite having embarked upon the terrorist operation, such an act was not “of his own thinking”.
Accordingly, with “The Unease of Michel Samaha: An Intervention In A Court Case”, we seek to question theoretically, not legally, the relationship between the crime and the discourse of its perpetrator which, in Samaha's case, draws a straight line between the terrorist act and the so called unease. As such we needed to adopt a method to articulate this relationship as it was conveyed in the arrestee's testimony. We adopted narration, comparison and debate, in order to look into the problem of the crime's objective status, more precisely into the proposition that the criminal committed his act as if hijacked by circumstances that were beyond him. Should we accept this proposition, criminality is negated, and the actor is no longer guilty.

Does Samaha's unease cancel his crime? In other words, does embarrassment nullify the guilt of perpetrating evil, or is it in itself the crime? But first, how did Samaha tell of his unease? Is it not possible to deduce the latter from the minutes of his interrogation and consequently, to establish "embarrassment" as an anti-guilt discourse? Through these and other questions we seek an appropriate resolution to the problem at hand, that of the crime of “unease”, and to connect it to the “going along with” and the “no thinking”, words that Samaha kept repeating throughout his interrogation.





JUÁREZ: A DOCUMENTARY MYTHOLOGY
Conceived and Directed by Rubén Polendo
Created by Theater Mitu

Friday      March 14
Saturday  March 15
8pm




The World is beginning to learn, live, function and thrive in borderlands beyond its literal borders; requiring increasingly global conversations and awareness. Nowhere is this more apparent than the sister communities of El Paso, TX (USA) – “Safest City in America” per capita – and Cd. Juárez, Mexico – “The Murder Capital of the World”. Drawn by the contradictions, history and mythology within and around this unique landscape, Theater Mitu conducted a series of interviews and investigations over a two year period to explore the ever complicated landscape at this historic US/Mexico border. Led by Theater Mitu’s Artistic Director, Rubén Polendo (born and raised in Juárez), the company creates an artistic and emotional map of El Paso/Cd. Juárez, incorporating verbatim transcripts and a deep investment in the voice of this community. The work frames Mitu company members as witnesses to memory and myth; vehicles of transmission of the many stories that create a conflicted history of this incredibly polemic border.

For more information on Theater Mitu and the production, visit theatermitu.org





10TH-14TH OF MARCH 2014

Dance worlshop : Tools for a Movement Practice
with Sandra Iché
6.30 - 8.00 pm
The workshop will be based on simple propositions inspired by various contemporary dance techniques and performance practices (Tuning Scores, Body Mind Centering, Kung Fu, etc.) in order to vivify and sharpen our perception of our own body and imaginary, our perception of the space that contains us, our inner rhythms (organs, liquids, breath, thoughts, etc.) and the rhythms that structure what is around us (the others, the space, the outside, etc.). We will experiment a dancing that is about composing movement with those different perceptions. Through the week, we will build up a practice on the accumulations of the exercises, games, tools, that each of us could integrate and reshape for his/her own use, as a dancer, an actor or anyone that wants to increase his/her conciousness of presence and mouvement. Non professional will enter the dance with no fear and no shame, professionals will train their rythmicality and performativity.
fee : 10$ / 1 evening or 40$/ 5 evenings
registration : sandrah_@hotmail.com




FEBRUARY 2014
 

Mountain of Skin - 9 Videos by 9 Artists -

Friday, Feb 28
8pm



Mountains of Skin is a screening of 9 videos by 9 artists who are all born in Iceland but live and work around the world. They come from various artistic backgrounds - dance, writing, visual art and film-making - which clearly effects the way each one of them uses the video medium.
Although their artistic aims span a wide spectrum, these videos share an extremely corporal approach to the expression of human existence.

Videos will be screened in the following order:

Rationalize by Páll Haukur Björnsson. Flaggskip by Sunneva Ása Weishappel, Elasticita by Katrín Ólafsdóttir. Domesticated and Surface by Bryndís Björnsdóttir. Shedrone by Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir. untitled by Haukur Már Helgason.You Can't Stand in the Way of Progress by artists duo Angeli Novi ( Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir and Ólafur Páll Sigurðsson ). Sun by Unndór Egill Jónsson


One of the artists, Steinunn, will be available for q&a after the screening.





JANUARY 2014




+ A N I M A L   M A G N E T I S M + 
films + videos by Basma Alsharif and 
Monday, Jan 20    
8pm


ANIMAL MAGNETISM is a general vital universal principle. As defined by Franz Mesmer in the 18th century, ANIMAL MAGNETISM (or mesmerism) is a principle that touches both man and the universe at all levels: psychological, human and cosmological. It is a theory to describe the entanglement between man and universe; it is a theory of the sensorial.


Presented here in five distinct chapters, ANIMAL MAGNETISM is a program designed to develop specific naturally-occuring inner/outer sensitivities in you, the viewer. In locating its apparent subject in geographies as diverse as Suriname, Malta, Greece, Palestine, and the Badlands of South Dakota, USA, this program proposes that, when cinema is form, you (dear viewer) are content. Mesmerism awaits!

FEATURING: Trypps #6 (Malobi) by Ben Russell (12:00, 16mm, color, sound, 2009), Deep Sleep by Basma Alsharif (21:00, video, 2014), River Rites by Ben Russell (11:30, S16mm on HD, 2011), Home Movies Gaza by Basma Alsharif (24:00, video, 2013), Trypps #7 (Badlands) by Ben Russell (10:00, S16mm on HD, 2010). TRT 78:30

BIOGRAPHIES:

Basma Alsharif (conceived in Olympia, Washington to Palestinian parents) is a visual artist working between cinema and installation. Born in Kuwait, raised in France and the US, she has lived and worked nomadically since receiving her MFA in 2007. She developed her practice between Chicago, Cairo, Beirut, Sharjah, Amman and most recently Paris, through a preoccupation with the human condition as it related to the subjective experience of political history. Her works have shown in solo exhibitions, biennials, and film festival internationally including YIDFF, the Jerusalem Show, TIFF, the Berlinale, Videobrasil, and Manifesta 8. She won a Jury Prize at the 9th Sharjah Biennial, was awarded the Fundacion Botin Visual Arts grant, received the Marion McMahon Award at the Images Festival in Toronto and was a guest of the Flaherty Film Seminar in upstate New York. Basma is represented by Galerie Imane Fares in Paris France and her works are distributed by Video Data Bank.

Ben Russell (b.1976, USA) is an artist and curator whose films, installations, and performances result in immersive experiences concerned at once with ritual, communal spectatorship and the pursuit of a “psychedelic ethnography.” A 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2010 FIPRESCI award recipient, Ben has had solo screenings and exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Viennale, and the Museum of Modern Art. He began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, was co-director of the artist-run space BEN RUSSELL in Chicago, IL, has toured worldwide with film/ video/ performance programs and was named by Cinemascope in 2012 as one of the “50 Best Filmmakers Under 50.” Ben lives between the USA and Europe and is currently calling every new location home.




Travel & Anti-Travel
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi and Nicolas Royer-Artuso
Tuesday, 14/01/2014, 8.00 pm


An evening of reading and music based on travel, anti-travel, epistles, history, and other weary geographies. Maryam Monalisa Gharavi will read from two forthcoming books: epistolary fiction from American Letters (Zer0, 2014) and poetry in translation from Syrian-Brazilian poet Waly Salomão’s bookAlgaravias. Nicolas Royer-Arturo will deliver a musical performance based on Salomão’s "Jet-Lagged Poem."

Reading will be in English, with poetry accompaniment in Portuguese.


Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a poet, writer, and visual artist. She has contributed essays, critical writing, poetry, and solo/collaborative videos and films to a variety of venues. She is the author of the blog/open text South/South and Editor-at-Large at The New Inquiry. She currently teaches at Harvard University, where she completed a doctorate in Comparative Literature and Film & Visual Studies.

Nicolas Royer-Artuso is a linguist, musicologist, Oud player, and violinist. Starting off as a jazz player and electro-acoustic composer, he soon after devoted himself to maqam music, studying in Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Turkey. A key concept of his work is the the theoretical and practical use of "heterophony." He is a founding member of nu.kolektif, where he composes, co-directs, and acts in the theater-oriented political collective. He lives in Istanbul, where he is an active part of the city's traditional music and free improvisational scene.




DECEMBER 2013



Ahmad Omran, 'oud concert
21/12/2013
8.30pm 

Ahmed Omran, an Egyptian composer and Oud player, was one of the founders of the band «Wust el Balad». He will presents eight musical pieces written by him under the title «Oriental Fracture», which is an attempt to re-assemble Arabic Samā'ī and Longa musical molds, and mix them with Nubian and electronic music.
احمد عمران، مؤلف موسيقي وعازف عود مصري، احد مؤسسي فرقة «وسط البلد»، يقدم آلة العود في ٨ مقطوعات موسيقية من تأليفه تحت عنوان «تكسير شرقي»، وهو إعادة تركيب للقوالب الموسقية العربية السماعية و اللونجا، و مزجها بموسيقي الجنوب المصري (النوبة) والموسيقي الالكترونية






Sharif Andoura's performance Al Atlal 
 2013/ 12/ 20

Oum Kalsoum's powerful song inspires here a play about memory. Sharif Andoura has thought since a while to propose an artwork as a junction of his two native cultures and two language speaking : Arabic and French. Al Atlal is this great and famous song, mythical for the whole Arab World, thateveals these essential signs of belonging, love and tearing.
d'après Oum Kalsoum, Mahmoud Darwich
avec Sharif Andoura et Camel Zekri
mise en scène Matthieu Cruciani

 
Beirut and Beyond 
International Music Festival 
08/12/2013

In partnership with the Oslo World Music Festival, BBIMF proudly annonces its first edition

Born from the need for creating a platform that puts a special emphasis on the local and regional independant scene of the Middle East, and brings, for the Lebanese audience, music from the world in accessible tickets and locations
     









MAY 2013



16th of MAY, 2-4pm

rodéo magazine

La revue rodéo a été fondée à Lyon en 2012. 
Elle est portée par un collectif d’artistes, écrivains et chercheurs qui souhaitent tout à la fois diffuser leurs travaux respectifs et les confronter à d’autres horizons de pensée et d’action. Le terme rodéo exprime l’assemblée, l’événement, le risque, la démesure. 
Nous voulions créer un espace de diffusion où puisse se croiser sans hiérarchie des tentatives artistiques et des questionnements critiques, philosophiques et politiques. Nous avions l'intuition forte que la confrontation entre des pratiques, des gestes et des discours hétérogènes, dès lors qu'elle était assumée, pouvait donner vie à un espace d'expérience et de pensée non linéaire et dynamique, opérant par échos et résonances plutôt que par catégorisation.

Nous sommes heureux de présenter rodéo à Beyrouth : le numéro 2, sorti en févier dernier, comporte un entretien inédit de Michel Foucault réalisé en 1979 par Farès Sassine, philosophe libanais.







 
3 & 4th of May, 8.30 pm

Radio Silence

Half imagined tales of men 
who fall to earth 
and then disappear forever. 

Performance prose set to sound, 
memory and moving pictures.

Written and performed by Doyle Avant

Running time: 33 minutes 33 seconds









APRIL 2013






Thursday 25th of April, from 3-9pm,
an open studio of Pierre-Marie Croc 's work in progress, at Mansion,
after 3 month residency in collaboration with Arab Image Foundation.








"Suspended spaces" Symposium  
from 18 to 21 April 2013, at Ashkal Alwan, Art Center, and Mansion

Organized by Suspended Spaces (Brent Klinkum / Jan Kopp / Daniel Lê / Françoise Parfait / Eric Valette), an independent collective set up above all with the desire to work together and with other artists and international researchers. It exists since 2007. It is based in Paris, Caen, Berlin.

The project Regarding Suspended Architecture in Lebanon proposes to bring together European and Lebanese artists and theorists for a common experience. The general objective is the multidisciplinary artistic and philosophical understanding, of a Lebanese reality, envisaged through the prism of a place that particularly resonates with the common history of our modernity: Oscar Niemeyer’s international Fair project in Tripoli.
  


For more info: www.suspendedspaces.net 



 
 # MON 1st of APRIL 2013 at 7:30 pm

KHYAM ALLAMI performing Resonance/Dissonance (solo)


“Khyam Allami epitomises the best of the new generation of Oud players whose roots lie in the Eastern tradition but who also judiciously draw on a wider range of contemporary influences... his compositions are utterly bewitching.” 
- Songlines Magazine, UK
 

Poster by Jana Traboulsi http://ayloul.blogspot.com/
 

Silkscreen prints of the poster will be available for sale at the concert.
 




MARCH 2013

Wednesday, the 27th of March, Mansion was hosting « LAST WEDNESDAY », a networking event.

The nature of the meeting is to facilitate the building of reciprocal relationships to help individuals and the community as a whole to achieve their goals. Don't miss out on this exciting event as it will help you network with various individuals.

Entrance fee: $20 including open wine and nibbles + 961 will be pouring draught beer.

The benefits will be allocated to the ongoing process of renovating Mansion!





A thousand tapes

12th of MARCH at 8 pm

AL RAA'I WAL NISAA 

BY ALI BADRAKHAN

WITH AHMED ZAKI AND SOAD HOSNY IN HER LAST SCREEN APPEARANCE !!!


تزوج المهندس كامل عبد العظيم من محبوبته وفاء ضد رغبة اسرته لتلفق له الاسرة تهمة اختلاس تؤدى للحكم بسجنه حيث يزامل حسن عبد الراضى ويقص له كل تفاصيل حياته الشخصية قبل ان يموت. تعيش الارملة وفاء مع ابنتها الوحيدة المراهقة سلمى وعزة المطلقة شقيقة زوجها فى منزل كامل الصحراوى المنعزل ويتعاون فى زراعة الارض ورعى الماعز فى عزلة عن الاخرين فترة من الزمن. عقب الافراج عنه يصل للمنزل الصحراوي حسن خريج السجون وزميل المهندس كامل فى زنزانته ليعرض مساعداته على النساء الثلاثة وبعد تردد يوافقن على إقامته فى البيت وخاصة مع مهارته فى العمل وارتباطه بالمهندس كمال ولكنهن يقعن في حبه وتتنافس كل منهن للفوز به ليتولد بينهن الحقد والغيرة العمياء.  










FEBRUARY 2013




Color Club
A workshop combining 
analogue film techniques 
and the theory of landscape / 20-24 February  
Screening / 2 March
 

“If you can work without any system of regulation or control, then you can increasingly utilize and develop a fresh mode of cinema.” Masao Adachi

The theme of the Color Club Workshop was Fukeiron, a theory conceived of by Masao Adachi, a Japanese filmmaker and scriptwriter who first came to Lebanon in the early 1970s and was active with the Red Army Faction during the war. It is a ‘theory of landscape’, a way of reading landscape’s many facets, from a site of fiction to a space for political engagement. 



The participants have learned how to operate Super 8 cameras and hand process color reversal films. They have conceived of a synopsis for a scene that they shot over the next four days, adapting the cinema of landscape and anticipating the final edit of their film. They have worked with Kodak Ektachrome 100D film, a format that is no longer being produced as of December 2012.

The workshop was part of Beirut Art Center’s educational and outreach program, organized by Siska in conjunction with Eric Baudelaire’s exhibition, Now Here Then Elsewhere
.
 
Siska is a filmmaker and visual artist, born in Beirut in 1984. He is the founder of LAB Beirut, now the Color Club Lab. He has been part of many experimental film projects and his works have been screened in a number of festivals and exhibitions, including the Rotterdam Film Festival, Oberhausen, Video Works. Siska currently lives between Berlin and Beirut.

Masao Adachi
(born 1939 in Fukuoka Prefecture) is a Japanese screenwriter and director. As well as writing for directors Kōji Wakamatsu and Nagisa Oshima, he directed a number of his own films, usually dealing with left-wing political themes. He stopped making films in the early 1970s and joined the Japanese Red Army, an armed militant organization. After living in Lebanon for 28 years, he was arrested for passport violations, and was found guilty in September 2001, receiving a four-year sentence suspended to 18 months. After his release he was deported to Japan via Jordan, where he was re-arrested on other passport violations. After being held for a year-and-a-half he was convicted and released based on the time he had already served. Since his release, he has resumed making films after a 30-year absence.

 

A thousand tapes

18/02 AT 8PM
KABORIA starring AHMED ZAKI and RAGHDA !

كابوريا
١٩٩٠
إخراج: خيري بشاره

قصة الفيلم
حسن هدهد ملاكم فقير يحلم مع صديقه محمود و مصطفى في الوصول إلى الأولمبياد من خلال الملاكمة. يتصادف مرورهم أمام عوامة راسية يمتلكها المليونير الشاب سلميان. تدعوهم زوجته حورية حيث تلهو مع أصدقائها و تستهويهم هيئتهم. يقيم هدهد في قصر الزوجين و يقدم مباريات للملاكمة، يبتكر حسن بعض الألعاب الأخرى التي تبهر السادة الذين يتسلون بالفرجة عليه و يدفعون

بطولة
أحمد زكي
رغدة
 






JANUARY 2013
31/01/2013


SAMANDAL n°15
New Samandal launch.
+
a limited slikscreen edition,
after one week of a sequential art workshop by Barrack Rima that took place in Mansion.








DECEMBER 2012

A THOUSAND TAPES / 19/12

تأليف و اخراج: نيازي مصطفى
١٩٨٣
عمل جميل حسين بمحل الجواهرجي عزوز ويكتسب ثقته يقع جميل في حب سعاد لكن اخاها سرحان يعارض الزواج يكلف عزوز جميل ان يحمل حقيبة مجوهرات الى الجزار عطيه كى تختار ابنته الشبكه يقع خلاف بين الجزار والخطيب فيؤجل اختيار الشبكة يضطر جميل الى الاقامة فى احد الفنادق الكبرى بناء على نصيحة جارته سعاد التى تعمل فى نفس الفندق لكى يتمكن من حفظ المجوهرات التى معه بخزينة الامانات بالفندق يتاجل حضور جميل العالم المصرى المقيم بامريكا لبيع حق استغلال اختراعه عن الطاقه الشمسيه لعدنان ليصل مساعده عبدالقادر وسكرتيرته سوزى الى الفندق ويستغلان الشبه بين العالم المصرى وجميل للحصول على قيمة العقد من عدنان الذى لم يتقابل من قبل مع عدنان يصل العالم الحقيقى وتكتشف الحقيقة يعرف العالم انه وقع فى ورطه ويقبض على المساعد والسكرتيره يقوم سرحان بمطاردة جميل ويزداد شكه به ثم يكتشف ان هناك من نصب على عريس اخته يتزوج جميل من سعاد بعد حصوله على مكافاة ماليه كبيره







 MANSION OPENING /05/12

*OuUnPo

... in fact more imagined than real.
A reading performance on sexual magic, myth and misunderstanding.

The intervention is part of the 5-day project Quantum Fluctuations in a Synecdochic Universe organized by OuUnPo - Ouvrier d'Univers Potentiels in Beirut and curated by Sara Giannini and Fatos Üstek. At Mansion OuUnPo participants will enact a free association between seven masks by Raffaella Della Olga and a text by Marco Pasi - both specially created for the session in Beirut.

OuUnPo is a European research network made up of artists, curators and researchers. Together they travel to different cities and investigate a given problem in dialogue with local creators, museums, art organizations, research centers, residency programs, and informal groups. With the enactment of Quantum Fluctuations in a Synecdochic Universe in Beirut, OuUnPo launches a 2-year itinerant research project on “Catastrophe & Heritage”. OuUnPonians and local participants will investigate how a catastrophe and a situation of crises embrace potentiality for creation, how architectural and cultural heritage contains the seeds for future developments. The diverse and multiple interactions of these notions will be witnessed, experienced, supposed, analyzed, contemplated, performed, discussed, contested, negated, emphasized in Tokyo (Spring 2013), Sweden (Fall 2013) and Sao Paulo (Spring 2014).

http://visionforumouunpo.blogspot.com/

 
*A THOUSAND TAPES / 1st set

‘’A thousand tapes’’ project consists of a series of film screenings based on a collection of a hundred of VHS copies of Egyptian films from the cinema el moukawalat or contractor’s cinema. These encounters will be accompanied by talks, lectures, and panels involving directors, producers, film critics, designers, political theorists, psychoanalysts and musicians.


‎‫مدافن مفروشة للايجار‬

‎‫تقيم أسرة المهندس أحمد وزوجته نبيلة وطفلهما وشقيقته هويدا فى أحد الفنادق الرخيصة بعد أن تمكن الحانوتى عايش من الحصول على أمر بإزالة منزله الذى تقيم به الأسرة. وبسبب التكاليف العالية للإقامة فى الفندق. تنتقل الأسرة للإقامة فى فناء أحد المقابر، يتعرضون لمواقف غير لائقة وتضيق بهم الحياة. تقع أخته الطالبة بكلية الطب فى غرام حفار القبور المقتدر. وتوافق على الزواج، لايكف أحمد عن البحث ومقابلة المسؤولين للحصول على شقة لكن دون جدوى، يصدر قرار بإزالة ونقل المقابر لإقامة كوبرى بالمنطقة فيتقدم أحمد بشكوى للمحكمة التى ترفض الدعوى. فلا يجد أمامه من سبيل غير الإقامة هو وأسرته فى بهو المحكمة.‬

http://athousandtapes.blogspot.com/