Give as a gift
With artists Basma AlSharif, Coleman Collins, Sky Hopinka, Emily Jacir, Joe Namy, and Oraib Toukan, ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is a program of video works that unfold a politics of image-making, reviewing and recounting social and cultural histories as they are explored through contemporary frameworks. The program is prompted by a work from the ArteArchive—Toukan’s performance video, Remind me to Remember to Forget (2006), after Mahmoud Darwish’s 1982 prose poem, “Memory for Forgetfulness.” The artist proposes to reverse the act of writing and the will to remember, consequently dispersing the written word and suspending it in memory and reimagination.
Revisiting Toukan’s video eighteen years later, in a global context that remains anxious with war and impending invasions, Remind me to Remember to Forget is revisited in conversation with works by Alsharif, Collins, Hopinka, Jacir, and Namy. Through minimalist experiments and lyrical narratives the works address profound violences of colonial erasure of land and people, the legacies of exile and dispersion, and our relationship to objects and images when only image and replica remain.
In their distinct structural explorations of cycles and repetitions, these works deal with the promises and devastating blunders of modernity. They connect to land, time, and space in a contemporary world charged with a renewed authoritarian tendency that swings from guise and symbolism to blatant and annihilating power. Between lived experiences and replicated environments, these works present a receding natural world, real and imagined sites, and archives that render the architectures of a modern time swept up in a coup of capitalist developments and techno-autocratic fascist regimes.
ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is curated by Fwaz Kabra and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of works from the program will be screened in-person at e-flux on Tuesday, September 24, followed by a Q&A between Emily Jacir, Coleman Collins and Fawz Kabra. For more details about the in-person screening on September 24, visit e-flux.com. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from September 19 - 29.
Libretto-o-o is an exploration of the history and resonance of Middle Eastern opera. Shot across six historically significant opera houses in Algiers, Beirut, Cairo, Marrakech, Muscat, and Tunis - some of which were never completed, others ranking amongst the most lavish theaters ever constructed - this architecture film offers a meditative portrait of the grand theater; and the poetics, drama, and politics that fade into its proscenium. This film is part of a larger body of artworks exploring the storied history of opera houses in 11 Arab countries,reflecting on history, desire and estrangement, nationhood and mythology, extinction and exile, and includes a collection of short fiction, a large scale opera curtain, and other sculptures and sounds.
About the Filmmaker:
Joe Namy is an artist and musician based in London, who often works collaboratively on public sculptures, sound installations, and performances. Namy’s work considers the social construction of sound and the forces that enable its transmission. Some projects have addressed the gender dynamics of bass, or the migration patterns of instruments, and the translation between languages, between score and sound, between drum and dance. Other projects by Namy explore the history and resonance of opera houses in the Middle East and the archive of Egyptian-American musician Halim El-Dabh, a pioneer of electronic music.
- Year2024
- Runtime5 minutes
- CountryLebanon
- DirectorJoe Namy
With artists Basma AlSharif, Coleman Collins, Sky Hopinka, Emily Jacir, Joe Namy, and Oraib Toukan, ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is a program of video works that unfold a politics of image-making, reviewing and recounting social and cultural histories as they are explored through contemporary frameworks. The program is prompted by a work from the ArteArchive—Toukan’s performance video, Remind me to Remember to Forget (2006), after Mahmoud Darwish’s 1982 prose poem, “Memory for Forgetfulness.” The artist proposes to reverse the act of writing and the will to remember, consequently dispersing the written word and suspending it in memory and reimagination.
Revisiting Toukan’s video eighteen years later, in a global context that remains anxious with war and impending invasions, Remind me to Remember to Forget is revisited in conversation with works by Alsharif, Collins, Hopinka, Jacir, and Namy. Through minimalist experiments and lyrical narratives the works address profound violences of colonial erasure of land and people, the legacies of exile and dispersion, and our relationship to objects and images when only image and replica remain.
In their distinct structural explorations of cycles and repetitions, these works deal with the promises and devastating blunders of modernity. They connect to land, time, and space in a contemporary world charged with a renewed authoritarian tendency that swings from guise and symbolism to blatant and annihilating power. Between lived experiences and replicated environments, these works present a receding natural world, real and imagined sites, and archives that render the architectures of a modern time swept up in a coup of capitalist developments and techno-autocratic fascist regimes.
ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is curated by Fwaz Kabra and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of works from the program will be screened in-person at e-flux on Tuesday, September 24, followed by a Q&A between Emily Jacir, Coleman Collins and Fawz Kabra. For more details about the in-person screening on September 24, visit e-flux.com. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from September 19 - 29.
Libretto-o-o is an exploration of the history and resonance of Middle Eastern opera. Shot across six historically significant opera houses in Algiers, Beirut, Cairo, Marrakech, Muscat, and Tunis - some of which were never completed, others ranking amongst the most lavish theaters ever constructed - this architecture film offers a meditative portrait of the grand theater; and the poetics, drama, and politics that fade into its proscenium. This film is part of a larger body of artworks exploring the storied history of opera houses in 11 Arab countries,reflecting on history, desire and estrangement, nationhood and mythology, extinction and exile, and includes a collection of short fiction, a large scale opera curtain, and other sculptures and sounds.
About the Filmmaker:
Joe Namy is an artist and musician based in London, who often works collaboratively on public sculptures, sound installations, and performances. Namy’s work considers the social construction of sound and the forces that enable its transmission. Some projects have addressed the gender dynamics of bass, or the migration patterns of instruments, and the translation between languages, between score and sound, between drum and dance. Other projects by Namy explore the history and resonance of opera houses in the Middle East and the archive of Egyptian-American musician Halim El-Dabh, a pioneer of electronic music.
- Year2024
- Runtime5 minutes
- CountryLebanon
- DirectorJoe Namy