AGENDA Immortality on display, in 54 boxes...‘Hulk’ trash? Art Basel employees inspect a Koons...

I don’t want to achieve immor-tality through my work. I wantto achieve it through not dying.

Woody Allen(1935 - )

U.S. actor, director,screenwriter, comedian,

musician and playwright

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ARTS & CULTUREthursday, june 19, 2014

THEATER

‘La Promesse de l’Aube’Theatre Monnot, next to St, Joseph’s ChurchJune 19-21, 8:30 p.m.01-421-870Based on the novel of thesame name by two-time PrixGoncourt winner RomainGary, and adapted for thestage and directed by BrunoAbraham Kremer and CorineJuresco, the feted “Promiseat Dawn” recalls RomainGary’s growing up in Russiaand France with his motherin the years before the Sec-ond World War. In French.

ART

‘Inside Out’STATION, Jisr al-WatiJune 19, 6 p.m. until midnight03-491-875For one night only, artistPaula Chinine’s debut exhibi-tion will present artworksthat tackle themes of confu-sion, forgetfulness andemptiness, posing the ques-tion: “What would we doand feel if we could see oneanother from inside out?”

‘Let There Be Art’ARTLAB, Gouraud St,Gemmayzeh, first right afterSt. Nicolas stairsThrough June 25, Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.; 3-7 p.m.www.art-lab.meThis exhibition featureswork from Lumiere Group,comprised of emergingartists from France, Iran,Lebanon and Syria.

‘Kabis’Mark Hachem Gallery, Salloum Street, BCDThrough June 3001-999-313Houmam al-Sayed wouldlike his public to fall into hispaintings, integrate them-selves with his charactersand assume the same percep-tion that begs for the recog-nition that is lost betweentruth and illusion.

‘Beirut-New York’twentytwentyone gallery,Tabet Building, Salim Bustros St, Mar NicolasOpens June 20, 5 p.m.03-777-177This decorative art anddesign space opens with agroup show featuring workby Eric Peyret, Peben, andURNEWYORK.

MUSIC

Abdel Rahman El BachaSt. Joseph’s Church, JesuitFathers, off MonnotJune 20, 8:30 p.m.Under the baton of HaroutFazlian, the Lebanese Phil-harmonic Orchestra accom-panies the Lebanese-bornpianist in a program ofworks by Beethoven andMoussorgski.

‘Hishik Bishik’Metro al-Madina, SaroullaBuilding, -2, Hamra StreetJune 19-21, 9:30 p.m.For detailed schedule, seehttp://metromadina.comNow in its second year onstage, this immensely popu-lar homage to the profanecabaret culture of early 20th-century Egypt celebratesArab femininity, and featuresthe dance of Randa Makhouland the vocal work of Yas-mina Fayed and Lina Sahab.

AAGGEENNDDAALEBANON

By Hélène ColliopoulouAgence France Press

ATHENS: A giant lion roars againstthe backdrop of a battered Greekflag in wall art covering the side ofa school building in a working-classAthens suburb.The creation is one of many

examples of street art across theGreek capital expressing the despairof ordinary people after four yearsof government belt-tightening at thebehest of international creditors.The artist, BANE, is among

around 60 contributors to Athens’second annual street art festival,using some 30 public buildings inthe run-down districts of Nikaia,Rentis and Tavros as their canvases.Several of the works defy the

three-month festival’s title “Crisis,What Crisis?” apparently aimed atsteering artists away from thegloom of soaring unemploymentand sweeping poverty with Greecebeginning to make timid stepstoward recovery.“The notion of reconquering

public space predates the crisis,”argues a young artist who uses thepen name This Is Opium.Among foreign participants in the

festival is Franck Duval of France,originally a collage artist who tookup street art in 2006. “We are all pay-ing for this crisis,” he said, “whetherin Greece or elsewhere.”Duval is taking part for a second

time and helped paint a muralinspired by “Zorba the Greek.” “Thewalls of Athens,” he said, “deserve alittle more color and joy.” “We seek to evoke reactions, no

longer just in studios but outside,”said Panos Haralambous, a vicedean of the Athens School of FineArts which is staging the event. “Artis not just for the few.”Street art has “exploded in the city

these past six years,” he continued.“It is a form of protest that takes the

artist out of his studio. Young peopleare looking for ways to expressthemselves in hard times, and streetart is an ideal vehicle for that.”Greece stood on the brink of

bankruptcy in 2010 when interna-tional lenders came to the rescuewith the first of two bailout pack-ages totaling $330 billion.In exchange, Athens was forced to

undertake drastic reforms includingwage, pension and job cuts to bringdown its runaway public deficit –prompting often violent protests.Organizer Gogo Kolivira

described the artists’ brief as “inter-preting the news in the publicspace” but with a view to generat-ing “optimism and hope.”

“The aim,” said fine arts studentSotiris Gardiakos, “is to keep streetart a vital part of the city.”Last year’s works, now on display

at the School of Fine Arts, were over-whelmingly inspired by the anti-aus-terity protests that rocked the coun-try between 2010 and 2012.One piece depicts a malnourished

child with the slogan “Need Food,Not Football” stenciled across hisdistended belly, while another titled“Death of Euros” shows six men car-rying a stack of oversized euros,evoking pallbearers carrying a coffin.The event, which enjoys support

from the French, Israeli and Swissembassies, closes at the end of Junewith a photo exhibition of graffitiand slogans that have appearedacross Athens since the start of thecrisis in 2010.Separately, the private Onassis

Foundation is currently showcasingsome 40 street art works includingspray-painted cars in a show titled“No Respect.”

‘Hulk’ trash? Art Basel employees inspect a Koons

BASEL, Switzerland: Three Art Basel employees gaze at “Hulk,” at a work by U.S. artist Jeff Koons Tuesdy during the art fair’spreview day that is open to the public June 19-22. Over 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia,and Africa show work from great masters of modern and contemporary art to the latest generation of emerging stars. Everyartistic medium is represented: paintings, sculpture, installations, videos, multiples, prints, photography, and performance.

A giant lion roars before a frayed Greek flag on a graffito by BANE on a wall of a primary school in Athens.

‘It is a form of protestthat takes the artistout of his studio’

In Athens, streetart vents angerover austerity

Immortality on display, in 54 boxesREVIEW

By Jim QuiltyThe Daily Star

BEIRUT: When the livingrecall the dead with fondness,as sometimes happens, it’snot unusual to honor their

memory. Memorials can be as idio-syncratic as the imagination of theone doing the remembering. Take thecase of the “Orvillecopter.”At the 2012 edition of KunstRai,

Amsterdam’s annual art fair, Dutchartist Bart Jansen unveiled a work hedescribed as a memorial to hisbeloved cat, Orville. The artist hadstuffed the beast – its pelt stretchedout like a miniature tiger-skin rug –and mounted propellers on its fourpaws. With the aid of a remote con-trol, Jansen’s memorial gave the giftof flight to his former feline friend.The work had its detractors.

While some found the concept play-ful and charming – gleefully gluttingsocial media with photos of the air-borne Orville – those with moreconservative sensibilities deridedJansen’s gesture as a stunt. Senti-mental cat lovers condemned thework as a form of animal abuse.As its title suggests, “A Museum

of Immortality,” the exhibition nowgracing the central hall of AshkalAlwan’s Home Workspace, is astudy of that most radical form ofmemorial: resurrection.Anton Vidokle, one of two resi-

dent professors at the Homeworksacademy this year, organized thisnoncurated show, issuing an open callto artists – a cosmopolitan roster ofHomeworks academy students andteachers – to create an installationimmortalizing a extinct individual.Of the 60 proposals, organizers

selected 54 by pulling names from ahat. The only formal restriction onthe contributions was that eachwork must fit within one of the 54vitrines created to display them:wooden boxes – usually glass-front-ed or glass-topped – whose dimen-sions approximate those of a coffin.A wide array of media has been

brought to bear in this exhibition.There are objects and the odd USB-

computer interface – and one work isexclusively tactile – but images andtexts predominate. The latter rangefrom handwritten notes to excerpts of

texts to novels. The former includeoriginal and reproduced sketches,paintings and photographs, though –this being a postgraduate school ofcontemporary art – visitors will finda variety of video screens as well.Though each component is

prominently numbered (1-54), theshow is not numerically arranged.Consequently it’s the modulardesign – credited to Nikolaus Hirschand Michel Mueller – that condi-tions how works are received. Indi-vidual pieces can be absorbed bothin their own terms and in juxtaposi-tion with adjacent works.One cluster, for instance, includes

works by Jalal Toufic (who sharesthe professorial burden with Vidok-le) and his collaboration with Gra-ziella Rizkallah Toufic.Toufic chose to reiterate his 41-

minute, 2006 video “Mother andSon; or, That Obscure Object ofDesire (Scenes from an AnamorphicDouble Feature),” which inter-weaves audio and video elements oftwo apparently quite distinct films –Aleksandr Sukurov’s 1997 “Motherand Son” and Alfred Hitchcock’s“Psycho,” from 1960. Shards ofboth films move across a flat-screenmonitor, which shares its vitrine

with the carcass of a wasp.Above and to the right is Rizkallah

Toufic’s “Victoria Rizkallah; or, TheSticking Out Hair.” A far more inti-mate video work (playing out on atablet screen), it juxtaposes shots ofthe deceased Rizkallah’s open casketwith scenes in which a tweezers-wielding young woman removesunwanted hairs from the still-livingRizkallah’s face. Alongside thetablet, a few white face hairs adorn asquare of black foam, alongside apair of tweezers.No restrictions were imposed

upon the selection of personages.Some artists chose more or lessobscure historical persons.Stefan Bakmand Andersen’s com-

pilation of images of, and texts byand about, a thinker from antiquitycalled Stephanus of Byzantium has apatina of Google about it.Amal Issa’s “Hope This Letter

Finds You Well,” on the other hand,is an affecting altar to Abdel-Nass-er Issa (1957-76), a relative killed atthe start of Lebanon’s Civil War. Hismortal remains rest in the cemeteryof Shatila Camp, but a bureaucraticerror misplaced his precise location.For his “How to Say Goodbye,”

Tony Chakar has stacked within a

vitrine the collection of cassette tapeshe can no longer use, thanks to theupdated technology in his new car.Mingling aspects of archive,

library and trash can, OctavianEsanu’s “Untitled” seeks to resur-rect the community of people thatconstitutes a particular individual(again himself), “including thingsmade, produced, listed, documentedor simply thrown away by peopleand beings that surround me.”The premise of “A Museum of

Immortality,” as proposed by artcritic and media theorist BorisGroys, is the idiosyncratic model ofmemorial proposed by Russianphilosopher Nikolai FyodorovichFedorov (1828-1903).Fedorov saw mortality as the

principal bane to the perfectibility ofmankind, one that all of humanityshould be unified in strugglingagainst – the Common Cause, as hetermed it – and was an advocate ofbending scientific research to thetask of radically extending life spans,with the goal of physical immortali-ty and resurrection of the dead.Given these premises, the single

most entertaining work in this showis Alicja Rogalska’s “The DrosteEffect (Lebanese Mormon Socie-

ty),” which juxtaposes a contempo-rary view of immortality with thatof Fedorov.It takes its cue from a Wired mag-

azine report that in a secure, subter-ranean vault, the “Mormon Churchhas squirreled away the world’slargest collection of genealogicalmaterial: more than 2 million micro-film reels … [holding] around 2 bil-lion names, a sizable portion of thetotal number of people who haveambled through recorded history.”Rogalska’s vitrine holds a tablet-

sized screen relating, with laceratingwit, the research initiative inspiredby her discovery. She inquired whether the Mormon

vault included the name of NikolaiFyodorovich Fedorov. As it does not,she undertakes a conversation withchurchmen about whether he oughtto be included. This amusing dialogueis represented in subtitles across aGoogle Maps-style search for thelocation of the church’s Utah vault.They don’t appear to have under-

stood the joke.

“A Museum of Immortality” is up atAshkal Alwan’s Home Workspace until July18. For more information, please seeashkalalwan.org

Ashkal Alwan’s latestexhibition gives artistschance to commenton death and memory

An installation view of “A Museum of Immortality.”

AFP/Sebastien Bozon

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