Tuesday 10 March 2009

Engaging with Different Platforms


Since I started the course at AUB, I have been noticing how active the campus is, with a lot a clubs, associations, and isms movements.
I happened to notice the WOMEN'S RIGHTS CLUB, AUB, and think they have a quite interesting program.
I am bringing this to your attention because I would like you to think of your "manifestos" in relation to these different platforms, OUTSIDE the course. I know this is an art class, but it is interresting to think about INTERSECTIONS, and what, for example, an art manifesto, could add to a more socially engage organization. What new perspective can it bring. What can Zeina's manifesto, bring to the Securalist group, or what can Tania's manifesto bring to the Women's Club. These are interesting questions to raise and make you think about the relation between ARTS and POLITICS.

Saturday 28 February 2009

Wake Up Manifesto, by Elie

Wake Up manifesto
We used to be one of the greatest civilizations in the old world. What happened? We hibernated! But we will sleep no more. We will Wake Up and stop playing dead. Too many years were wasted and too much creativity went down the drain. We must take action. No more copying the west way of life. We must dare to rise up and create the Lebanese way of life, an artistic and challenging path. Art must be our new religion. We are all artists in a way; we somehow don’t exploit our artistic selves. We were the first sailors, the inventors of the alphabet. We must take this challenge, wake up, and defy the whole world. We must stop the corruption, we must change and become, as we were: the best.
We, the young generation will save our country. We must eliminate all who stand in our way. We must hang the rules and burn all who take advantage of it. Instead we must make our own rules, Rules that help people. let them live fulfilling and creative lives. We shouldn’t need laws to restrain us; there should be an inner restraint in each and every one of us. From speed limits to major crimes, we won’t let our primitive minds draw us into such idiocies.
We should wake up. We must wake up. We WILL wake up

Futurist manifesto

The Futurist Manifesto Performed

Tuesday 24 February 2009

UPCOMING EVENTS













Rabih Mroue's conference at BAC on the 4th of March
http://www.beirutartcenter.org/parallel-events.php?exhibid=16&statusid=2
Plus check all the parallel events at Bac.

For those interested in music, there is a concert by Charbel Haber on the 18 of March
http://www.beirutartcenter.org/parallel-events.php?exhibid=18&statusid=2

Report On Week II (17-19 February)



We have familiarized ourselves with an example of the historical avant-gardes, the futurists and have read their manifestos. Doing so was important to introduce a couple of key concept related to Modernity; how did artistic movements react to their historical, social, technological and scientific changes? Each avant-garde movement had a proposal in relation to the world; what they want to change, what did they want to destroy and what they want to create? They positioned themselves at the beginning of an era, and declared the end of another.

Radical Breaks and the Desire for the New?
Artists experimented with form, did actions that would embody their beliefs (Dada, Fluxus…), the formal innovations of Futurists and their experiments with sound, the formal innovations of Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus later on…
Artistic movements (historical avant-gardes or the later neo-avant-gardes) were in fact, plenty of new proposal and ideas. These proposal and ideas, however, rather than being generated by new beginnings and radical gestures, were often ideas, which were recuperated and appropriated.

“After Effect”
Hal Foster, an American art historian, whom we have not mentioned in class, has written an essay “Who is afraid of the Neo Avant-Gardes” and reads the emergence of avant-gardes movements in the 60s and 70s (we will look at some of these movements), at the light of the historical avant-gardes. He questions the temporality of the avant-gardes and the way its action is always delayed.

Political Action
This after effect, rather than depoliticizing the avant-gardes, becomes a way of rethinking their ‘original claim’, and how it acts in the present. Meaning: reading/ writing manifestos today can be seen as joke than, since they consciously affirm something that is bound to fail.
However, this does not undermine the sense of “urgency” Zeina has picked up on last time.

This is why your reports are important for the course
Elie wrote a report on Mohamed Soued’s last film “ My heart beats only for her”. He observes “ Some people even stood up the whole hour and a half to watch the movie” because the room was full. Why did people do that? Why was it so important for them to watch this film?
Art and artist have something to propose and to offer that is important. Depending on where we are, and when, these claims change. Although an artist in Beirut might share some concern with an artist in Buenos Aires, the specificity of the context they are in informs what they want.
We will be looking, in our next class, at the way in which artists have related to Modernity in Lebanon; did they ever propose a “Modern project” ? What artistic experimentation were taking place? What were the claims of artists and what impact did they have?

Final notes…
Which brings us back to “urgency” and this is why I asked you to write a manifesto and to express your desires as what is urgent to you. It might sound like an awkward request but it is a useful exercise . The manifesto is a way of articulating these desires to a broader public.
In this sense the manifesto is a form, particular, that unites innermost desires and a public dimension.