Regional Research at Home Works, Beirut

Home Works IV: A Forum on Cultural Practices
Beirut, Lebanon

Time: 12-20 April, 2008

In 2008, Arthub met with the Arab Image Foundation and a number of artists, curators, and practitioners from the area to discuss further co-operation. The Home Works Forum is a multidisciplinary project that brings together artists, writers and intellectuals to present their work. It takes place every eighteen months with many activities such as exhibitions, performance venues, lectures, panel discussions, screenings, debates, and artistic interventions by established and emerging artists.

The fourth edition of Home Works proposes the topics disaster, catastrophe, desire, and sex. From the experience of organizing three past editions of the Home Works Forum, it is no longer self-evident to assume that such a platform made for real dialogue and cultural exchange can exist. However, what the platform does allow for is a productive space in which political, social, and economic realities can be explored, reflected, made manifest as visual and verbal articulations that occur with some consistency. These articulations have become our obsession.

“A tormenting thought: as of a certain point, history was no longer real. Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly left reality; everything happening since then was supposedly true; but we supposedly didn’t notice. Our task would now be to find that point, and as long as we didn’t have it, we would be forced to abide in our present destruction.” —Elias Canetti 1978

The first edition of the Home Works Forum, which opened in early April 2002, coincided with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in Palestine. The second edition opened in late October of 2003, after a six-months delay due to regional upheavals caused by the US invasion of Iraq. The third edition was due to take place in mid-November 2005, after a 6-months delay due to the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005. At this point the Home Works Forum has settled into a regular schedule of regular disruptions. This unpredictable dynamic has become a rhythm, a paradoxical routine. Since the practical and political circumstances around our work are always breaking and shifting, relevant questions about dislocation and disruption impose themselves repeatedly.

Ashkal Alwan, 2008

Organizer: Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts

Partners: Masrah Al Madina, Cinema Metropolis, Agial Art Gallery, Gallery Sfeir Semler, E-flux, and Bidoun Magazine.

Home Works IV: A Forum on Cultural Practices is supported by the Ford Foundation, Foundation Open Society Institute, Heinrich Böll Foundation, and British Council Lebanon.