How Close Could We Get to the Light and Survive?

Hoda Barakat
Short Cuts
Arabic with English and German subtitles

We cannot leave from nowhere, asserts Hoda Barakat. Starting from Lebanon’s recent history, Barakat turns to her own experience of leaving her country—as so many have—during the time of the Civil War: while the country’s survival up to the present day has remained a tightrope walk due to its religious and sectarian constitution, the everyday experience of its people is characterized by an uncertainty mirroring this predicament. One may have left for distant shores, but still there is a need for a point of departure to cling to. By revisiting places, famous or not, by recomposing proper names, well-known or not, Barakat attempts a patchwork approach to this condition: near yet so far away, strong yet so powerless, well-fed yet so enfeebled, proud and yet so sick of being attached to this country.

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
An Additional Continent?
English with simultaneous translation into German

A forgotten Lebanese space program of the 1960s, the complex geopolitical world of internet spams and scams in a post-digital age, and the potentials of poetry facing chaos are among the main topics of recent works by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. In this contribution, they present their research focused on artistic and cinematographic narration and question the writing of history and the construction of imaginaries as well as explore the prevalent notions of territory, cosmopolitanism, and contemporaneity.

Part of How Close Could We Get to the Light and Survive?, curated by Rabih Mroué