Current “major” issues and all arguments in the international society have been focused around G7 countries like the US and Japan. This first world-centered phenomenon in the globe has controlled an interest and imagination we might have in the relationships with other countries. In spite of its comparatively large impact to the history of contemporary Korea, from its Middle East construction boom in the 80s, Korean soldiers’ dispatch to Iraq War, to chronic complexity in its relationship with North Korea, the knowledge and information on the Middle East region in Korea have been relatively poor with mostly depending upon the media coverage of critical events. The interest in the Arabic region has rather been increased today, but it wouldn’t be over-exaggerating to say that this project, “Sequence of Tense” is the first serious attempt in Korea to develop a general, passive understanding of the region so far into a close examination of critical issues and art practices in contemporary Arabic world.

Lebanon of today, with its traumatic experience of 15-year-long civil war from 1975, set out various dynamic activities for restoration and peace settlement in the war-wounded country. This project suggests that we should objectify and re-orient ourselves from the limited and biased perspective, away from the superficial survey of dis/similarities among the attitudes and viewpoints of two regions on such universal issues as peace compromise, trauma, national border, restoration, the intervention of external forces, and the memories of war. The time zone of Arab and Korea might be, and should be, much differed, but this project sets its title as “Sequence of Tense ” with an intentional purpose to catch “contemporaneity” we share, in spite of the distance in time and location lying between us. The word, "tense" in this title could literally mean the political state of two regions, the Middle East and Korea, being in continuous tension, but it could also allude to a certain attitude and consciousness commonly shared by contemporary artists who keep themselves alert to life, the reality and society.

This project is composed of an exhibit, screening and workshop program. The exhibit at Alternative Space Pool invites highly influential figures in Lebanese art scene who have represented some of the most radical voices in the region. Screening program at Insa Art Space presents Lebanese and Palestinian documentaries and feature films as well as their major video art pieces. The workshop will also be held at Insa Art Space for four days with artists’ presentation and proposals of new projects, which are envisioned to develop into projects that can bring in a collaboration with local artists and local community. “Sequence of Tense” hopes to give us a critical chance to reform our notions and values on the Middle East region that have been bound to the mythology and ideology which are not entirely independent from politics and, eventually help us have a critical awareness to the region and ourselves.

Curatorial Team of “Sequence of Tense: Messages from Lebanon and Palestine”

Exhibition
Fri. 16 Dec 2005-Wed. 11 Jan 2006
Alternative Space Pool
Opening: Fri. 16 Dec 2005 6:00 pm

Screening
Fri. 16 Dec 2005-Sun. 8 Jan 2006
3F, Insa Art Space of Arts Council Korea

Workshop
Mon. 12 Dec 2005–Thu. 15 Dec 2005
3F, Insa Art Space of Arts Council Korea


Exhibition

Artists
Tony Chakar & Naji Assi
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Bilal Khbeiz & Walid Sadek
Rabih Mroué
Jalal Toufic

Rabih Mroué, Bir-rouh Bid-damm, 2003, video, 11mins
“Rabih Mroué told me that he was intrigued by the circumstances that in none of the many dreams of falling he had did he ever hit the ground. He postulated the following hypothesis: were one to hit the ground one actually die in reality. I would rather advance that if one does not hit the ground, it is that the sleeping body is cadaverous, therefore an infinite fall”.

----an excerpt from Jalal Toufic’s book, (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film(2nd ed., The Post-Apollo Press, 2003, p. 376 , footnote 332)


Rabih Mroué, Face A/Face B, 2002, video, 10mins
In 1978, my brother Manuel who had just arrived from Cuba, wrote lyrics to a song, and synchronized them to a Russian tune. We sang it and sang it till we memorized it, recorded it and sent the audiotape to my brother Abou Salam living at the USSR at that time.

Swearing by fire, bullets and iron,

Swearing by the last breath of the martyr,

Swearing by Lina, Leila and Nabil,

Swearing by the glorious Land of the South,

“They will never pass,” said the martyr.

In case I was shot in my right arm

I still have the left one as strong as iron.

And if my left arm is shot too, fellow comrade

I still have teeth as sharp as flint

We will fight with our finger nails and nails.

Bilal Khbeiz/Walid Sadek, Indolence(Al- Kassal), 1999, papers
This piece is a photo-essay published in newspaper format and produced in collaboration with a writer Bilal Khbeiz, which delineates its logic of protest through a willed retreat towards a physical self that is committably un-couth and de-sublimated. On the pages of “Al-Kassal” spreads one last eulogy for a body that we dream of; a body that is organic and tired, spent and hairy, blunt and most noticeably guiltless, a heap of wrecked matters savoring the idiosyncratic pleasures of its disruptive laziness.

Jalal Toufic, The Lamentations Series: The Ninth Night and Day, 2005, video, 60mins
It would be felicitous if a Shi‘ite were to make the first film or video on the lamentation of Judas Iscariot during the interval between his delivering Jesus to the chief priests and his hanging himself. Judas had prearranged the following signal for the apprehension of Jesus: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” Given that Jesus had told his disciples, among whom was Judas, “If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also” (Luke 6:29), why didn’t the one who was kissed by Judas turn the other cheek for another kiss? Given that Judas did not sin against the Holy Spirit but only against the Son of Man (“Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven” [Matthew 12:32]), why didn’t the one who was kissed by Judas miraculously move time backward till before the birth of his betrayer (“It would be better for him if he had not been born” [Matthew 26:24]) in forgiveness? If the one who was perfidiously kissed by Judas did neither, was this because he was not actually Jesus Christ?

Jalal Toufic, Minor Art: Conceptual Film and Video Posters, 2000-2005, 18 posters
An artist and film theorist, Jalal Toufic expresses his critical view on the films by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Carl Theodor Dreyer through the means of ‘conceptual movie poster.’ Toufic, for instance, makes a counter remark to a common view in such a way that the better depiction of Egypt is found in “Artificial Intelligence: A.I.,” instead of in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Toufic dedicated his movie poster series to the book, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature written by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari and the movie posters by two Russian Constructivists, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, whom, he refers to, as precursors to his posters.

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Wonder Beirut Project : the Battle of the Hotels(in the story of a pyromaniac photographer), Postcards of War, Latent Images, 2002, photographs, postcards, texts
Abdallah is an iconic Lebanese photographer widely known for his postcard shots for tourists. During the war, he burnt his postcards, and this action mimics the actual demolition and vanishment of the buildings in Beirut. Khalil’s uncle, who disappeared in the war, left a 8mm film as not printed. Those who stayed at the Khiam detention center provide detailed descriptions of Khiam, but its whole picture is left to viewers’ imagination. The ambiguous state of such images in “Wonder Beirut Project” implicates its infinite expansion and association of their meaning to a larger context as well as reveals the ephemerality and intangibility of the memory. The vanished images, even a blank, can bring imagination and provoke the birth of new images.

Tony Chakar & Naji Assi, Traces of Life: Rouwaysset Project, 2002, mixed media
Artist Tony Chakar and architect Naji Assi started their research-based urban project in a collaboration with the students of Architecture of Academie Libanaise de Beaux-Arts(ALBA) from observing an organic formation and growth of population in the suburbs of Lebanon. Stemmed from a recognition that the theory and method developed from the modern city and architecture cannot be applied to the research of today’s Beirut, the Rouwaysset Project suggests a new way of approach to an urban environment that involves the local community living on the site.


Jalal Toufic

The Sleep of Reason: This Blood Spilled in My Veins (2002, 32mins)
The organic dying of a human is as nothing compared to that of an animal, exemplarily of a bull in a corrida; the only phenomenon that equals in intensity the death of a bull in a corrida or of a cow in a slaughterhouse is the resurrection of a human, Lazarus coming out from the grave. The living woman in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is found settling her pillow to sleep when she encounters the undead. Why are you settling the pillow, why are you so sleepy? What disclosure are you thus trying to elude? “Tell you all,” Lazarus says in Eliot’s poem, and would that “all” not also include himself? Did Lazarus come back to tell himself about death? And did he find himself sleeping then?

Saving Face(2003, 8mins)
Were all the candidates’ faces posted on the walls of Lebanon during the parliamentary campaign of 2000 waiting for the results of the elections? No. As faces, they were waiting to be saved. Far better than any surgical face-lift or digital retouching, it was the physical removal of part of the poster of the face of one candidate so that the face of another candidate would partially appear under it; as well as the accretions of posters and photographs over each other that produced the most effective face-lift, and that proved a successful face-saver for all concerned. We have in these resultant recombinant posters one of the sites where Lebanese culture in specific, and Arabic culture in general, mired in an organic view.

’Âshûrâ’: This Blood Spilled in My Veins(2002, 80mins)
Al-Husayn, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad and the son of the first Shi‘ite imam, Al, was slaughtered alongside many members of his family in the desert in 680. This memory is a torture to the artist, Jalal Toufic. But, basically, one can say “this memory is a torture to me” on every memory, since each reminiscence envelops at some level the memory of the origin of memory, the torture that had to be inflicted on humans in order to make them remember (Nietzsche). The memory that the yearly commemoration of “Âshûrâ” is trying to maintain is not only or mainly that of the past, but the memory of the future, namely the promise of the Parousia of the twelfth imam. the long-awaited Mahd—notwithstanding the passage of a millennium since his occultation—as well as the corresponding promise of Duodeciman Shi‘ites to wait for him.


Akram Zaatari

Her + Him Van Leo(2001, 32mins)
A nude portrait of a grandmother, proud of posing nude in facing a local photographer, is a pretext to visit the Armenian/Egyptian photographer Van Leo. Originally named Levon Boyadjian, Van Leo was born in Jihane(Turkey) in 1921, from an Armenian family that moved to Egypt in 1924. He opened a studio in Cairo in 1947. He is very much a good example of the photographer-craftsman and one of few photographers from that period to consider himself artist. This is a portrait of a studio photographer, but it is also an attempt to look at the photography of the 40s and 50s from a critical perspective not a nostalgic one. It is a documentary that puts face-to-face traditional portrait photography and video. It is a dialogue between two media; crafted black and white print and the electronically colored and manipulated screen, to comment on the transformations in art practices and terminologies, and to evoke some of the social/urban/political transformations that took place in Egypt over fifty years of its recent history.

Red Chewing Gum(2000, 10mins)
“Red Chewing Gum” is a video letter that recounts a story of separation between two men, set within the context of the changing Hamra, a formerly booming commercial center. The video looks at the image making in relationship to consumption and the possession of desired subjects. It examines the issue of desire, power, and the attempt to capture the fleeting time.

Crazy of You (1997, 26mins)
Set in the industrial suburbs of Beirut, “Crazy of You” explores male sexuality through interviews with three men, who were asked to recount very openly the beginning, middle, and end of a sexual relationship each one of them had. The video examines the details of shaping the body, sexual language, songs, and signs in relation to the boys’ fantasies. It explores the image they wanted to project of themselves, hence the image of the “male” they identify with. They become as “courageous”, and “seductive” as men represented in video games. Their stories are alike, starting with seduction and ending after screwing. There seems to be no possibilities outside these norms. Desire is transformed into a commodity and relationships lead to defeat.

How I Love You (2001, 29mins)
It is an exploration of sexuality among gay men in Lebanon. A couple and three characters talk about their sex life, about commitments and failures, about their relationships to their bodies, about their passions and love in a society where homosexuality is still punished with imprisonment. The video uses light to produce a white veil that obstructs seeing, hence rendering character identification almost impossible. Through this obstruction, this video locates itself within a specific social context: in time and location, where certain rights are not granted.

In This House(2005, 30mins)
Following the Israeli withdrawal from Ain el Mir in 1985, the village became the frontline. The Dagher family was displaced from their home, which was occupied by a radical resistant group for seven years. When the war ended in 1991, Ali Hashisho, a member of the Lebanese resistance stationed in the Dagher family house, wrote a letter to the Dagher’s family justifying his occupation of their house, and welcoming them back home. He placed the letter inside an empty case of a B-10, 82 mm mortar, and buried it in the garden. In November 2002, Akram Zaatari headed to Ain el Mir to excavate Ali’s letter.

This Day (2003, 86mins)
As an outcome of a three-year long research on the circulation of images in the Middle East, “This Day” is at once an extroverted voyage in geography, and an introverted voyage in memory and the recording of everyday. It uses video and photography to communicate the states of mobility and closure in the contemporary divided geography of the region. It starts in the ever-changing desert, where presumably, Arab civilizations were originated, and where a historian Jibrail Jabbur photographed a woman holding a Jar on her head in the fifties, in a village on the edge of the Syrian Desert. The video soon unfolds into a re-construction of Desert landscapes and becomes like a laboratory where new images of the desert and of Arab cities are reproduced.


Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Khiam(2000, 52mins)
Six detainees describe how they survive on the detention camp of Khiam in South Lebanon: how they managed to live, sleep, dream and think within the four walls of cell for nearly 10 years. Deprived of a necessities, they secretly created a needle, a pencil, and chessboard. This document attempts a metaphysical reflection on man’s willpower and wish to live. It is also a work that questions representation and its limit.

Rhamad(Ashes)(2003, 17mins)
Nabil returns to Beirut with the ashes of his father who died abroad. He tries to overcome his bereavement while his family insists on respecting rites and customs by burying a non–existent corps.

The Lost Film(2003, 42mins)
A copy of Hadhithomas and Joreige’s first film was lost in Yeman, on the day of the tenth anniversary of reunification of North and South. They returned a year later to attempt a retrieving of it.


Lamia Joreige

Embrace (2004, 4.30mins)
The man abruptly reaches out his hand and touches her shoulder;
she moves a little, she is scared, but doesn’t recoil.
He grabs her arm; tightening his grip, he clings to her body. She looks shaken.
She sways, about to fall, wanting to die, but elsewhere.
I hear screams.
She opens her wide mouth and laughs; moving closer to him, she wraps her arm around him and kisses him.
Our encounter is filled with strange sonorities, we watch ourselves live.

Replay(bis) (2002, 9mins)
The starting point of “Replay” is the idea of rupture in a time and place that are undefined. This story, which might have been experienced or dreamed, is repeated in various forms. The images appear as reminiscences of the past, as well as attempts to reconstruct a narrative. These narrative attempts to make a room for one final long shot: a view of Beirut today, in the time of the dusk prayer; as if this last image, inducing contemplation, had become the ultimate way of relating the story.

Here and Perhaps Elsewhere(2003, 54mins)
During the Lebanese civil war, hundreds of people disappeared. In most cases, the bodies were not found and the circumstances of their disappearance are not certain. Today, the artist/filmmaker Lamia Joreige travels through Beirut, asking the inhabitants she encounter, one same question: “Do you know of anyone who was kidnapped here during the war?” Her investigation carries the artist through the many districts around the “green line” which used to divide Beirut between East and West, and where a militia sets up their checkpoints, of many kidnappings, and crimes are presumed to have happened. Thus the artist tries to trigger the process of memory and to reveal the multiplicity of existing discourses on the war and the immensity of this drama. As she crosses town and discovers places laden with history, she draws a personal map of this city.

Objects of War (2000, 68mins) screened on monitor as a video
“Objects of War” is a series of testimonials and discourses on the Lebanese war of eleven persons. Each person chose an ordinary, familiar or unusual object, which serves as a starting point for his/her story. These testimonials, while helping to create a collective memory, also show the impossibility of telling one “History” of this war. In fact only fragments of this History are related here, held as truth by those expressing them. Sincere and/or invented versions of an event cannot be narrated. In “Objects of War,” the aim is not to reveal a truth but rather to gather, and confront many diverse versions and discourses on the subject. “Objects of War” was first shown in 2000 and continued in 2003, recording seven new persons, one difference being that since then, there is no longer any editing. The work of collecting and assembling these stories is still being continued.


Hicham Kayed

Lemonade (2004, 12mins)
A Palestinian family settles in a new exile in Lebanon after fleeing Kuwait during the Gulf War. The children raised with the epic tales of their grandfather’s heroism in the defense of Palestine, finally meet him but only for one day, before he dies. The young brothers try to transcend their predicament as refugees by spending their holidays productively, inspired by the girl that created beautiful ritual out of her grandmother.The film is a product of the project “Palestinian Refugee Children in Lebanon” and inspired by a true story.

Childhood in the Midst of Mines (2002, 18mins)
“We’re deprived from playing because of the mines, and our families are not able to cultivate the land.” Hicham Kayed’s film is his response to this remark by 12-year-old Doha in Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon. Kayed’s documentary collects pure voices and messages of the children in the refugee camp. This film is a product of a project, “Raising Children’s Awareness on the Dangers of Mines” conceived and organized by Al–JANA/ARCPA (Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts). The screening fee of Kayed’s films is donated for forming a fund to support culture and education of Palestinian children in a refugee camp.


Jayce Salloum & Walid Ra’ad

Up to the South (1993, 60mins)
“Up to the South” explores the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon and the powerful resistance to this occupation. It also examines several popular discursive notions such as “the land,” “culture,” and “identity” in relation to both the East and the West. Discussions on “terrorism,” “occupation,” “colonialism,” “post-colonialism,” “truth,” “myths,” and “martyrdom” provide an excellent opportunity for a parallel critique of the documentary genre as well as the West’s production of information about the region.


Azza El-Hassan
Kings and Extras: Digging for the Palestinian Image(2004, 62mins)
The films of the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality–and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a “road-movie” from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, the director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive. The increasingly absurd search finally leads her to a martyr’s graveyard, where the films are said to be buried–but no one really wants to dig over the whole place. While Azza El-Hassan’s search for lost images leads her down various dead ends, she is confronted with new clues and starts to construct her own story.


Elia Suleiman

Divine Intervention (2002, 92mins)
In this darkly comic masterpiece, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman utilizes irreverence, wit, mysticism and insight to craft an intense, hallucinogenic and extremely adept exploration of the dreams and nightmares of Palestinians and Israelis living in uncertain times. Subtitled, “A Chronicle of Love and Pain,” “Divine Intervention” follows ES, a character played by and clearly based upon the filmmaker himself. ES is burdened with a sick father, a stalled screenplay and an unrequited love affair with a beautiful Palestinian woman living in Ramallah. An Israeli checkpoint on the Nazareth-Ramallah road forces the couple to rendezvous in an adjacent parking lot. Their relationship and the absurd situations around them serve as metaphors for the lunacy of larger cultural problems. The result is a palpable rage that is both personal and political

Chronicle of a Disappearance(1996, 88mins)
What does it mean to be Palestinian in the second half of the twentieth century? Elia Suleiman was born in Nazareth in 1960, well after the establishment in 1948 of the state of Israel in historic Palestine. After twelve years in exile, living in New York, Suleiman returns to the land of his birth in an attempt to find his roots. “Chronicle of a Disappearance” does not take a position on the political impasse in the Middle East. Rather, the film is a personal meditation upon the spiritual effect of political instability on the Palestinian people, their psyche and their identity.


Mohammed Soueid

Nightfall (2000, 70mins)
In 1975, a group of young Lebanese men joined a group within the Palestinian organization “Fatah” known as “The Student Brigade” that took part in the Lebanese civil war. Some of them were killed, others left the country. Following the Israeli invasion of 1982, The Student Brigade was dissolved and the once young fighters that survived, have now aged, healing their solitude with alcohol, poetry and song. Director Mohamed Soueid draws from his diaries, recounting the time he spent in The Student Squad of Fatah. He recounts stories, both happy and sad, of old friends fallen during the war and of others still living with their memories and solitude.

Tango of Yearning (1998, 70mins)
Relationships of people and cinema are the central themes in this very personal, endearing film. A personal journey where images of love and yearning for cinema in wartime and post-war Beirut are revisited in the filmmaker’s attempt to reconstruct the shattered image of a missing passionate life. Mostly lighthearted but sparkling with intensity, “Tango of Yearning” is a marvelous tribute to the anguish and longing inherent both in human relationships and on the silver screen.

Civil War(2002, 85mins)
Mohamed Doaybess worked for many years as an assistant director and production manager for numerous Lebanese filmmakers. In the winter of 2000, he left his home in the southern suburbs of Beirut, never to return. Several months after his disappearance, his body was found in a deserted war-torn building. Reasons of his death still remain unknown. The film reconstructs Doaybess’s life and his tragic demise.


Monika Borgmann & Lokman Slim

Massacre (2004, 98mins)
Between September 16 and 18, 1982, for two nights and three days, the killers of Sabra and Shatila went about their heinous crimes. In the end, they had murdered between 1,000 and 3,000 Palestinian civilians, predominantly women, children and old people. The precise number of victims–both those killed and those missing – is not known to this very day. “Massacre” is a psycho-political study of perpetrators, who participated in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, both on orders and on their own personal initiative. The film intertwines the mental dispositions of the killers with their political environment and broaches the phenomenon of collective violence through their accounts.


Workshop

Day 1. Monday, Dec. 12, Jalal Toufic
1: 00 pm-3:00 pm “Saving the Living Human’s Face and Backing the Mortal”
3: 30 pm-5:30 pm “‘Âshûrâ’: A Condition of Possibility of an Unconditional Promise”
Artist’s presentation on theoretical background and development progress of his works (Please refer to Screening section for further information on Jalal Toufic.)

Day 2. Tuesday, Dec. 13, Naji Assi
1: 00 pm-4:00 pm “Traces of Life-Rouwaysset Project”
Artist’s presentation on theoretical background and development progress of his works
(Please refer to Exhibition section for further information on Tony Charkar & Naji Assi.)

Day 3. Wednesday, Dec. 14, Akram Zaatari
1: 00 pm-4:00 pm “Activities of Arab Image Foundation”
Akram Zaatari, an artist and founder of the Arab Image Foundation gives an introductory presentation on activities and projects the AIF has initiated. The Arab Image Foundation is an institution based in Beirut, established and led by artists themselves in Beirut. Holding the biggest collection of a photography archive, the Arab Image Foundation utilizes this collection as a resource material for artist’s publication, exhibition, and other diverse type of production.

Day 4. Thursday, Dec. 15, flyingCity, Paola Yacoub & Michel Lasserre
* This session is not open to the public.
10:00 am-12:00 pm Project Proposal 1: Paola Yacoub and Michel Lasserre
1:00 pm- 4:00 pm Project Proposal 2: flyingCity
Interpretation : Lee Kyung –Hee

Workshop program will be provided with a consecutive interpretation of Korean/English.
This the Workshop of Day 4 session is not open to public.
The discussion and project proposal disclosed in this workshop are to be published in the spring issue of BOL, a quarterly journal of Insa Art Space.


About Artists and Filmmakers
Akram Zaatari (Lebanon) is a video artist and curator who lives and works in Beirut. He is the author of more than thirty videos, among which are: “How I Love You”(2001), “Her+ Him Van Leo”(2001), “Crazy of You”(1997), “All is Well on the Border”(1977), “The Candidate”(1996), and two video installations, “Another Resolution and Monument #5” and “The Scandal.” He is a co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut started in 1996 to promote historical research of the visual culture of the Arab world, and to promote experimental video production in the region. Through AIF Zaatari has developed his recent research-based work on the photographic history of the Middle East. This work became the basis for a series of exhibitions: “The Vehicle: Picturing Moments of Transition in a Modernizing Society”(Portrait du Caire); “Van Leo, Arman, Alban and Mapping Sitting”; “On Portraiture and Photography”(in collaboration with Walid Ra’ad). He has edited or co-edited three publications of the same titles. His writing have been published in critical and scholarly journals such as: Parachute, Camera Austria, Framework, Transition, Bomb magazine, Al-Adaab, al-Nahar and Zawaya.

Azza El-Hassan(Palestina), current works and lives in Germany. Most of her stories in her films are based on true story her own Palestinian family had experienced during the forced fleeing from Palestine in 1948. Azza returned to the West Bank town of Ramallah on a tourist visa in 1996 and discovered Ramallah placed under a curfew of Israeli army. Azza El-Hassan’s film consists of a series of observational acts of her own state of being unable to return home. She tells you about all the little things under threat and shows myths, life stories and life lies, the personal effects of defeat and loss emerged from a life under a threat. Her films, however, do not forget to bring some humor to the tragedy of the situation–to which she simultaneously feels a sense of belonging and opposition. She also shows how the bitterness induced by occupation is transferred from generation to generation.

Bilal Khbeiz (Lebanon) was an officer in the Lebanese national resistance fighting against Israeli occupation between 1978 and 1987. During that period, he was made prisoner in Israel between 1984 and 1985. In 1988, he started working in Beirut, as a cultural reporter for Al Masa 3, which he did until 1989. Between 1992 and 1994, he worked for a weekly cultural supplement of the newspaper An-Nahar. His publication includes Perhaps Memory of Air (1991), On My Father Illness in the Unbearable (1997), The Body is Sin and Deliverance(1998), Al Kasal with Walid Sadek(1999) and The Water in the Cafe is Cold(2000).

Elia Suleiman (Palestine) moved to the US and served as a guest lecturer at many universities, art institutions and museums. He also directed short films, including “Introduction to the End of an Argument” and “Homage by Assassination.” In 1994, he came back to Jerusalem and was commissioned by the European Commission to initiate a Film and Media Department in Bir Zeit University. His first feature “Chronicle of a Disappearance”(1996) won the Prize for Best First Film at the Venice Film Festival. His second feature film, “Divine Intervention” won the Jury and Fipresci Prizes in Cannes Film Festival 2002. He currently lives and works in Paris, France.

flyingCity (Korea) is a Seoul-based artists’ collective(www.flyingcity.org), whose work brings together principles of psycho-geography with the modern realities of urbanism. At the heart of the collective is an ongoing commitment to an active research into the intricate relationship between the appropriation of capital and the resulting urban transformation. “All-Things Park,” the latest project of flyingCity, was stemmed from the group’s investigation on the project, “Cheonggyecheon renovation,” which is the major beautification project conceived and forced by the city of Seoul. flycingCity has been widely invited for lecture and workshop by international art, architecture, urban research institutions and was most recently featured at Istanbul Biennale.

Hicham Kayed (Palestine) currently lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon. Having his post at Al–JANA/ARCPA (Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts) as a multimedia coordinator and also a festival coordinator of Al–JANA’S Film Festivals (Palestine in the New Cinema & Jana International Children Film Festival). With a devotion to education of local young people of Palestine, Kayed has performed many workshops for children & youth, and supported them to express themselves by producing films. His films have participated in numerous festivals worldwide, and won several prestigious international awards. His films include “Lemonade”(2004), “Childhood in the Midst of Mines”(2002), “Our Dreams…When!?”(2001) and “God Forbid!”(2001).

Jalal Toufic (Lebanon) is the author of Distracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003), (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), Over-Sensitivity(1996), Forthcoming(2000), Undying Love, or Love Dies(2002), Two or Three Things I’m Dying to Tell You(2005), and ’Âshûrâ ‘: This Blood Spilled in My Veins(2005). His videos and mixed-media works have been presented internationally, in such venues as Artists Space in New York; Witte de With in Rotterdam; Fundaci Antoni Tpies in Barcelona; and the 16th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in a “Focus Jalal Toufic” program. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of the Arts, USC, and Das Arts and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He is the Head of the MA program in Film and Video Studies at Holy Spirit University, Lebanon. http://www.jalaltoufic.com.

Jayce Salloum (Lebanon) has been working in installation, photography, mixed & new media and video since 1975, as well as curating exhibitions, conducting workshops and coordinating cultural events. After 22 years living and working in San Francisco, Banff, Toronto, San Diego, Beirut, and New York, he now lives and works in Vancouver. His work takes place in a variety of contexts critically engaging itself in the representation of cultural/social/political manifestations and other cultures.

Joana Hadjithomas (Lebanon) and Khalil Joreige(Lebanon), are filmmakers and artists, currently based in Beirut. In 1999, they directed their first feature film, “Al Bayt el Zahr (Around the Pink House)”(a French-Canadian and Lebanese co-Production, 2000), they directed “Khiam”, a 52 minute- documentary film in 2000 and “The Lost Film” in 2003. They are the authors of various videos and photo installations. Among these are: “Beirut: Urban Fictions,” “Poste Restante,” “The Circle of Confusion,” “Don’t Walk” and “Rondes.” Lately, they have been working on different facets of their project, “Wonder Beirut”, which includes: “The Novel of a Pyromaniac Photographer, Postcards of War and Latent Images.” They both worked on various articles and publication, including the book, Beirut: Urban Fictions. Joana teaches scriptwriting. Khalil Joreige teaches the aesthetics and philosophy of an image at the Institute for Scenic and Audiovisual Studies (IESAV), ST. and Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon.

Lamia Joreige (Lebanon/France), has lived in France since 1983 where she studied graphic art followed by film school in the US (Rhode Island School of Design). She currently lives and works as a painter and video artist in Beirut and Paris. Lamia Joreige has presented her paintings and video pieces in a number of festivals, as well as in solo and collective exhibitions around the world. Her works include: “Objects of War n° 2 “(2003), “Here and Perhaps Elsewhere “(2003) , “Replay (bis)” (2002) , “The Bater Dance Project group” (2002) , “Replay“(2000) , “War Object “(2000), “The Journey” (1998-2000).

Mohammed Soueid (Lebanon) is Lebanon’s pioneer of independent video production. Acknowledged to have produced the first independent video in Lebanon in 1990, Soueid has produced a powerful video oeuvre. SHe is the author of a book-length study of Lebanese cinema and a novel written in , Georges Perec style. A founder of the independent media collective Beirut DC, he currently produces and acquires independent documentaries for the satellite channel MBC. Accomplished in many media, Souied is acknowledged by arab artists as a tireless promoter of creative and progressive expression, a lover of Orson Welles whose style is nevertheless uniquely Beirut.

Monika Borgmann (Germany) & Lokman Slim (Lebanon) have explored the subject of Massacre and Wars, as a part of major projects in Umam Production. Umam is a production established and founded by Borman and Slim themselves in Beirut at the end of 2001. Covering a wide range of production projects in cinema, television, theater and artistic production, it has expanded its scope of partners from individual artists to on/off line publication, journals and various media out of the Middle East. But, Umam Production has been noted for its spearheaded pursuit of themes of conflict, memory, responsibility and reconciliation. "The Massacre & Wars within Lebanon’s Wars" is the project Borgman and Slim have committed with involving different artist by each case, and "Massacre" is made with the partial collabration with Hermann Theissen (France).

Naji Assi(Lebanon) studied architecture at the Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) where he received his Bachelor of Architecture (1994) and then received his Masters from the Ecole d’architecture de Paris Belleville (1996). Naji Assi has been a part time faculty member at the Department of Architecture at ALBA since 1997 at the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut since 2003. He has been working since 1998 as an associate architect at Sabbag Architects in Beirut focusing on the rehabilitation of historical buildings and on new developments in the city center. Assi regularly takes part in seminars on urban research (transformactions Paris, Grande Halle de La Villette, 2000 ; Contemporary Arab Representations Rotterdam, Witte de With, 2002) and has participated in many international competitions, the latest martyr’s square an the grand axis of Beirut. Among his publications: Towards a better built environment prepared for the Directorate of planning and the Order of Architects (2003), Traces of life with Tony Chakar produced by the Sharjah Biennial(2003).

Paola Yacoub (Lebanon) & Michel Lasserre(France) have been associates since 1996. Their main concern has been to articulate the expressiveness of territories and their aesthetic and political implications through photographing urban landscape. Born in Beirut in 1966, Paola Yacoub was graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Michel Lasserre, born in Auch, France in 1947, studied architecture and philosophy in Paris. They have been featured at numerous international shows in important art venues including Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2000), Venice Biennial (2000), Sao Paolo Biennale(2002) and Busan Biennale(2004). During the period when they were involved in the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart as board members, they organized an exhibition, “The Next Village in February 2002,” which was also shown at the Galerie Claude Samuel in Paris in February.

Rabih Mroué (Lebanon) started producing his own productions since 1990. He acted in, directed and wrote several plays, performances and videos among them: “Who’s afraid of Representation”(2005), “Life is short but the day is long”(2005), “Looking for a Missing Employee”(Ashkal Alwan Production, 2003), “Bir-rouh Bid-damm” (Cine pome, 2003), “Limp Bodies”(Tansquartier Production, Vienna, 2003), “Biokhraphia”(Ashkal Alwan Production, 2002),“Face A/Face B”(Cin Pom, 2002), “Three Posters”(Festival Ayoul Production, 2000), “Come in sir, we are waiting for you outside”(1998), “Extension 19” (Festival Ayloul Production, 1997), “La Prison de Sable”(1995), “The Lift”(1993), and “L’Abat-Jour(1990). Since 1995, he has worked at Future TV as a writer and director of short animation films and documentaries.

Tony Chakar (Beirut) is an architect, artist and writer. He has participated in many projects and exhibitions, including “Once Upon a Time There Was A Mouth( Sao Paolo Biennial, 2002)”, “Convulsive Fables, (Universidad International de Andalica )(UNIA), 2001), “4 Cotton Underwear for Tony ( Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, 2001), “ All that is Solid Melts into Air”( Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 2000), “ A Retroactive Monument for a Chimerical City” (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 1999), “ Come in, Sir, we’re waiting for you outside (Ayloul Festival 1998).

Walid Sadek(Lebanon) is an artist and writer. His latest exhibitions include “Rumours,” (Townhouse Gallery of Contemparary Art, Cairo, 2001); “I Don’t Think People Leave Hamra Street: Part of the Hamra Street Project”(Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 2000); “Adolescence”(Ayloul Festival 2000, Beirut); “Karaoke”(The Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, 1998). He is the author of several art publications such as Al-Kasal(1999) with Bilal Khbeiz and Bigger than Picasso(1999).

Walid Ra’ad(Lebanon) grew up in Lebanon and now lives and works in the U.S. His works include textual analysis and video and photography projects, and concentrate on the Lebanese civil wars, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and documentary theory and practice. Walid’s career has been led through his activities through the Atlas Group, a one-man project band established by himself in 1999. Atlas Group(www.theatlasgroup.org) has created research-based projects devoted to an audio, visual documenting of contemporary history of Lebanon. His videoworks include “Up To The South”(with Jayce Salloum), and the recently completed collection of video shorts titled, “The Dead Weight of Quarrel Hangs.” His photography projects include “The Beirut Archive—an ongoing documentary photography project of post-Civil War Beirut.” Walid Ra’ad is also a member of the Arab Image Foundation.

Project Director: Beck Jee-Sook(Insa Art Space); Park Chan-Kyong(Alternative Space Pool)
Curator: Heejin Kim(Insa Art Space); Chae Eun-Young(Alternative Space Pool);
Staff: BoRa Yoon, Han Yoon-Ah(Insa Art Space); Jang Yoon-Ju, Kim Ju-Hee, Yoon Hyung-Min(Alternative Space Pool)

Organized by Insa Art Space of Arts Council Korea, Alernative Space Pool
Sponsored by Arts Council Korea, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture
Thanks to: Gwangju International Film Festival, Seoul Independent Film Festival