The time is drawing near when all nationalities will disappear. The home-land will be an archeologism, like the tribe…The man of the Future may have immense joys. He will travel to the stars, with air pills in his pockets. The rest of us have performed the most difficult and least glorious task: the transition— Flaubert

The Notion of the Fishing Document 

For years he has been haunted. He wakes up every morning, snatches up all the local newspapers in Beirut, rushes to his office, perches himself over his desk and commences his excavations. He sifts through every last newspaper, gleaning here a headline, there a caption, a line or parody on RS. He starts by highlighting his boxes, parsing the pages, coming through the intricacies of the paragraphs, dissecting pages upon our faces.   For years I have watched him collecting newspaper cutouts, dating them with severe punctuality. For fear of being unfaithful to daily events, he has selected, compiled, dated and stockpiled it all in a notebook; a notebook that suspends facts from everybody; a notebook full of history’s gaps. Aren’t we subject to history’s gaps? Don’t we too participate in producing them, in piercing them in our timelines? How we enjoy history’s hysteria; how fond of it we are. The knowledge notebook grew vigorously; pages bloomed from its thresholds, heading nowhere. I began to fear Rabih’s pages — pages of knowledge, of data, random information, obsolete records. Seated amongst the audience, he rifles through the pages of his notebook. His image tucked away on the theatre platform competes with his other, seated one. Unsure of what to make of the two images, I am taken over by unrest and anxiety. I tremble, shiver: He cannot be reached. Both are ghostly.

 

Christine Tohme, 2008 From the Introduction, Home Works III Publication (published in 2008, presented at the Home Works IV Forum)

Fadi Abdallah Omar Amiralay

Ayreen Anastas

Renaud August-Dormeuil

Nadiah Bamadhaj

Yussef Bazzi

Abbas Beydoun

Dalal el Bizri

Nahla Chahal

Tony Chakar

Ali Cherri

Hassan Choubassi

Fouad Elkoury

Ghassan Halwani

Kamal Hamdan

Raed el Helou

Natasa Ilic Islah

Jad Zuhair al Jezairi

Amal Kenawy

Ahmed Khaled

Bilal Khbeiz

Steve Kurtz

Lynn Love Hashem el Madani

Cynthia Madansky

Reine Mahfouz

Nadim Mishlawi

Rabih Mroué

Rana el Nemr

Maani Petgar

Walid Raad

Jacques Rancière

Mahmoud Refat

Wissam Saadeh

Walid Sadek

Hazem Saghieh

Maher Abi Samra

Mohamad Abi Samra

Suhail Shadoud

Shirana Shahbazi

Carol Squiers

Jalal Toufic

Nadine Touma

Raed Yassin

Akram Zaatari

Yang Zhenzhong Critical Art Ensemble.

 Steve Kurtz Visible Collective : Naeem Mohaiemen

The Arab Image Foundation : Lisa Lefeuvre and Akram Zaatari

The Otholith Group : Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun