Head Above Water 

The course of seminars runs weekly throughout the 10-month period and is organized along four interconnected nodes that deal with, among other things, text, image, sound, movement and interdisciplinarity in Seeing, listening, writing, moving; the geopolitics and genealogies of the category of the artist in Histories of the artist; the histories of our relationships to, and the conditions and effects of life and the future under ‘technologies’ in an expanded sense, are elaborated in Technologies, life and the future; and Financialization introduces primary terms, and examines the formations of capital and its manifold instruments, which channel the distribution of energies, materials and power. 
 

Preface 

Ali Cherri | October 10th-29th, 2016 

For the 2016-17 year of HWP, Ali Cherri has been invited to co-organise a three-week Preface. The Head Above Water Preface proposes a three-week introduction to the the urban, literary, political-economic and artistic contexts of Beirut and Lebanon. In these introductory weeks, guests from a range of disciplines including architecture, urban planning, design, comics, law, political economy, visual art and theatre, will be invited to offer their positions on various aspects of the city, from urban and social development, to state and non-state problematics, to literary, gendered and exploratory readings of the city, and more. The Preface will also include a number of studio visits with artists working in different media including painting, installation, performance and video, as well as three solo exhibition visits: Haig Aivazian at Sfeir Semler Gallery, Saba Innab at Marfa’ Gallery and Hassan Khan at the Beirut Art Center. The Preface will end with a two-day retreat in Amchit.

Week One: Presentations by Ali Cherri and Joe Namy | Presentations by HWP 2016-17 fellows. 

Week Two: Guests speakers Sahar Mandour, Hatem Imam, Joelle Boutros, Jamil Mouawad, Nadia Abou Ali, and Zoukak Theater Company (Maya Zbib, Lamia Abi Azar | Visit Saba Innab exhibition at Marfa’ Gallery | Visit Haig Aivazian at Sfeir Semler Gallery. 

Week Three: Guests speakers Ahmaed Gharbieh | Abdul- Halim Jabr | Studio visits with Charbel- Joseph H. Boutros, Stephanie Saade, Tamara Al-Samerraei, and Danielle Genadry | Walk with Nesrine Khodr | Weekend retreat. 

 

Course Modules

Course Module I | November 2nd - December 14th, 2016

Listening, seeing, writing, moving 

Seminars with Guest Professors Hala Auji, Diann Bauer, Seth Ayyaz, Jalal Toufic, Haytham Al Wardany and Mirene Arsanios.

Course Module II | January 18th - February 15th, 2017  

Histories of the artist 

Seminars with Guest professors: Tirdad Zolghadr, Walid Sadek and Kristine Khoury

Course Module III | March 1st- March 30th 

Technologies, life and the future 

Seminars with Guest professors Jihad Touma, Keller Easterling and Suhail Malik.

Course Module IV | May 10th - June 8th, 2017 

Financialization 

Seminars with Guest Professors: Sami Khatib, Ray Brassier, Ana Texeira Pinto and Elie Ayache.

Workshops

Workshop 1 | November 7th-30th, 2016 

Visiting Professor Cevdet Erek 

Shall I quickly sketch a series of moves and throw it to all the people scattered around 
while there is still enough daylight to read it at a gallop
so we stay in sync
in such a brief history of unexpected events
while the agreement forces us to stay on schedule
will they be able to read my eyes and freeze?
ignoring everything else
while all those sensors and hearts are tracking us
to melt again 
In sync with the seminar module titled Listening, seeing, writing, moving, for his workshop, Cevdet Erek wants to trigger a practice on composition and improvisation, with a special focus on translation. The group will determine forms and channels of output during and after conducting a series of solo and group exercises + presentations + short travels. 
 

Workshop 2 | January 23rd - February 8th, 2017 

Visiting professor Lina Majdalanie 

In parallel with the module on histories of the artist, and through group and individual practical exercises, this workshop aims to explore the relationship between the personal and the common (or the public). It aims to bring the distant closer and to estrange the familiar, or even to make a stranger out of it. It wants to dig vertically and archaeologically into a point, and to search horizontally for unexpected, possible and existing links. 

Workshop 3 | March 13th - 27th, 2017

Visiting Professor Lawrence Abu Hamdan 

The Life and Times of a Private Ear
The intention of Abu Hamdan’s workshop is two-fold. On the one hand, it will draw from the double life of his practice as part audio investigator, part visual artist, in order to explore the potential of the multiple lives of an artist, and other producers of artifice, in a post-factual age of politics. Looking specifically at how the work of artists and the skills of aesthetic practitioners can be used to create new forms of audibility and visibility in today’s political forums. On the other hand, it will employ a series of lectures and workshops that focus on the role of of sound and listening in historical research, social and political practice and spatial thought respectively. Once combined, the two aspects of the workshop will function as a laboratory that critically engages with the contemporary function of the ear, while practically mobilizing audio technologies, artistic intervention and technique to propose a future of listening. The workshop will also include a guest lecture and workshop by artist and media theorist, Susan Schuppli. 

 

Workshop 4 | March 28th - April 7th, 2017 

Visiting Professor Maha Maamoun 

Maha Maamoun is a Cairo-based Egyptian artist. She is interested in examining the form, function and currency of common cultural, visual and literary images as an entry point to investigating the cultural fabric that we weave and are weaved into. She also works collaboratively on independent publishing and curatorial projects. She co-founded the independent publishing platform called Kayfa-ta in 2013. She is also a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC) – an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. 

Her work has been shown in exhibitions and biennials including: The Time is Out of Joint, Sharjah Art Foundation (2016); Century of Centuries, SALT(2015); Like Milking a Stone, Rosa Santos Gallery (2015); The Night of Counting the Years, Fridricianum (2014); Here and Elsewhere, New Museum; Ten Thousand Wiles and a Hundred Thousand Tricks, Meeting Points 7; Forum Expanded, Berlinale 64; Transmediale; Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear, Tate Modern; 9th Gwangju Biennale; Momentarily Learning from Mega Events, Makan, Amman; Second World: Where is Progress Progressing, Steirischer Herbst; The End of Money, Witte de With; Sharjah Biennial 10; Mapping Subjectivity, MoMA; Live Cinema, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Ground Floor America, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art; The Future of Tradition/The Tradition of Future, Haus Der Kunst.

Course Module IV | May 10th - June 8th, 2017 

Financialization 

Seminars with Guest Professors: Sami Khatib, Ray Brassier, Ana Texeira Pinto and Elie Ayache.

Workshop 5 | May 15th - June 7th, 2017 

Visiting professor Metahaven 

CONTRADICTIONS

Metahaven

In January, on the 5th of April,
In dry weather with knee-high puddles.
On a brick street made of wooden planks
Walked a tall man of short height
Curly with no hair, thin like a barrel.
With no children, only a son and a daughter.

—Anonymous Russian children’s poem

The prompt for this workshop is “Contradictions.”

Life with intense contradictions used to be a privilege reserved for people in the global non-West. Within the bubble of post-War Western Europe, things at once seemed quite predictable and okay. Conflicts and wars were kept at bay; colonial practices invisible. There were many ways in which contradictions were suppressed. The welfare state and various forms of “stability,” however contradictory they may have been, created the semblance of cohesion. Increasingly, contradictions as manifest in daily life, politics, and ideological languages, came to permeate the world beyond the confines of their former geographical and political boundaries. Some of the responses are complacency and anger. There is an almost never-ending list of injustices and wrongs to be addressed, but at the same time our cognitive and linguistic capabilities fall short of this work, as does our ability to take action for or against. Emancipatory discourses and vocabularies are growing old and tired, and there is a hyper-fragmentation and atomization of the political spectrum. Social media bubbles blow up and burst, and we hop from capsule to capsule.
In spite of the fragmentation, the same themes continue to define our lives. The themes of birth, love, and death, belonging, arrival, departure, and other larger motives continue to shape our perspective – in spite, perhaps, of our efforts to generate artistic, informational, and other side universes.

How do we reconcile life with harsh contradictions? Is it only bitter, or also sweet? Does the attempt to create poetry make peace with the enemy – or is this poetry itself a necessary survival and defense mechanism, perhaps, our last one? 

Participants' presentations  and Open Studio 

Group critiques | June 21st - 23rd, 2017 

With guests Danielle Genadry, Roy Samaha and Rayyane Tabet . 

Group Critiques | January 9th-13th, 2017 

With guests Haig Aivazian, Helene Kazan and Tirdad Zolghadr. 

Group Critiques | April 24th - 28th, 2017

With guests Danielle Genadry, Walid Sadek and Roy Samaha  

Open Studios July 12th-15th 

Click here to access Open Studio event page

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and “private ear” whose projects have taken the form of audiovisual installations, performances, graphic works, photography, Islamic sermons, cassette tape compositions, potato chip packets, testimony, human rights reports, essays, and lectures. Abu Hamdan’s interest in sound and its intersection with politics, originates from his background in DIY music. In 2013 Abu Hamdan’s audio documentary, The Freedom of Speech Itself, was submitted as evidence at the UK asylum tribunal where the artist himself was called to testify as an expert witness. He continues to make sonic analyses for legal investigations and advocacy for organisations such as Amnesty International, and was prominently part of the No More Forgotten Lives campaign for Defense for Children International. The artist’s forensic audio investigations are conducted as part of his research for Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths College London, where he is also a PhD candidate. 

His solo exhibitions include Earshot at Portikus, Frankfurt (2016), Taqiyya at Kunsthalle St Gallen (2015), Tape Echo (2013) at Beirut in Cairo and Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven, The Freedom Of Speech Itself (2012) at Showroom, London, The Whole Truth (2012) at Casco, Utrecht. Additionally his works have been exhibited and performed at venues such as the Shanghai Biennial (2014); the Whitechapel Gallery, London; MACBA, Barcelona; Tate Modern, London; M HKA, Antwerp; the Beirut Art Center (2016); and Liverpool Biennial (2016). Abu Hamdan’s writing can be found in Forensis (Sternberg Press), Manifesta Journal, and Cabinet Magazine. His works are part of collections at MoMA in New York, the Van AbbeMuseum in Eindhoven, and the Arts Council, England.

Ali Cherri was born in Beirut in 1976. He works with video, installation, performance, multimedia and print. His recent exhibitions include Lest the Two Seas Meet at Warsaw Museum of Modern Art (Poland 2015), Mare Medi Terra at Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma (Spain, 2015), On Things That Move solo show at Galerie Imane Farès (France, 2014), Songs of Loss and Songs of Love at Gwangju Museum of Art (South Korea, 2014), and Helsinki Photography Biennial (Finland, 2014). Cherri has presented his work inat various venues and festivals including at The Berlinale (Berlin), TIFF (Toronto), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Delfina Foundation (London), Tate Modern (London), VideoBrazil (Sao Paolo), Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo), Modern Art Oxford (Oxford), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Manifesta (Amsterdam), Yalay Art Space (Hong Kong), KunstFilmBiennale (Köln), Kasa Galeri (Istanbul). He recently received the Arab Short Best Director Award at Dubai International Film Festival 2013, and the Res Artis Award 2013 at VideoBrasil, and the NEARCH Award 2014 for his current research on archeology. Cherri works and lives in Paris and Beirut.

Cevdet Erek was born in Istanbul in 1974. During and after studying architecture at Mimar Sinan University, Cevdet Erek was a member of the music band Nekropsi. He completed a Master’s degree in Sound Engineering & Design at ITU MIAM, and was an artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie (Amsterdam, 2005-2006). He works at Istanbul Technical University where he offers courses on sound and space. 

Erek’s installations have been shown in dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), Istanbul Biennial (2003, 2013 and 2015), Sidney Biennial (2016), Sharjah Biennial (2013), Stedelijk Museum (2014), MAXXI (2014 and 2015), Istanbul Modern (2014, 2015 and 2016), Arter (2011), among others. His published books are: SSS – Shore Scene Soundtrack (2008, BAS), Room of Rhythms 1 (2012, Walther König), and Less Empty Maybe (2015, Revolver). Erek was responsible for the sound and music direction for Kaan Müjdeci’s film Sivas (71st Venice Film Festival – Special Jury Prize, 2014), and music and sound co-design (with Cenker Kökten) for Emin Alper’s film Abluka (Frenzy) (72nd Venice Film Festival – Special Jury Prize, 2015). He lives and works in Istanbul.

Maha Maamoun is a Cairo-based Egyptian artist. She is interested in examining the form, function and currency of common cultural, visual and literary images as an entry point to investigating the cultural fabric that we weave and are weaved into. She also works collaboratively on independent publishing and curatorial projects. She co-founded the independent publishing platform called Kayfa-ta in 2013. She is also a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC) – an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. 

Her work has been shown in exhibitions and biennials including: The Time is Out of Joint, Sharjah Art Foundation (2016); Century of Centuries, SALT(2015); Like Milking a Stone, Rosa Santos Gallery (2015); The Night of Counting the Years, Fridricianum (2014); Here and Elsewhere, New Museum; Ten Thousand Wiles and a Hundred Thousand Tricks, Meeting Points 7; Forum Expanded, Berlinale 64; Transmediale; Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear, Tate Modern; 9th Gwangju Biennale; Momentarily Learning from Mega Events, Makan, Amman; Second World: Where is Progress Progressing, Steirischer Herbst; The End of Money, Witte de With; Sharjah Biennial 10; Mapping Subjectivity, MoMA; Live Cinema, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Ground Floor America, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art; The Future of Tradition/The Tradition of Future, Haus Der Kunst.

Lina Majdalanie has written, acted and directed a number of plays, including Les Chaises (1996), Ovrira (1997), Extrait d’Etat Civil (2000), Biokhraphia (2002), Appendice (2007), Photo-Romance (2009), 33 Tours, Quelques Secondes(2012) and A Drop of Sweat (2015). She also directed I Had A Dream, Mom (video, 2006) and Lina Saneh Body-P-Arts Project (a website project, 2007). She has taught in several universities in Beirut, and at the Geneva University of Art and Design (2008-2013), DasArt in Amsterdam (2012) and Goethe University in Frankfurt (2016). She was a member of Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Curricular Committee between 2010 and 2014.

Metahaven, founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, Metahaven is a collective working across design, art, and filmmaking. Recent solo presentations include ‘Information Skies’, Auto Italia, London (2016), ‘The Sprawl’, YCBA, San Francisco (2015), ‘Black Transparency’, Future Gallery, Berlin (2014), and ‘Islands in the Cloud’, MoMA PS1, New York (2013). Recent group exhibitions include ‘Fear & Love’, Design Museum, London (2016), ‘Dream Out Loud’, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2016), ‘The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?)’, the 11th Gwangju Bienniale (2016), ‘All of This Belongs to You’, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2015), ‘Private Settings: Art After the Internet’, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (2014), and ‘Frozen Lakes’, Artists Space, New York (2013). Recent publications include ‘Black Transparency’ (2015), ‘Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?’ (2013), and ‘Uncorporate Identity’ (2010). Music videos by Metahaven include ‘Home’ (2014), and ‘Interference’ (2015), both for musician, composer and artist Holly Herndon, as part of an ongoing collaboration. Metahaven’s first full-length documentary, ‘The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda)’, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2016. Its successor, a short film titled ‘Information Skies’, was shot and edited in 2016 worldwide.

Joe Namy is a composer and media artist. His work often addresses identity, memory, power, and currents encoded in organized sound/music, such as the politics and gender dynamics of bass, the color and tones of militarization, or the migration and asylum patterns of musical instruments. His work has been exhibited, screened, and amplified at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, the Berlinale, the Brooklyn Museum, the Beirut Art Center, the Detroit Science Center, and less prominent international dance floors. Some of his projects fall under the sound art platform titled Electric Kahraba, an experimental radio program that operates out of clocktower.org.

Ghalya Saadawi is an independent writer and academic living in Beirut. She lectures at the fine arts and art history department of the American University of Beirut and at the University of St. Joseph, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary art theory, and Lebanese post-war art. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, artists’ monographs and edited volumes. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London titled Rethinking the Witness: Art After the Lebanese Wars (2015) and is currently artistic director of Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program.