Journée Paroles et Manœuvres: Sound Art, War and the Arab World
Special Event
Saturday May 16th, 2pm to 7pm
Presented as part of ELEKTRA 16: POST-AUDIO and of the 1st edition of the International Sound Art Biennial (BIAS)
Journée Paroles et Manoeuvres
In the spirit of exchange and reflection, Skol invites the public to participate in Journées Paroles et Manœuvres. A cross-disciplinary meeting of interventions, conferences, performances and discussions, this event aims to inverse roles, to encourage collaboration between different types of expertise and to support hybrid forms of communication. Journées Paroles et Manœuvres is an opportunity to take time, together, through various forms and ideas.
“16 May 2015 2:01 p.m. That day, they met in a studio located in a building downtown. She had come to the coffee shop, where he waited under the awnings. “Hi,” he kissed her, “Are you all right? “. Far away, the sound of bombing was tearing down the sky. Closer, men stood at the end of their weapons feeling the anxiety together. The land was enduring. “Well, she answered, I hurried, the electricity was cut off. What about the others? “” Some have arrived already. Anything new? “” Yes, I’ll tell you about it but let’s get to them first”. Thus they got together with the desire to live yet for another night, to make music, and for the others to read and write.
A warm breeze in the night, a night that presages rain and thunder, one that upsets trees and brings clouds to life; a night with an uncertain future. “- Mirna Boyadjian
Schedule
– 14h: Sound piece by Mazen Kerbaj, Starry Night (2006)
On the night of July 16, 2006 in Beirut, Mazen Kerbaj recorded an improvisation piece on the trumpet that develops with the sound of destruction.
– 14.30: Performance by Mirna Boyadjian (concept), Raïa Haïdar (action), Nadia Abiad (narration) and Thomas Sinou (sound). A Night (2015)
A performance that deals with war through the narration of the experience of a night during the Lebanese civil war.
– 15h: lectures and discussions
Samir Saul – The Arab world in turmoil: Points of reference
The conference will present synthetically the main causes of the current tensions in the Arab World. The historical focus will allow for a better understanding of the origins of these conflicts and explain their evolution.
Monia Abdallah – The War Regime in the Silence of Peace. Reflections on a Selection of Contemporary Artworks.
Recent books on contemporary Middle-Eastern art as well as exhibition catalogues have certainly helped introduce the theme of war into the contemporary art from the Middle East around the notions of conflict, history and Identity, but they don’t address specifically the issues raised by implicit relationships between these concepts. Various career paths that artists shown here had and their respective ways of representing the war will make us question the distinction so quickly acknowledged between the art of the diaspora and the art created in the country at war, in this case Iraq: does that distinction make sense when it comes to the expression of war and its aftermath?
Serge Cardinal – Stereophony of the Syrian Conflict
Having as the only trace of the Syrian conflict the audiovisual material found on the web, the artist Christine Renaudat makes her first intervention: she removes the images and keeps only the sounds; she strips away the visual leaving us to experience only the audio recording. As if the images were no longer able to depict war. And as if listening was our last chance to embrace the resistance of Syrians. As long as listening does not entice our imagination. This is why the artist intervenes for the second time: turning the stereophonic sound into a real clash between two sound regimes, and therefore into something political: shouting against shooting, people’s appeals against mortar explosions …
– 17h: Videos and short film
Rehab Nazzal – Military Exercise in the Negev Prison, 6:36, 2014
The highly censored footage reveals an Israeli military training exercise that took place in 2007 in the Negev prison, where hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners are held, mostly without charge or trial.
Rehab Nazzal – Target, 4:00, 2012
Target consists of tens of still photographs of posters and found portraits of Palestinian leaders, intellectuals, and activists who were assassinated inside the occupied Palestine and across the world.
Mary Ellen Davis (image, original sound), José Garcia-Lozano (editing, additional sound),
Will Eizlini (sound track, additional sound) – Un jour en Palestine, 5 :00, 2007
Scenes of everyday life in occupied Palestine, filmed in a 1960’s home-movie style, creating a sense of irreality. Instead of a day at the beach or at the park: a wall, an olive tree, a bulldozer and soldiers harassing grandmothers.
– 17:30: Radwan Ghazi Moumneh
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh is proposing a musical project that addresses the experience of the ephemeral in a performative context, presenting a reiteration of the contemporary culture of the Levant.
“My New Friend and his Friend” Mazen Kerbaj