Samir Kassir

Historiography of Beirut

I believe what separates somewhat frivolous current upper class tourism, with travel-for-travel-sake four times a year journeys, from serious traveling is the careful research and the "further readings". Here's my direct bibliography for the recent hop into Lebanon:

Nicolas Sursock

Shaker Abtissi

Grozny-like devastation ...

Nahr El Bared ( Northeast Lebanon) still a desolate monument to asymmetrical warfare.

Nahr El Bared

A Grozni-like desolation...

(text to follow soon)

Alfred Sursock

Mahatma Gandhi

Bi'lin (West Bank, Palestine)

Will non-violent resistance prove itself a shorter way to end the ocupation? Most of us keep our fingers crossed.

Adam Thirlwell

Indeed "one of the funniest, most stylish and utterly original debuts in years". Threesome sex, bits of Jewish North London, hints of Stalin's relations with selected Russian writers (Mandelstam, Bulgakov), Bauhaus architecture as source of metaphors and aforisms - all very Kunderesque. But above all one is impressed with the "voice" of the writer. Quite something.

Mikhail Lermontov

Recent readings.

Russia wins.

Tarek Al-Ghoussein

At Al-Ma'mal (Old City) an exhibition of photographs by Tarek Al-Ghoussein

At Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, New Gate, Old City, Jerusalem a exhibition by Palestinian-Kuwaiti photographer Tarek Al-Ghoussein titled "In Absentia". The show represents an interesting glimpse on how Contemporary Art in East Jerusalem can be sponsored. Instead of relying on the budgets for cultural activities of local Western diplomatic missions, this time you have 'The Third Line", a Dubai gallery, the Sharjah Foundation (UAE) and ( ok, it weakens my argument) Ford Foundation.

As the leaflet of Al-Ma'mal points out: "Tarek Al-Ghoussein's work exposes an identity shaped by a context of inaccessibility and loss, his fabricated landscapes providing a foil for the experience of exile. In many of his works the artist is dwarfed by a vast desert landscape, reconstructing allegories for the obstacles, barricades and walls erected in the Occupied Territories."

Read more at www.almamalfoundation.org

Tracey Emin

Personal life archeology. Changing the focus from the bedroom to the office room so to speak...

Anwar Sadat

"Homonym" (Sadat's " Visit) 2009, Mixed media,

by Ruti Sela, Boaz Arad, Doron Rabina and Guy Ben-Ner,

A grounded airplane (made of clay) from which a small figure emerges at the top of the stairs of the front exit, just like Heads of State, or other important visitors do... The rapid decaying material, the fact the plane looks it endured a crash landing, the figure who evokes a alien-who-visits-planet-Earth - there's a sense of doom, a feeling of tragic events, like a near-miss catastrophe. Is it a requiem for Peace (that Sadat symbolically inaugurated with his historical visit when he landed at Ben Gurion) ?

A very powerful work in "The Side Show" , the small companion to the main event, during the ArtTLV biennale.