 in week two of what is a five-week online virtual assembly this year. And this week we're focusing on Beirut. Yesterday we had a powerful and ultimately I found very optimistic conversations. But today I'm very pleased that Amanda Abi Khalil, curator and the founder of TAMP, which she will talk about, is able to join us. She's in the middle of a whole new initiative in Brazil, which I'm sure she will also talk about. And I think some of you will remember she was able to be with us live in New York last year at last year's assembly coming directly from what was then the October Revolution in Beirut. So a city that's gone through multiple crises. And since the catastrophic explosion on August the fourth, the cultural sector has been reeling, looking at how it can play a role and rebuild both civic and the cultural life of the city. So Amanda, thank you very much for making time and for convening the panel and curating the extensive resources list, which is on our website for people who want to read more or see more about what's happening in Beirut. But I hand over to you, Amanda, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much, Simon. Thank you CEC for having me once again in your assembly. This year is a bit unusual. It's online, but it's a very important format to give voices to practitioners from Lebanon during these very, very difficult times for us. As you said, Simon, exactly a year ago, I was in New York at the physical assembly and my intervention was about the revolution that had just begun. And I was talking about the promise it was opening up for the cultural sector. Today I'm speaking, I will be speaking about the state of agony, we're living as Lebanese citizens, and as artists and curators, and about the specificity and of the reality the cultural sector is facing nowadays in Lebanon. As you said, I am personally in Brazil since the year, so since last year's assembly. Partly because I was stuck, first by the economic crisis, which took hold of my savings, we will talk about this capital control that is affecting the arts being later on. Also because of the pandemic, which delayed the project I was working on in Brazil. I would like to first start by thanking Omar and the panelists, Omar who's in the same space with me who took the courage of taking part in this residency. We will talk about it. I would like to thank Helena and Haig for having accepted this invitation. I know how hard it is for all of us to provide the slightest effort for anything at the moment so I really really appreciate the time you're taking for this. Haig, you want to present yourself briefly and then we'll just like say hello and then I will continue with my intro before giving you the mic again. My name is Haig Aibazian. I have been co-director of the Beirut Art Sector, along with Ahmad Aqsan since January. And I'm also a visual artist. Helena. I'm Helena Naseeb. I've been the managing director of cultural resource El Maurit Fakafis in September 2017 and I'm also a cultural researcher. Hi everyone, my name is Omar Musmar. I'm a visual artist and also an educator based in Beirut. So what we've been living is a total collapse. I don't know what terminologies we're going to use. I think it's also hard to think of words. Yesterday, Omar Rajah at the first part of this seminar was describing the situation as a roller coaster. It's true that I have been away from Beirut since the year, the worst year for my country and its people. But from where I am, there's only Beirut on my mind. So I gave today's panel that the title of Beirut, the city that is not. Referring to an open letter written by Elias Houdi, a prominent Lebanese writer and thinker, which was published in Le Monde, the French daily newspaper, three days after the Beirut port explosion. I will read excerpts as an intro to our conversation. This is not Beirut, but no, this is Beirut, a city broken and wounded, whose blood spreads like glass over the eyes. A city paved with glass, as though glass had turned into eyes, plucked out and filling the streets. In Beirut, you must tread on your eyes in order to see. And when you see, you're struck blind. A city of glassy blindness, of ammonium nitrate, and of the searing glass that swallowed the city and split the sea. This is not Beirut. Don't ask the city who killed it. Those who killed it were those who ruled it. Beirut knows it and all of you know it. The killers of the city are the ones who tried to kill the 17 October Revolution by forming a government of technocratic puppets and who unleashed the dogs of repression on the streets. The killers of the city are the communal party mafias that took the country over and proclaimed the civil war ended by converting its menacing ghost into a political regime. The killers of the city are the ones who elected Michel Aoun as president, converting the catastrophe created by oligarchy into farce. Listen well. Beirut has blown us apart to proclaim your demise, not ours. Beirut is not its past. Beirut is its present. It bleeds blood, not honor. Stop talking. Shut up. Everything you have to say concerns us. We want just one thing from you to be gone. Go you and the bankers and everyone else who has gambled with our lives all the way to hell. Then we shall bind Beirut's wounds. We shall tell our city that it will return to us. Poor but joyful. The soul shall be renewed. And though weakened by its wounds, it will hold us tight to its pain and wipe away the tears from our eyes. The time of the bastards who have ruled our lives for so long is over. I would like to dedicate this person I worked with in Beirut last year at the gallery where Amal Mismar and I were starting to install his solo show. To Fadi Dahwish, who helped me hang several shows that curated in Beirut. To Alexander Najjar, the three-year-old daughter of a childhood friend, Paul. To Antoine Barmaqui, member of my family, who died to all the victims and the missing that these criminals have killed. Reconstruct and build upon immediate needs and long-term safeguarding of the control sector. I'm sure how far we will get into formulating any plans or solutions. Our priority is perhaps to start to start giving the foreign audience a glimpse of what we're going through as citizens, as artists, as curators from Lebanon today. I've been away and I certainly didn't feel the effect of the blast on my body the way Amal Haig and Helena felt it. It's reached me and deferred in ways. The explosion is somehow suspended in my nervous system between its status of an image and the word traumas it awakened from my childhood. The words often fail and the energy to explain also lacks. I think my colleagues here will agree with this. We are exhausted, drained. But if we collapse and withdraw, they will win. And if we stop thinking and plotting and hijacking resources and energy, they will win. But at the same time, turning anger into something productive is not an easy task. But the four of us here are trying very hard and somehow we're managing with with micro steps. So for the first part, I will ask Haig, Omar and Helena to tell us where they're speaking from a year after the breakout of the Lebanese Revolution. Sorry guys, I will not call it uprising. Revolutions are slow paced and two months and a half since the massive deadly explosion. Let's start with you Haig. What's about the present situation. Tell us about you and how you're dealing with these conflicting impulses at the Beirutat Center. Thanks. Thanks for that. Amanda was nice to just listen to you reading. I guess I should clarify also, I also didn't feel the explosion on my body, I was lucky to be abroad and I came, I guess a week after the blast I came back. I mean, it's, it's difficult to kind of give a sort of comprehensive image of the current moment for me because it's not really experienced as anything comprehensive. It's something that changes all the time. It's highly unstable, kind of very basic tasks or, or activities become sort of complicated people's attention spans are not, are not quite what they used to be. So, so there's these kind of more abstract things that end up being very concrete and very kind of repeated aspects of just the daily attempts to work or to, or to get together or to think together. And of course this is just the kind of your own mute. Can you give concrete examples of what this means because I think the foreign audience really need to understand what, what does it look like you know when when you go to your bank trying to ask for money to buy food you know what do you do when you don't have electricity like if you could give us concrete examples would be amazing. Yeah, I mean it's it's basically we're living in an extremely restrictive kind of restrictive and oppressive moment where every aspect of what you would call kind of a normal quotidian life is is made impossible essentially so you know there's been a kind of daylight robbery of an entire country with absolutely no legal structure to justify any of the kind of decisions or the policies the highly restricted policies of the banks so, for example, we're not able to access above a certain amount of money and that money is not enough for even the most basic kind of expenses. For example, it's not enough money to buy a ticket for people who are able to leave and have access to outside to just purchase a ticket or to study abroad to pay tuition, but also for most people to pay rent to buy groceries so it's like quite basic in that sense. So in terms of like our own activity here it just means a de facto localization of our activity so it's very difficult to pay somebody abroad, it's basically impossible. I mean you figure out ways and you kind of have a mule that happens to be going to a place where there happens to be somebody you're working with. So, you know, so kind of on a financial level, this is this is how it translates and then there's of course the something as simple as the value of the currency which is changing on a daily basis so there's an official rate, which is essentially the real rate of the currency. So for those people who still have jobs and are getting salaries they get it at the official rate of 1500, but then for everything that they're going to pay, they end up paying 8000 so. And that's in addition to the fact that prices have kind of quintupled or they're just through the roof. So this is on the kind of financial level. So going to the bank is actually, you know you go prepared for war and you go prepared for defeat basically. There's nothing that you can do. It's, it's, yeah, it's completely kind of transparent robbery without any legal framework but you have no. The whole system is kind of held together be it on a security level. And a financial level, it's all held together. And there's no possibility to kind of crack through it. So what it's meant for for kind of a center like the way art center which is a relatively large white cube, it's an exhibition space, you know it's not. It's not kind of like a social space necessarily it's like it's quite traditional in the sense that it's made for exhibitions. It turns out very quickly feeling like a kind of big cavernous empty hall so we've been spending several months trying to figure out what to do with this with the space. What is it that what are basically trying to think about this these highly restrictive conditions that to see if there's a way to turn them into some kind of generative prompts to. So what is an aesthetic that comes out from these very pragmatic set of conditions that can create that has to create a new kind of visual language. So that's what we kind of spend our time trying to think about on level, and then trying to, you know realizing that it's not going to be something that we're going to theorize it's something that we have to figure out not just on our own, but with the people that we are working with or thinking with that we try things with that we fail with. And to see what emerges of anything. But it's also meant for us that basically the kind of pleasure, if I can use that word and that's something that we're like kind of intent on seeking pleasure or inspiration or these kind of us notions that become like quintessential. Yeah, so the focus becomes on this on how people get together how they think together and what they end up coming up with together. Much more than what the actual kind of result is the process becomes the kind of core of the activity. And just after the blast the Beirut Art Center opened its space as a storage it was one of the these radical just the gestures that you took to help people like beyond the artistic community actually you also took other decisions of shifting the programming online and coming up with this with this online publication. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the programs that you thought of that are ongoing or have passed that responded to because we know one mentioned the pandemic it's funny but Yes, I haven't spoken yet but yeah I mean it's really funny how in the perspective of thing the pandemic, the effect of the pandemic is kind of minor next to the tragedy we're living. I don't know if you agree with me. Yeah, so I mean the center was was damaged from the blast, our kind of large metal front gate kind of flew off its rail like a piece of paper and into the space, the back wall was destroyed. And then there was like some kind of gypsum board and like false ceilings that that felt so it took us a couple of weeks to fix the space and then as soon as we did. You know obviously we're just going to start programming exhibition so we again we have this large space it's secured now that we fix the door it has a roof where you know, many people don't have a roof or walls so we reached out to groups that were kind of you know, responding to the very immediate needs that were on the ground so we have a group that has been replacing windows so they cut glass out there. We have a group that distributes used furniture for people who've lost whatever their couch or their bed. There's a group that does food boxing and distribution. There's a kind of a union of of lawyers and engineers that are also kind of assessing the damages and seeing if there are cases that can be kind of formulated and fought. So that's how the center is occupied right now and that would be the case until the end of this month and then next month we'll try to put something together for the first time, since we took this position in the space. And yeah, I mean, so you know, so we talk about the blast this is kind of zero moment but it's been a rough year. Well, it's been a year that started kind of beautifully with the with the revolution, but it also made work kind of secondary and nobody was kind of concerned with it. And it was this of course highly bodily experience and highly collective experience and then when you know when COVID happened then it was this it became this very isolated experience is very silent experience and also this highly virtual experience. And it was also at this time that you know I had time to look at my screen again and we're seeing kind of all of this on this online the shift to the online that the art world very quickly kind of responded to. And so yeah we've been doing online stuff as well reluctantly at first, maybe particularly so because of this kind of brutality of the transition from this highly embodied moment to this kind of virtual but also because we believe then we continue to believe in the importance of people coming together. The idea has been will do stuff online and it's not of course it's not going to be some kind of like replacement to what we can do in person but it's in parallel to it or it's in the meantime or something like that. And so coming back to also to these kind of very restrictive conditions and thinking about them as generative prompts we came up with this very simple idea to do these micro commissions like coming up with a theme and the themes are, you know, inspired by very visible daily realities and asking artists to respond in kind of, you know, easy short quick gestures poetic gestures. In addition, like, depending on what is asked of the artists, the fees will kind of vary but they're always in local currency in order to kind of move on from this dollar rise constantly trying to calculate the exchange rates. And it's distributed on our on our social media platforms and so every month there's a team, and it's usually for artists per month so it's a weekly kind of launch or release this month exceptionally we have. It's been a daily release because we've been working with illustrators and comic artists to have them kind of respond on a daily basis to the realities. And so every day from we have five different illustrators and each day of the week is dedicated to one of them. And so throughout the month each week, the each release additional drawing so that was one thing we did. And we continue to do. And, as I said, we started off reluctantly but there's something kind of. But also enriching like we just get a lot of good feedback, mainly from the artists but also people who are started following us. So that's seems as important and any as anything else so just this idea that, you know, artists say like oh this is exactly kind of what I needed, you know it's enough of a prompt to get somebody to out of a flunk or to start thinking about something but not so overwhelming of a project that you know they can't kind of handle it. So kind of bite size production. And then we also launched an online publication, which hopefully will at some point be also a print publication called the derivative. And the structure of the derivative is again trying to kind of think very small in the hopes that we can kind of unfold these small nuggets into more complex thought formations. And so most of the words in Arabic have a three letter roots. And so we give each editor that we invite and there's three editors per issue, each of them get a three letter word that they kind of think about and expand on and then based on that they each invite five contributors to respond to one aspect of this work. And so here again it's a kind of on a weekly basis we release new texts and they're bilingual either originally written in Arabic or English translated vice versa. And each of the editors also invited artists to create an artwork to accompany or to respond to each of the articles. And so, next month when we open the space, basically, we had an artist in residence here for the last three months. So one side of the gallery will be a solo kind of exhibition for, for him, how much the girl is the name of the artist. And on the other side of the gallery will be the accumulation of all of these micro commissions and the artworks for the derivative. And I'm curious to know how you are dealing with budget planning and programming because there are so many topics right that with that with that we have to address between the need of coming together during the pandemic, the need of bringing themselves and having concrete projects on which to work, but also let's not forget that the revolution is ongoing at least this is my, this is my take. And then we have a role also in, in, in that. Let's come back to the slate after after this first series of questions. Amad is here, he's across from me, we're sitting on the same table at the residency in Brazil. Even this far away, the situation in Beirut is not only haunting us but informing and affecting all our conversations, our walks in the forest, our time at the beach, our plans. Last year, Amad and I were crossing Beirut on a motorbike between the gallery where we were installing his first solo show and the protest at night. And that's the first time we met again a year after and after this total collapse. How are you coping with the situation and how is it to be an artist in Beirut these days. Thanks Amanda. Hello everyone again. I think the answer to this question I kind of summed up a timeline of the disaster that cascaded over us since last October, and I did that because I think it is closely intertwined with the timeline of plans and projects that many, many of us had. I was part of the Homeworks 8 which opened on October 17, the night that the revolution started roads closed and people took to the streets. It was a time of migrating anger and collective cry for overthrowing the political oligarchy that have rained over the country for the past 30 years. The exhibition closed on its opening night out of necessity because it was increasingly impossible to travel across the city to the different exhibition venues but also out of solidarity. It closed for a few weeks and then being sold. As you also mentioned Amanda we had a solo show together which was scheduled for November 2019. It felt untimely out of place and irrelevant to schedule an opening amidst the revolution. The priority was the street sometimes the mere existence of our bodies on the ground or in squares. The works for the exhibition went into storage and were covered with plastic way before plastic became the city's skin after the explosion the material that surrounds us and suffocates us in our own homes or what is left of them. So we decided to postpone the exhibition to the January with this kind of unwavering insistence that it must happen that it's treatment of image production in times of war as part of the moment you are going through. So if we could control the timeline of the revolution or timestamp the moments within it when art becomes permissible relevant or simply tolerable. January came and with it, the worsening of the economic crisis of the devaluation of the Lebanese era up to almost 80% or 100% as you are speaking. So this time that we kind of publicly here and see things such as you know people setting their furniture in order to be able to get diapers or milk. Added to this is was the illegal confiscation of our money in the banks which I mentioned the control or total freeze of the dollar withdrawal for small depositors. This control masquerading as financial engineering and the gallery like many other businesses could not survive and have to close close down. And then came covered 19. The revolution was put on hold silenced with the lockdown covered 19 couldn't have arrived at a better timing that suited the state government that we have. As if it was a lingering tear gas bomb, a more lethal but equally equally scattering. In March, we switched to online learning which is its own beast and Lebanon with the extremely slow internet connection and the electricity cuts that can reach to more than 12 hours in some areas. And so there were teachers and students expected to teach and learn online as a default transition to adapt seamlessly with the denial somehow of the complete lack and absence of infrastructure. Work became twice as demanding. And the pay was in Lebanese pounds, again, minus or for the 10th of the value. The status of part time or adjunct faculty which will form really the backbone of many departments and and university wide required classes remains unchanged. And the family the majority of part timers are not renewing their contracts because their demands to adjusted and fair salaries and light of the collapse are not being met. And then came the August for explosion. I'd like to read the short text that's okay that I shared a few days after the explosion. I think I will read this text as opposed to telling you about the aftermath of the explosion as an act of distancing, perhaps an inability to conjure on demand what what happened. It's a short short text, August 9 2020. My week was a little busy. I survived a deadly blast that killed 155 people injured more than 400 with 60 still missing. I drove my bike home and saw people living on the streets I saw buildings collapsing. I cried. I went to my high, my house to find it completely shattered. I went to a funeral of a friend's daughter who passed away due to the explosion. I cried. I cleaned the shattered glass for four days with the help of wonderful friends but with the attachment and absolute lack of hope. I watched tons of videos of the explosion in slow motion fast motion and no motion of people collapsing in front of the camera and those still looking for the loved ones. There was a huge protest against this accidental explosion, this literal rendition of years of mountain corruption, this inevitable blow of built in negligence. I got tear gas and survived the bombs now served to decide of pellets. I left because I couldn't bear it. My body is exhausted but I'm very angry, a dangerously neutralizing mix. I continued covering the broken windows with plastic and watch the city through the only two available lenses now shattered through the broken glass and blurry through the plastic crop. The little I mentioned, which I also mentioned was for Gaia, the daughter of Amy, who was the gallerist I was standing on showing with Gaia was the gallery director for us, the Harish also would have been the preparator and production manager for the show. He also passed away. The timeline of the disasters really devoured all other timelines for for for us all I would say. Sorry, I know this was hard. Helena, you're the director of one of the very few regional organizations that directly support the cultural sector in Lebanon through artists and institutional grants. My mission is to empower to engage to inspire creative talents in the region, but unfortunately the upheavals in the region have been shifting your mission to one of support of preservation and of safeguarding. I don't know if it would be the right word to use. Any institutions in Lebanon actually have been saved from total collapse and disappear and disappearing because of your react your reactivity in addressing direct and short term needs. What is your assessment as a funding institution of the damage on cultural life. And how shall we reconstruct and build upon these these tragedies. Thank you so much, Amanda. Hello to everyone with us today. Before I try to answer the question which is very important. I want to go back to the emotions shared by Haig and Omar, because honestly listening to them and being in Beirut. I want to share with everybody listening to us now that we are really exhausted and that we are filled with so many emotions. Each person is feeling it differently but there's like certain happiness on our soul on our hearts on our minds, minds that is making that there's there's a certain intensity to what we are experiencing. People wrote about it. We shared it. We are sharing it amongst each other when we meet. There's the shock. There's the trauma. There's the burnout. There's the mourning the grief. People experienced that moments close to death experiences or some people felt that they were they died and then they lived again. The physical pains that doctors are saying that they want to be gone before six months. Similarly to the sense of exhaustion sense of loss and the anger. Living with all these emotions is difficult and we. I mean, I cannot generalize but within the arts and culture seen in Lebanon. We started to come together early on from the uprising or the revolution time last October so one year from now, and that coming together has helped us to to continue to to work, given all these challenges. Maybe one emotion I haven't really talked about which is the emotion of fear. There's a real deep sense of fear. There's a culture, philosophy, French philosopher that talks about the culture of fear. That maybe what what happened to us is that we shifted very sharply between an emotion, a culture of hope last October and the culture of fear that is we are really embedded in today. And yeah, this is just to share these emotions but at the same time we don't want to be perceived as victims, we are very sensitive to this. At the same time we're very sensitive now to the term resilience as as as a as a term that would give us the this like magical power of surviving everything. So we're neither victims nor just resilient survivors, but at the moment we are surviving and we are creating many things out of nothing. So what I want to go back to that moment of October last year and share another narrative, very complimentary to what I was sharing but from an institutional perspective. October last year also, firstly upon an invitation by Hyde, a number of cultural actors, artists, etc. And then later on institutions started to meet in order to, you know, try to work together as part of a cultural kind of action in relation to what was happening on the streets. It's important to note that we were both feeling ourselves as cultural actors and as citizens at the same time. These meetings and these kind of, you know, shared discussions, etc. led us to all of us to sign an open strike statement where we all as organizations, you know, in a way started to contribute in a way to the civil to the public discussion that was taking on happening at that moment in time. That moment in time for the teams because more as you were saying, or touch resource is a regional organization. So we had to continue working on our regional programs, although we are not all of us part of the team is based elsewhere so we have colleagues in Morocco and in Tunis and Egypt, but the majority of the team is based in Beirut. So we had to find ways to working remotely and to continuing with the regional programs. And when the economic crisis or collapse came starting in December and then January, we had, we started thinking together with with colleagues, partners at AFAC, what we can do because we were close to the organizations working on the ground in Lebanon but we had a different kind of position being a regional organization. So we collaborated on the Lebanon Solidarity Fund targeting organization arts and culture initiatives and organizations across Lebanon. We, the starting from January until May we opened the call. We got the applications around 75 we start the jury study the files, etc. the applications and 23 organizations were granted on the 30th of July three days before the explosion. The explosion happened and many of the organizations that were supported through this grant, whom we knew that we knew that it's important that they continue to be active in Lebanon for the coming year because there's the challenge was that the organization continues to exist. The teams continue to be supported. And as they continue to exist they can work with other artists, so there will be a trickle down effect and there will be some vitality continue to the sector. And then the explosion happened. We also missed to Corona COVID-19, strangely, because the COVID-19 in a way in February affected our programs but not really as deep as we would have expected, because we were already starting to work remotely. So we were working from home anyways we had started to work from home because of the uprising and our programs but it really influenced other because our programs are granting programs, but it did influence the arts and culture scene across the region. And with the COVID-19 we also started to think of different response programs, because we, we did like a fast rapid assessment we knew that the individual artists were the priority they were like the most affected across the region. It depends on certain countries there were some kind of initiatives and few very few countries across the region, but most of the artists across the region needed some kind of support similarly to other countries in the world where they created funds that will support artists. We, at the same time in the rapid assessment we understood that some organization that organizations across the region will also be suffering but they will have like they will start suffering a little bit after there's like some some more time if you like depending on what the COVID-19 how it's going to be changing the reality on the ground of the of the arts and culture practice. In May we started. So, so by May in May we started for response programs, one in collaboration in partnership with a fog, reaching out to the arts and culture organizations in Lebanon so that was a Lebanon specific program. And three other programs were dedicated to the arts and culture sector across the region to for individuals and one for organizations. The explosion. Together with a fuck also we had to, we acted very rapidly we had we met and we thought that it was also. We identified many of the organizations that we had supported in in the initial fund. Yes. The talk is that I found for arts and culture. So we, we identified the need for a different kind of support because of the damages and losses that the explosion post. But when we met when in the first week after the explosion we started meeting in the rapid assessment we also identified individuals to be priorities. Individuals in that in the, in that part of the route most affected by the explosion many artists live there because it's affordable. They had created a very vibrant cultural scene. A lot of small, you know, art spaces initiatives, etc. At the same time, some many artists had their studios inside their houses they had their workspaces inside their houses and when these houses exploded they lost most of their infrastructure. And that's why also in collaboration we opened the call for support for artists for individuals, not just artists living in Beirut damaged by the explosion, not necessarily Lebanese citizenship everybody from all across the region who live here because it's actually for many artists from across the region. And now together also with a fuck we are planning the, the support for for institutions. Also, with a view of, of, like how to just answer to the emergency needs but at the same time to have the longer view of recovery, because, although all these emotions I've expressed at the beginning are existing. There's an emotion at the moment there's not just an emotion a kind of a will or a kind of an energy where everybody is sharing that we feel we want to do something. And now many organizations are coming together to plan events in November and December in Beirut. Thank you Helena. Thank you so much. I think it's important to clarify for the global global audience that we are speaking in the past when we talk about the explosion, but the crisis is still ongoing in Lebanon I mean two days ago. The Prime Minister was appointed which is the same Prime Minister that the streets forced to resign last year in October so we are still trapped in that really in that vicious circle and things are still happening and fear is really important element. I would like to kind of build on what you were saying Helena about the importance of focusing on individuals and focusing on artists at the moment. Because it seems to me as a director of an institution that it's almost kind of irrelevant to think of institutional needs right now. Temporary art platform is perhaps the tiniest institution in the Lebanese landscape. And we've been really thinking about our priorities right now and perhaps this could be an interesting time to present and the emergency relief program we came up with. Since I was blocked in Brazil since the year with an exhibition that was focusing on hospitality and guest host relations in relation to migration. So the show was supposed to take place in April at the Museum of Passo Imperial in Rio and then it was suspended because of the pandemic we're still waiting for a date. So I decided to shift the public programming of that show and to bring tap in in order to think about radical radical form of hospitality, inviting a group of seven artists from Beirut to come to Brazil and spend five weeks on a fully funded relief residency in one of the most beautiful forests here on the coast of São Paulo. What sounds at first like a bit of an eccentric or extravagant and perhaps a crazy endeavor. Now that we're in two weeks into the residency. I think that all these doubts were like were valid, but I really see the importance of focusing on direct and immediate relief which is opportunities for artists to recollect themselves be in a place that is safe, have a safe roof and be together with other people to think together. So we kind of put this really very quickly together. And I wanted to say that almost half of the artists we reached out to half of the artists who were nominated refused the invitation. I was actually really surprised by that, but many expressed that they didn't have that their nervous nervous system wouldn't allow them to be on a 19 hour plane, or they talked about sudden fears of heights and sudden traumas. So we are also dealing with psychological effect of what we've been going through that is not to be disregarded. So I don't know who and how we're going to attend to this, but what TAP is doing at a really, really tiny scale with only seven artists and we wish we could have invited more practitioners as really important. So I think that residencies are very interesting formats to think as a first step about what artists really directly need right now. So this project came together with support from the Goethe Institute and some direct donations we kind of called for. TAP doesn't have a space so we weren't really eligible to any of those institutional fundings that were kind of open for Lebanese institutions. And I wanted to really share what we've been living here. It's been really intense and as a curator I've been torn between planning activities and scheduling things and at the same time just like leaving room for whatever happens organically. One of the artists last week said that residencies are confusing right now because they kind of emergency residencies, relief residencies are confusing because they mix between that position of the artist as an artist who usually is expected to contribute to a residency or the artist as a citizen, as a person needing just time off and time to breathe and time to sleep. So these are topics that I think are interesting to discuss when we're talking about individuals and the needs of the direct needs for artists today. So yeah, make yourself at home started two weeks ago, we are in Boisokanga and I've invited two psychoanalysts and curators to think of the program with me. And this is the first time I do that and I think it's been a very interesting process of building this program together with the artist. So we are kind of experimenting with these ideal rhythmic forms of living together in order perhaps to plot for what we would do when we go back home in Beirut. TAP has suspended all other activities and programs. We had two, three projects in line for 2020, which we kind of cancelled and decided to really concentrate all our efforts on this very experimental format of the project right now. So beyond self-care and welcoming rituals, we are looking at care and hospitality in terms of collective solidarity, generosity to face this deadlock. We're facing globally, but especially as Lebanese and Armenian citizens, we have two Armenian artists with us here. So perhaps for the second part of the debate, I would like to focus on more practical propositions that can help us think of a possible future and how do we move on from here basically. Maybe Haig could start. I mean, I can obviously only kind of answer that question within the framework of the BAC, but also the other art institutions in terms of the way across the to act that we can do. And Amanda, you know, and Elena, you guys are talking about supporting artists and of course that's as an art institution, that's something that we are also concerned with. But we're also trying to think about a kind of broader ecosystem, right, so to try and think about the institution as as some kind of input, like as infrastructure or as a motor for an economy. So what is the kind of breadth of skills, crafts, professions that actually comprises this ecosystem. Let's say to make an exhibition, but also even just to build the space to produce artworks to maintain projectors. So, I mean this was kind of an expansion of what we had come to the position kind of with the initial proposal that we had come with, which was to really think about the location, the physical or geographic location of this building. Within the kind of crazy vicinity right so there's a there's a popular Sunday market that's literally just across the street from us. And there's the so called Beirut River which is a kind of ecological disastrous ecological landmark that delineates the municipal boundaries of Beirut which is also right next to us. It's this kind of post industrial super gentrified area. This is where police regularly kind of civilian police regularly stop people to make sure that they are that they have status in the country. So basically, you know, all of the kind of problems of the of the world or you know that the art world has been very urgently concerned with be it on a on a kind of ecological level, social gentrification, police violence, and so forth, all of them are literally at our doorstep. And so how do we kind of deal with that reality. But yeah, so we're trying to basically think in very practical steps about how this place can be a generator for small economies. For example that we're thinking about is starting from the blocks that we that we notice as an art center. So for example, let's say there's a shortage in the country of people who can you know hang exhibitions at a very high level. So how do we kind of create that that skill set. And who are the actors that we can activate in order to, to create that skill set. And then another thing that we think about is, is this kind of intense exodus that's happening this brain drain that's happening. It's kind of kind of simple ways to not obviously not to reverse that but to think in an opposite direction so can we bring people that you know are highly skilled in this. And then also think about people who are doing things locally who are sensitive to the kind of politics of the context. People that we've been working with or other institutions have been working with to create a kind of an adopted way to mount exhibitions that would be sort of on par with international standards but that would also be very specific to the availability is here so one of the things that I kind of keep obsessing about. Is that, for example, you know, infamously projective light bulbs are very expensive right and all the more so nowadays because you would have to import it and then you're immediately dealing with. And first of all trying to figure out a payment and international payment but also converting the currency so it just becomes this kind of, you know this tiny piece of equipment becomes this prohibitive expense. So when we think about, for example, electricians that are very skilled but that don't necessarily work at all. And then we give them a kind of light bulb and see if there's any way that they can figure out, you know, a knockoff essentially here that we can that we can use like this is the kind of level that we're trying to think about. Very small things and trying to see if there's a way to connect with other institutions who we know have similar needs. And it's interesting, I mean that you're focusing on like the the the ecosystem as a whole and thinking of all these actors and players that are fundamental for the for the life of our private sector, we've been living actually the art scene has has has been sustaining itself for the last 20 years on funding from private the private sector in some region and funding. So this is something that we should kind of stress here. We have a public support whatsoever, which, which really fragilizes us in times like these. And now I have a feeling that I don't know where are those private institutions as well in Beirut, you know, like after the pandemic after like the event is gone. So you know what I'm talking about, you have a wall where you can put a logo of a sponsor or of a donor. Now that this kind of convening around object related art is gone. Private support has also disappeared in a way. I've been really, you know, trying to reach out to those institutions that have been sustaining our art scene also for the last years. They're totally absent. So we're left even more alone and and with less support so maybe you are in a good place to talk about that as well. I mean, again, I just I sort of I try. I don't know nowadays kind of anything that that sound seems like it might be a bummer I kind of try and move on and redirect my attention elsewhere so you know you say we're all the more alone and of course you're absolutely right but really my impulse is immediately to to say, are we though I mean like these people are gone but then we still have each other. I mean, we have other institutions and as Helena mentioned like it's been a year now that those conversations have been happening between institutions and the kind of the struggles are shared. I think our audiences for instance sorry to interrupt but like where is our audience gone like how do we, what are what are the projects that we can come up with in this in this place of extreme fragility that can allow us to build connections with our audience because right now, which is amazing that we're we're focusing on artists, we're focusing on workers, we're focusing on the livelihood of our sector, but aren't we losing connections with our audiences, I don't know like how, how I had this is a question, I'm talking to myself all the time right it's not a, how are you thinking about that at Beirut Art Centre about these crowds that used to show up at your openings that were part of you know, I mean, I'm doing everything to, so for example planning for the next exhibition I'm trying to, we're trying to figure out all the ways in which we can avoid crowds right. So it's about kind of trickling the flow of people in, but yeah I'm not sure. I don't know I mean, even the notion of audience becomes a kind of complicated thing like audience to what I mean we're just talking about all the struggles to kind of produce something meaningful or that people don't have, you know artists are not in a place where they're having anything to say or whatever they have to say may not make sense or. So, it makes sense that there is no audience per se, but there are people right so I don't know. I mean, I, the conversations that we end up having with Ahmed are really. This is why what I was trying to say that the process itself becomes the kind of the core of what we're trying to do it's, and then whatever it kind of ends up being produced, you know, it may be great and if it is then that's all the better but it really is secondary. It's really about, you know, thinking together and coming up with frameworks together, bouncing ideas off of each other, you know sharing emotions even in this kind of weird, you know, public platform but like to kind of be able to vocalize these things. I can't quantify why it's crucial, but I know for a fact that it's crucial. So, I think, yeah, I no longer am able to, or no longer I currently am unable to think about, you know, you do something kind of behind closed doors, and then you prepare it and then it's ready to be presented to an audience and I think much more that I want things to be kind of open and transparent and in process, and there's not necessarily a thing that's being produced for somebody to come see it. I think it's much more. How can the space become a place where, you know, audience or producer or institution or worker can kind of come together within a structure that makes sense for all of these entities to come together so it's not about like a social experiment. It's coming up with models that activate all of these different entities with a clear direction, even if not necessarily with a clear goal, right. It's kind of good contemporary practice lends itself to this I mean social art practice and all these, you know, like projects that are focusing on processes which is really the heart of what we do what's up since since since the beginning. But we cannot also put aside the other disciplines who actually require, you know, an audience, you know, a proper audience per se and I was I was having this conversation with one of the artists in residence here with us. She was a sound artist and it was really interesting because she was saying yeah I mean I'm doing these commissions online she's these concerts online, but at the same time I missed this opportunity of performing in front of an audience and this is an essence of my practice and of my work. And Mia Habis really discussed this yesterday with regard to contemporary dance and I thought it was a very interesting element which kind of differs from our position as maybe curators or visual artists where we can kind of turn the situation. On our side let's say or or to our. Benefit, I don't know. Perhaps. I don't know if I'm just looking at the time here I would like Hannah, sorry Helena to to tell us a little bit about this funding that is being channeled to be roots, this fresh money coming to be roots and that regional institutions like yours are kind of contributing to cultural institutions and to artists. We've been through this before in the 90s after the war. So we've witnessed that kind of big amounts coming in all of a sudden and we we know the risk of that as well. So how, how is a lot of cultural resource and a fuck. Centralizing this, this, this, this, let's say organization of the money and and how are you assessing actually the needs across scales of institutions and and disciplines. Thank you. I would hike was saying something I wanted to comment on the different on the multiple levels because I feel what we are also engaging in at the moment is trying to think in a fresh way about our practice. That applies to artists and about the discourse as well about how institutions and organizations and new initiatives are thinking of discourse as well as practice. So, both of these are being re re thought or not really thought completely but it's it's it's different. There's a certain kind of questioning that's happening as we go. One thing that is a bit, let's say, new or I will not say totally different, but it is in a way different is that two regional organizations are working together on on the implementation of one solidarity fund. Coming together has been really valuable on multiple fronts. At the same time, there's a learning curve and coming together in the discussions that's happening and the way we do things and the way we thinking of how things need to be done. Both of us how have our systems. We have long practice systems of grant making and opening calls and jury evaluations and etc all these grants making systems. And in fact, we also discovered that during the working together that there's a lot in common and these differences are really important, I mean, not major. And that allowed us to to have a very smooth working relationship, not only in terms of the vision of what the Lebanon Solidarity Fund, how, how it needs to work, it does not, what we what we identify that it does not need to work in the same way we usually do our and identify things and we implement them. In a way, it was done, as Rima would say, in the opposite way, we had to follow the needs on the ground in a rapid, more rapid speed that led us to be working at the same time while assessing so it was a kind of a really really fast, very, very difficult but at the same time, we were feeling the urgency and the responsibility. And that's why why we were working together not just as two regional organizations but doing these assessments together with all colleagues and stakeholders on the ground. We had the, for sure, obviously the ecosystem approach in our head that's why we prioritized we had priorities and we had the vision of starting with the emergency and recovery phase and then building phases, together, not alone, but together with with others of what, how would the phase two and phase three fit because it was clear that we need more than a year or like minimum a year for us to be in a way coming back to some kind of a vitality that would allow us to to to gain back our, our, our practice. In the phase one, we already opened one round for support individuals the second round would go to artisan shops and other kind of entities or structures so it's not just for institutions or arts and culture organization, it's a bit more open for both in the in the nonprofit and the commercial because also all of them are suffering and in a very, very drastically in a way that's like would live or death kind of kind of harsh living reality. At the same time, we're also thinking of the need for production for for for support funding for artists to produce their work. And more longer term, the medium and longer term, we're assessing now and it's in process together with with others, how we need to think of or be responsive to how the artists themselves are trying to self organize how they're thinking of the need for syndication how they're thinking of the need for collective collectives. And how these different different ways of coming together with kind of create something new in terms of practice and discourse, which we are still in the moment we're still witnessing how these. Some people are trying to study how things happen before but at the same time there's a certain freshness to how things will happen this time I don't think it's, there might be some similarities with the 90s but I think it's a very different moment. In terms of the number of artists and cultural actors who are very much qualified and very much also working together with a very strong kind of solidarity. I think that the way the organizations like a fuck and moored are very sensitive to the importance of the diversity of diversity in its multiple forms, and of enriching the ecosystem in a way that is, that is not excluding in a way that's very inclusive and that takes into consideration. The challenges we're living and the contribution of everybody. Do you have a follow up question. No, I mean thank you so much. I think that you're right. It's a different moment, perhaps because solidarity and and doing together is the only way out right now was the only way possible. A few years ago it was something that was more in the discourse of wanting to be together wanting to do things I mean I've been taking part in those institutions, coming together meetings since 2011 since I moved back to Beirut. When I was director of the hangar back then Ziko was one of the director of an institution in Beirut asking, he invited in 2011 group of institutions including the Beirut Art Center, and others to, to say okay, how about we buy a printer together in order to print our posters. And it was really, you know, it was, it was, it sounded extremely anecdotal back then like I mean come on right like we're not doing that it wouldn't make sense who would take care of it where would we put it. I think that we're on the level right now where these problematics and these questions are essential because we have no other way. We have a temporary out platform where two people know I'll say it on my colleague has been working for the last year with a deferred salary that will I don't know when I will be able to pay her. We, I'm physically in Brazil so all the operations of temporary out platform platforms accounts are frozen and are impossible, because I'm not physically there. And these, I would have, you know, loved to, you know, maybe call the Beirut Art Center say okay, what, what, you know, why don't you give Nuren office for for three weeks and then we have to think of these mutual resources and sharing resources whether they're human or technical physical. This is a necessity. We have no way out. So it's a very different logic that we need to think about. Omar, perhaps you would like to talk about what artists need right now you're here. I heard, I heard you kind of surveyed the other fellows. So it would be nice if you could also speak about your experience in that emergency, how this nature of the project can be useful or not. Yeah. So this is in no way sticking on behalf of anybody really I have like a preliminary wish list that hopefully will turn into a to do list, some point in time. And one of the first things is that I want a dyke for president. I want a person with the eight for president I want everything that Zoe Leonard wanted in her work for all of the wish list of Zoe Leonard, in addition to that. I think Can you I would begin with the need of solidarity between artists and cultural practitioners that really precedes any institutional organizational or categorical support. I'm thinking of I'm hoping for a camaraderie that of belonging to a cultural sphere or ecosystem as high, called it irrespective to start with at least of the different practices and whether they resonate with us or not. It's a clearance for a row common ground where our dynamics are paused are held at bay and a horizontality is emphasized everything can can rise from there and such ground is quite difficult to arrive at I think, especially with the heavy clique system that is entrenched in the art scene. One can argue that such cleakness is essential and indispensable in social formations. But I think it's also a danger is othering different practices of of amping up a certain harsh vein of criticality to the point that it abolishes curiosity and generosity and reproduces a power dynamic. We can also argue that such cleakness is a distant cousin of nepotism which is a major default practice in the beneath politics. Such solidarity requires that patients are self organizing really for listening, but not so much money which is required everywhere else on this kind of wish list want to be to do this. I think we need to push for artist fees to become part and parcel of our label not as an afterthought or as a gesture or what is left of the grant money. Often we feel that getting a chance to publish or exhibit is a compensation or reform of capital and we are always grateful for it but, but the reality is that it is, it is not enough, especially with covert with the economic crash with the blast in Beirut. I think many of us juggle between different jobs to support ourselves financially, our practices become that which will eventually get to after the modest money making duties are fulfilled. And I think such compartmentalization of jobs and our practices naturally leads us leads many of us to not be fully present in the practice. If not the entire practice, many of the components, many of its components are constantly deferred. Another ongoing wishful thought is to have health insurance for artists, of course, among the many other insurance less professions in Lebanon, unionizing or rehabilitating and restructuring unions and syndicates as Elena was mentioned mentioned also key. In the aftermath of the explosion funded residencies that also provide artists fees are crucial. It is necessary for for many artists to be able to to extract themselves from from the site of trauma, however briefly and imperfectly, in order to recoup also however incompletely. And for me, I think this is precisely what this residency is doing. It's, you know, it comes without without without huge kind of mixture of feelings of separation anxiety from a place that I'm not sure I want to be in the first place but you know like leaving Beirut even and that it's such a hassle. Coming here and you know being with people who have experienced something similar with difference. It is not the topic of the hour it is not something that we discuss all the time but it's something that we are and it's it is something it is that which we are and it's aftermath and by default. You know we we shared anecdotes we share stories we we talk about going back to Beirut. And what would that mean we each together we all got really severely bitten by mosquitoes by tropical mosquitoes. The status of exhibition spaces shifted from very rare to almost nonexistent before and after the explosion. And it's important to ask, how can we re approach exhibition spaces as sites of thinking seeing and listening that can also foster that raw ground of solidarity while while embedding itself in the civic and political life on the city. Exhibition spaces become polysemic entities or ecosystems again I that can imbibe and spark a range of practices processes and approaches to art making. Which are not centered on the object or product but that also do not shun it or essentialize it as irrelevant by default I think it's a really kind of careful careful ground to treat but I think I mean it's it's rewarding if we are aiming for this kind of raw ground of solidarity and lastly workspaces have become. And now even more crucial than ever with the loss of studios and homes which also functioned as studios and huge. One of the main reasons why I'm here is precisely that kind of my window of my window list apartment and the plastic crap which really just consumes all other sounds one cannot hear oneself think and to kind of focus on needs for spaces I know that has taken an initiative and that that's a vain offering workspaces to artists who lost them as much as their space allows and I mean hopefully we can find more of these initiatives more of these spaces. Thank you so much, I'm also sorry. Thank you for this. It was an exhaustive wish list. And that we thinking exhibition spaces we thinking residencies we thinking commissions are part of these exercises that we all are doing and I hope we'll do more together. I'm sure to think of what the reconstruction or rebuilding from this could look like. I mean with this current residency that I'm organizing here. I heard artists saying ah we are in this bubble or in this temporary heaven or in this parenthesis I would like to see it as a as a temporary autonomous zone for us to really challenge each other in in in our ways of attempting to do things together and to think in a horizontal way and think of the ecosystem of residencies also as something that generates thoughts and good practice. I think we have more minutes. Perhaps we can open up for questions from the audience. Because there was a registration for the Q&A on zoom. And if, and if no questions pop up then maybe we can go on with our conversation. Let's see. I answered one question from the audience and the person I'm not sure whether the name is right Lula was saying that the audience would like to hear some positivity. Like we need to empower the Lebanese people and why we're rejecting the word resilience. I tried to answer based on briefly because you shared very important articles that explain this nuance with the use of the word resilience we don't mean not, we don't want to say that we don't want to be resilient. But it's how it's being used the framing of resilience as like a construct. But I want to share just to bridge with with with our audiences today. Because there's this feeling of constant existential threat and our need for survival that keeps pushing us in this sense of like the pressure of survival that maybe not everybody across the world is living. It might be the case of many people, especially people of color in different parts of the US, for example, but it might not be a generalized kind of experience. But at the same time, we, we are very much aware that at the same time we need to survive but we need to think strategically with a long term view about the systemic change and the lasting change that we as arts and culture we are exerting or we are influencing in the world and how we're contributing to these to the change of what kind of world and future we want to live in because it sounds very this this topic from where we are. And we don't want to be pessimistic, we want to, in fact, kind of call for everybody for friends and colleagues across the world to build together these spaces where we can produce or think or imagine. Together, these different ways of being together of sociality of how our world would look like. And this is where this is where we are in a way still succeeding so when we speak about we are still alive we are still producing. In fact, it's, it's really, it keeps, it's amazing how across the region, not just in Lebanon like now, everybody is working on the today they are now in a meeting, collaborating to produce the radical stages by radical events in November. There has been a film festival in Palestine and Ramallah in the open air this week. There are radio initiatives all across the region where everybody is working voluntarily to produce content that is like really progressive and interesting and talking to each other. So we don't want to say that nothing is happening many things are happening and these things that are happening are both trying to save us as as as communities and individuals and at the same time pushing the boundaries. And we hope that you take this as not as a sign of despair but as a sign of kind of more, I don't know how to say it more. More instinct, I would say. Yeah, more kind of the is the break of the fighter you know the fighter when they need to take a break and then fight again so now speaking to you we we are taking like the break of the, yeah, of the fighter. Haig is sitting in front of a checklist. So we are definitely working. We are in our spaces I mean temporary platform managed to put together an emergency relief residency in no time. We made visas happen funding happen PCR test on time channeling almost like rubbing a bank to able to pay Qatar Airways for seven flights. I mean, no, we, this is not a negative at all. We are all kind of doing whatever we can. I think, at least here the four of us. Maybe we could invite the audience to have a look at the, the new publication of the Beirut Art Center which really provides very, very interesting insights about these, you know, conflicting feelings that writers from Beirut are also sharing. I could also add it on the reading list of the panel. We have more questions from the audience. Okay, so we don't have questions perhaps we can conclude here. Thank you CEC ArtSling. Thank you Haig, Helena and Amar. This was a heartwarming conversation, even digitally, we should have more of the physically soon. And yeah, thank you. Thank you Amar. Cheers. Bye.