 And I apologize ten times, and I said that I didn't want to be the moderator for this session, because it's a very heavy topic, it's a big responsibility. And all the speakers with us are very important, and I'm actually afraid of them, so please help me a little bit here. When we speak about colonialism, we assume that there should be some kind of occupation, as if we're speaking about liberating arts from some kind of occupation. I don't know if this is true, and I don't know who's occupying whom. So we're here to speak also about the arts that are non-European. The objective of this session is not to speak about the consequences of the material occupation in our region, our Arab region, but it is to reflect upon post-colonialism issues as a continuity for the cultural and intellectual colonialism and occupation. So we're not here to speak about the donors' agendas and the funding problems. No, we're here to speak about the content, about the impact of these issues and topics on the aesthetic dimension of arts and on the intellectual production for our intellectuals and those who work in the cultural field. Also in this session, we will be speaking about the representation of the modern arts that are produced by artists coming from different Arab countries, not only in the international arena, but also on the local level. So we can find here modern artists that are also inside the formal aesthetics that we usually see in the supported artistic institutions in our countries. And we'll also speak about the history of arts, modern empire, and we'll also speak about what's happening now in the world of arts. We'll also speak about the narratives and counter-narratives. So who writes the history through arts? Who receives this history and who republishes it? I also think that when we speak about occupation in this region of the world, we're not just speaking about the occupation by the west of the Arab region, but we're speaking also about the internal occupation, meaning the repressive systems that try to limit our expression in our countries. So there are different levels of occupation of our artistic productions in our region, and we need to see what are the methods and ways that are used to go past it. I don't want to belong. I would like to give the floor to our guests today. But I would like here to say a few words without putting them into a meaningful sentence. Only words to keep them in the background, like geopolitics of arts, geo-aesthetics, the map, the world map for arts, the presence of the Arab arts in the curricula. All of these are issues and topics that are important for me, and our speakers are today to speak about them. So very quickly, we have with us Maya Zbib. She's a director and artist, and she's also a founding member in Zoukat, and a postmaster from Shakar Hees, an architect. And the professor of architecture, who's also a visual artist, and she's also an art director in the cultural director, and he's also a director and researcher. We have also Laila Surayman from Egypt, she's a director and writer, and Quresbos Hart, he's also a cultural director, and he's a professor of arts. I will be starting with Laila. We're speaking about the modernizing of the arts, and your last show, Six-Eyed, you worked with a documentary about the history of Egypt under occupation. So you were working on a material that is directly linked to our topic here. So what made you work on a documentary, and specifically on history and theater? I will start from the end actually. When I was studying, I was interested in reality and its different aspects inside the theater, and I wanted to take it from the theater to what is outside to the reality. Since 2008, I became really interested in the theater that is linked to documentary, and I had started also working on development theater or social theater, so all these concepts bothered me in the beginning in the way I was dealing with the content and the form of theater. Then in 2011, there was a direct change. It's when I started having a different vision about writing history, because there was direct censorship done and imposed to media, especially when it relates to torture and the army machinery. And I started working on testimonies related to the violence that was perpetrated by the army and the police. Then in 2014, we had a festival, and they asked us to create a project related to the 100th anniversary of World War I and what were its impacts on Egypt and then when I started working on that, I saw that the consequences of the foreign education had an impact on our national narratives and the most important thing in that production was the revolution back then in the beginning of the 20th century. So I tried to find something through songs, through the traditional songs, because we didn't have an open archive, so we went to the British archive to try and find some documents and you were able to find some investigations about the Shubah case. And these investigations were long and I'm speaking here about 400 pages. It was in 1919 and it was in a village in Nikiza. There was a lot of stealing, of killing and also rape. And what was it surprising is that in these investigations, there were details by female farmers. They spoke about the way they were raped. So the process was very long, so we decided after that to work on the zigzag show. And it was only about the Shubah incident. You face any problems when you want to start working on a documentary and you want to look at history in a different way, from a different angle. Because in the national history, the way it was narrated, it was done by the state. It was done in 1952 and it's still the same until now. It's still the same thing that we teach now in the schools and they always show that the leaders are more important than the individuals and more than the popular movements and the different forms. The archive in Egypt was something difficult to access because, first of all, it's not open. Only academic researchers or journalists, when they have security authorization, can access these archives. And that is in Dar al-Wazaq. And they need to be very specific in what they want to see in the archive, so they should have a specific question or a specific topic to only search for the archive that they need. And we knew about these documents concerning the Shubah and the ordinary Egyptian book. It was written in English by Ziyad Ahmed. And through this book, through this biography, we knew that there was a fight. We knew where this fight was and that it was with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And you're able to get it also. It's like 100 years old. So these investigations were done by the British as for those who were done by the Egyptians. No one knows where they are, where these investigations are. There were other things that are translated and other archives. But, for example, for the white book concerning the independence and that was used in the conference in Paris, we also don't know where it is. So it was unclear for the Arabic documents. So we worked on this file and there were many questions here. Now, about the rate that happened, this is only in English, but it's complete. And the question was, what are we going to do first, should we translate them? What will be the language of our show? Will it be English or Arabic? Because these farmers, of course, spoke in Egyptian 100 years ago, it was difficult for us to use this language because we would be using our own imagination. This is why we decided to keep the documents in English. And we decided to keep the form of these documents and the same language so that we would be indirectly also showing to people that these documents are not available in Arabic and that these investigations were happening with the occupying entity. And also we chose to put these investigations in an artistic way. This is why it was very important to us to have a secondary because we were artists working in 2016. So we worked more on the way we were reading the documents. How did people receive this historic material? I remember when we spoke before that, you said that people were really surprised and there was like a kind of going more to the west because and not to the east. So Occidentalism and not Orientalism. As you said in Egypt, the wanted result was that people from the beginning thought that these were translated documents from the investigations. But the second result that we wanted is that we wanted to have some Occidentalism or alienation. So why more than 60% or 70% of the show was in English? Although the audience is Egyptian. We also tried to remind people that when we decided to translate on the screen these investigations, we decided to translate them until they're literally Arabic because this is something that happened 100 years ago and we were not 100% sure of how they were said in the Egyptian dialect. So this is why we translated them into literary Arabic. So there were also different phases in translating them. For me, the use of these documents and the Shubak incident were all very important to link between two causes that we see today in the reality in Egypt. So we thought that such things are not available. And second, to break some stereotypes related to the farmer, to the female farmer when she's compared to the educated women in the city. And we also wanted to break the stereotype related to the evolution that was achieved in these 100 years when you want to speak about things such as rape and how society accepts us when we go and testify about this, about rape. So we broke a worldwide and an international stereotype about the Muslim women because it was told that it was in our tradition that women would not testify about such a thing. So we broke that stereotype and now we see more that it's the political influence that affects the capacity of women to testify or not testify. So this can be a support for them. But now if the soldiers who raped them were Egyptian, would they have testified? Now this is something that we don't know. So these investigations created a direct link with what you have today. Let's go back to this later on. Let's speak later on about what's happening now. You said something about the testimony of women. Maya, hello. You're an Arab artist, Lebanese artist, you're a female, and you represent many things in the fantasy, in the world fantasy. You represent something specific about women working in the Arab arts and we spoke together about different combinations of identity and different identities, the political identity, the real identities in your work and the work of the group of how do you work on breaking these identities? Don't go past the five minutes. In my work as director and artist in the Zouka group, especially in our shows outside Lebanon, we always face this dilemma. Actually it's not a dilemma, it's a way of thinking, a thinking process to see how we want to perform, what we want to perform about. It's also linked to the language that we use and to the extent that we explain our texts. And this is something continuous that we always ask to ourselves because it's also important to convey a certain idea and explain it to others and make it clear. And there is also the necessity of representing your identity and between both, there is a great gap. So this is our responsibility as artists not to fall in this world. So in order for it to become smooth, we need to be authentic with ourselves. We need to be genuine. We need to start with ourselves being individuals living in this region without taking into consideration our cultural legacy or the identities that are imposed on us. We need this of course to start from our legacy but from its wider sense. If we want to have some kind of integrity we shouldn't carry a certain narrow identity. We can go from our legacy, from our individual life and find something that also is interesting for our society when I work on a text I cannot only base it on my life as an individual. Yes, of course the group should do that but also should be based so personal to be political so the group also should be able to find something that will make the audience interact with them. So it doesn't mean that I have to perform something that is related to the identity that is expected from me. So we want to do this also in a positive way. We are constructed of different layers of different pieces of information. Leila and myself, for example, could be put in the same spot but it doesn't mean that we are the same people or we do the same thing. Especially when we're performing in front of a foreign or a Western audience when we worked on our show about gender we used popular stories and also imaginary stories for children. So we decided to work on Snow White's Sleeping Beauty not because these stories have come to colonize us as stories. No, but because we know these stories since our childhood. Now, of course there are Arabic versions of these stories but I know Grimm versions. Not because Disney took it. It means that I cannot use it myself and just speak and think about the colonialism here. No, I can still use it. But the idea is that I shouldn't put myself in a certain model that is expected from me. I need to do something that is related to my reality as an artist and that is linked to the narrow sphere and to the wider sphere as well. This leads me to Tony. When you were preparing for this session immediately when I told you that you will be in the colonizing the art session you said, no, but Arab artists are not occupied artists. They are global artists. They're everywhere. So in comparison with what Maya said and Laila before her said could you speak a little bit about the place of the modern independent Arab artists today in the Arab sphere? How do you see the Arab artists today? Of course there are words that I didn't use like global Arab artists. No, yes, maybe this is something that I used as an illustrator. This is nothing called the Arab movie or the Arab arts. They say from the Arab countries whether they're Syrian, Japanese, yes, of course. I want to say something about decolonizing the arts. I'm personally convinced that this has to do with the post-colonial studies because they have done a lot of destruction with our arts. This has produced monsters. We all know them. Maybe we know them through the internet and you can find this in politics and social studies, etc. So when I hear about this I have this apprehension that no, I don't want to be in that place. I want to be somewhere else. This is on one side, on the other side. There is also the personal experience and what I see around me. There are specific topics that you see have become obsolete. So when you are invited to go to Europe, to the United States and when you participate in exhibitions here and there and when you see that there is a contemporary art scene you see that there are also other things that you should address and this cannot be summarized with you being Arab or not by you having been colonized by the French or not. No, you need to know that there are also topics that are more important like what, sir? For example, like how to deal with a globalized culture that we see everywhere. Let me give you a quick example. A few days ago I was in Amsterdam. To the south of Amsterdam there is a region where they're working on this speculation that looks a lot like what we're having now in Solidaire and in Skatelblad where you digital district. So I was able to see the same speculation the same architectural trend the same intentions meaning that they wanted to move the downtown and put it elsewhere and the result is the same. There is a quasi empty city there is no one living there and they don't see the people it's only accumulation of square meters for investment. So if you're colonized by this or that if we're in post-colonialism or not there is something that is happening now and is more important than what we are supposed to carry. They speak a lot about the white men. Who is the white man? What does that mean? This happened in Beirut and this happened in Amsterdam this speculation. So there is nothing called the white man. You need to have causes that are really important and that are worth hearing about. So these are the things that I would like to deal with and speak about. I never say that you are a globalized artist now about globalization hello Ras also when we spoke when you were preparing for the session when Tony said especially when he spoke now about the globalized cities I remember also that you said to me that you are searching for the non-globalized cities or to de-globalize some of the cities and that you always search for difference and that if now we de-globalize artists this would be something good of the arts and that we need to decolonize the arts. Can you please explain more to us your idea? Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Things I did because we can't forget it I want to talk about the ideas of the students because I think the students all over the world will be one. Now looking at what my students are doing in the university sometimes it irritates them because they are working with robots they are working with the robots and their arms and they are working with things together with the public it means there is no more actors no more public all are innovated actors the professional actors are only the guides of the other ones in a way and what comes on top of that since about two years is that because we are cooperating with for example the Hong Kong taking they are making current projects together with the Chinese students with the Chinese don't come to China students who don't go to China Zürich students are guiding Chinese public through the sea of Zürich telling stories and the Chinese public stays in China but is in Zürich and all the things which for sure are being quite interesting provoked us to start the research project called gamification in theatre gamification what does it mean by gamification? gamification including in theatre what does it mean by gamification? with this tool with the theatre that means that performing arts performing space is a digital form or at least a normal stage the program art can be in two cities at the same time in two different continents and that's why the university is the head of the university puts the internationalization on the first level means he created a university in Hong Kong and asked me to create a university in Singapur me and the theatre film and dance department refused and we started to because we say that that's the whole life city he said you have to do that in Singapore because it is the most whole life city in the world and we said yeah that's why we are only interested we are only interested in the differences that's why we started now three years with the University of Guadalupe in Burkina Faso and the aim is that we learn we all learn that the students also to work together with the students and the artists in these places with these differences not to equalize because it's not interesting but to make quite an interesting work together which is why for me it's not only to put the local things on the first level to ensure the inclusion of internationality of the plants to your concept concerning independent culture and art and how you are dealing with the subject and dealing with independent art good morning thank you Romana independent this is a very important and positive point and I will add a question to your questions how shall we realize or achieve independence independence is when we take independent decisions so when we have frameworks for people working in the art field to work and to achieve their project without having anything imposed from an outside party the most important thing is how to create a framework that will enable the artist or the artistic production to be open to create partnership and to add with the others as peers and not feel inferior and feel at the same time that he can have his freedom, his independence when it comes to performance now we are a little bit moving from the production to the institution and that is as well related to our discussion which means that now the institution is working to put a framework for the production of the art or when the institution itself is producing art so we are talking a lot about the cultural institutions are able to be independent and not promote imported things in terms of presenting art that are not imported that are purely local and in our region now there is a big interest in the distribution of art and taking into consideration this independence and I think to a big extent that this is a challenge because how we can create models and frameworks that respect these local specificities are very important while presenting you as well in international framework as well the experience of the interactive theater in the region was a model of bringing something that is not related to the region but adapting it and I do believe that we've realized a big success in that field and here I'm not talking about integrating social issues in the theater but I'm saying that the model used in planning or implementing a project of talking about an institution means that there's something imposed from outside or you can't talk about anything local or discuss it in a deep way so based on that I do believe that we can go deeper in that question now there's a big interest in the region and we need to ask ourselves in the framework of all these changes or at the light of all these changes to what extent can we preserve our local specificities and characteristics in the world the tools that are used to what extent are safeguarding the independence Maya and Leila talked about that point as well and now I'm trying to seem to ask to what extent the institutions are preserving the independence of the artists not only in the framework of respecting local characteristics but respecting that he's coming from a certain country and presenting his art you've talked about the changes happening right now and now I'll go back to Tony now we will move to a speaker mouse list which was a performance you've presented in 2012 and I will read what you said when the revolution in the Arab world started and the press introduced the term the Arab Spring many artists from the region including myself were often solicitated by European cultural institutions to speak about what's going on this in itself seems harmless they wanted to know and we wanted to speak at least this is how it looks at first now the debate has shifted as the interest has warmed the themes today revolve around radical Islam the fears of minorities, chemical weapons and so on things on which contemporary artists are not considered experts exactly now we will move to a speaker mouse list and I think it's very important to talk about the changes that happened in the Arab world in 2011 and this course the artists were trying to formulate ways and how they were trying to adapt it to present internationally first of all as an introduction to my answer I would like to say that I am convinced that in order to face the globalization that is necessary we have to start from the local because this duality local against the globalized can lead us to very bad consequences especially if it wants to save God some things what needs to let go will let go so that was the idea of the world because when I was asked in Berlin to talk about Arab revolution during a symposium concerning the Arab Spring it wasn't the first invitation I had to receive many emails and the bulk of the demand made me suspicious why they want to hear me speaking or to hear us speaking why? so here as well we can take the west orient model as well maybe they want to know more about that but I said something else I said that they want to accumulate knowledge quantitative knowledge in order to know more about the subject because this subject is covered by the media so we need to know more about this we need to have archives and then the archives will need to be opened for people to have a look at them so that is very similar to the work done during the revolution the Renaissance in Europe to have all the world under a single roof such as in the museum or in the zoo for these buildings where we compile things from different countries and that is similar to the capital accumulation we accumulate capital without having an open horizon the inverto echo in the name of the rose talked about a library that was working in a different way and when we read the novel it's a very lovely library because it's like the word and not divided in subject but divided or based on somewhere the books are so it's a very strange idea I won't go in the details of the novel but when I realized my work I was completely silent I decided not to talk I had only a PowerPoint presentation and the idea was that I've asked my guest, my host that after I finish the presentation I want someone to come and give me an envelope with the salary that was agreed upon and that happened as well I received the envelope I've counted the money in public and put it in my pocket it was to say that we are a part of this economy I've criticized okay but at the end of the day I am a part of that economy that I am criticizing because there's nothing outside that economy and if we assume that there's an economy outside the globalization or ideas outside the globalization that would be an illusion definitely illusion because we will be outside of the history and the dilemmas that we need to face economy in Naila when we've talked about the subject of decolonizing the arts you've talked about the dilemmas that the north of the region can face and the contradictions that you might face here we won't dwell in the details of financing and funding but there are always parties that can help the artist promote his work give him visibility so how an imbalance in the powers can influence the contents of artistic works if you can dwell on this briefly when I was talking you were focusing more on the fact that Tony mentioned that Maya as well is turning these subjects choosing the subject would make it cheesy for us to disseminate the work and sometimes studying other subjects can make it a lot more acceptable maybe presenting the art as not the Muslim but an Arab art and the effect of this study to work on the art for it to be accepted in the arena of contemporary work and be a developed version of it but as well we have conditions concerning the aesthetic dimension the show should be lighted easy and if one needs to work and to be a part of the market to a certain extent the maybe moving from a place to another is a must that people that are not a part of Europe or the States will have to endure a long time before starting to move and before being excited Maya I guess was supposed to be with us Father Jairie and I wanted to ask him a question but I will ask it to you now concerning the relation your work in this talk and the cultural translation we talked to you and I about the cultural translation I wanted to ask our guest when God Otage was performed in Odeon in 2006 it was the first Arab show that was presented in front of the rubble so you in the so called it was the first to be an Asian a man performing on that venue I know that in Zoukapi you are moving a lot you are performing in Europe in the state and you are training as students in universities in the states this is very rare because usually it's the total opposite so what are your comments and can you tell us more about your experience especially when training students in New York or elsewhere I will give you an example we were working with a group of youth in Houston last year and the subject was very large and then we worked with them we write scripts with them and we try to focus on letting the artist express himself and that in our work as well we start from the individual and then we move to a much more deeper subject or vast subject we wanted to work on women warriors but some students wanted to work on abortion because we were in Texas and the restrictive abortion rights were discussed and in position on abortion laws were discussed some students were doing or organizing a campaign they were holding pictures of posters and pictures reflecting on that subject they wanted to work on that subject we started some research and each and everyone was working on specific issues explosions that targeted abortion clinics in Houston and Texas in general and we thought as well about an incident that happened in Iraq where an explosion as well targeted a clinic performing an abortion and the discussion concerning that subject was one of the most important discussions that enable us to understand the bulk of work we have to do as artists today away from our conversion when we go and perform in Paris or London because mobility is cities that are accustomed to work coming from our region and adapting it and the difference between that and working with students in Houston not knowing anything about the arts coming from different contacts and the difference between that and going through rural areas in France so this is the important work that will highlight the fact that we have a role to play in making sure that today there's no difference between an explosion targeting a Houston clinic by Christian conservatives and an explosion targeting a clinic in Iraq perpetrated by Islamists we've discussed this we've talked to the student and she considered that this incident the incident in Iraq is something very far away and that in all cases the woman in Iraq would have been killed by her parents so we've explained that no parents will necessarily kill them and that the content is similar whether in Texas or in Baghdad the discussions were very interesting and I think we have to do that most often and we've talked about teaching arts and then one extent arts coming from outside non-European arts are present in the curriculum of universities in Europe and you've talked about your personal experience in that field and how you are trying always to find a new exchange program your own work, your own efforts in order to have a multiple content and what is your idea or your opinion about that? That's what I meant when I said that the equalizing means putting the first step to the local things and then we are because the local areas the first thing that teachers go in there to deal with is the difference between Missouri when we try to find these collaborations that's quite, I'm also with it's quite not the globalized but it's very concentrated and this partners is it was the former foundation young Arab theater fund next year we will do an exhibition a new exhibition we invited, Mochadat invited invites Arab artists to different places for example today about 10 Arab artists we come to San Josele, San Gallo Art Museum and working there on the exhibition and I also invite about 10 students from Granaturgie or from the second line to assist these artists so I hope that this could be the next step to create a collaboration around the university Some things were mentioned by Tony May and everybody the first colonial studies the research, writing in Arabic know that once we mentioned and you and I the quality of the research and the scientific research pertaining to the Arab artistic works you have more than one experience in the first course in terms of writing your PhD in the University of Angels of Lebanon and all the studies that you are trying to take in order to shed light on this project so what are your comments I will give you an example during the last two years I had the opportunity to work on texts for Syrian writers that were written from 2000 to 2015 I was working on 15 texts that were written from 2000 to 2015 I was working on 15 texts as a part of my university work in order to see how the Syrian writer is trying to see himself through the world and to tell you the truth I first wanted to focus on this course in order to depict that component and first of all I tried to see the narratives anything that can help me and then the references I have in Arabic or the translated references especially that I had many references in French and I tried to see how I can translate them and find solutions to that after a bit of research and after reading the text you see that you cannot start that way you cannot take a school or a curricula and see to what extent the texts are adapted to it yes or no but I felt that I won't reach any result simply the philosophical and social question for Syrian writers are different from the hazes or the motifs that led to the elaboration of that curricula so I wanted to focus on the meaning and applying the curricula as they are cannot help me reach that but when I was... if you go back to Foucault the authority etc I feel the difference I'm not here making a difference but when a curriculum... a European curricula that cannot be adapted to Arabic text there's nothing as we've mentioned called European or Arab theater but using the curriculum and the problem is problematic in Arabic because there's no critical reference to study that text or that curricula on the level of the terminology we need to find a way to translate the terminology before you said we said it was representation but if we don't do that we won't even know what the term is in Arabic so there is a great scarcity in this regard and there is a weakness in Arab experiences for example when I see Laila's work I can see it more in Europe rather than in India and I think that Dukak's work also is better situated in Europe as well in the European streets more than in here, more than in our region and this goes back also to the history of art where art really exists we need to ask questions about this topic and sometimes we don't see questions at all add to that another question how can we help our artists in this region maybe they have a production or maybe they can read a foreign language so that we will have a problem with the conscience regarding the translation of the Arab world as you're grasping on all levels sometimes in some fields we find that the translation has stopped 20 or 50 years ago thank you very much you have talked about something that we've been suffering from now we will open the door for the audience we can take three to four questions because we don't have enough time and Tony has another lecture yes please good morning I was able to find my self-link to what Tony said sometimes I like more to see artists' works rather than listen to their words and when he was silent I think he did something important also when he took the money on the panel I think also it was very important the problem is that we have a capacity to take money and to do presentations and then criticize the system but in order to criticize the wider system now maybe in our countries we're working against a smaller system in order to open spaces for ourselves and others but we need to look at the wider system so it's not really ironic to see that one of the funders here is a newspaper that represents the old system itself although I have a long warrant of fight against them but here I am so we need to redefine the situation we need to redefine the resistance what we're lacking today and we spoke a little bit about it yesterday we spoke about liberalism, neoliberalism maybe now there is neo-neo-liberalism and yesterday we spoke about the German institution that was supporting something in Tunisia and Egypt and then they decided that there was no transition in Egypt so there was no need for their funding so now maybe I didn't have my coffee but I can say that we were not insightful enough told you that the transition has stopped that the shift has stopped who told you that now you can put a full stop and that we're going to something new they sometimes say that the change has stopped that this change wave has stopped and like Tony said they want us to speak about chemical weapons and other things that are actually permanent there will always be disasters but when other people, when technocrats put a full stop and they want to control our work as artists and they're limiting our work when a journalist has a female in downtown during the demonstration what do you feel as a woman here but you're just looking at your breast and you don't even care about their presence and the demonstration you're just thinking about the audience maybe what is essential here and what is substantial and we need to understand we're not the Galabagos meaning that we're not coming to discover how dinosaurs worked, where they were etc and how they were put in laboratories thank you I think that a big part of this independence issue and I just was said before but in different forms so the samples or the forms the startups should be changed because in Europe they were able to open sources for us when we deal with what we have inherited then we can transform it into those sources and then other people also can use our sources so a big part of our definition of independence is what is material I really liked what they said we were in the festival that invited us to in Zurich's spectacle that was years ago and the discussion was about our work and how it's successful when we do something strange because when we do something about the Egyptian heritage people can see it as exotic and then we can market it but this is not actually what we're doing and people are not speaking about our work anymore but at the beginning there was this idea that either we keep it exotic or then it should be familiar meaning that it resembles what others do but the idea of doing something special that is neither exotic nor familiar that was the problem so in order to do something specifically and then we have this talk about the other so can I accept the idea that I am the other or maybe I'm just somebody else so the whole time we have these traps and we need to avoid these traps so that we can reach a dialogue that is really interesting with the audience and with the people Hi everybody I guess first I'll start by giving a little a little bit of a power-up series coming out of this conference so I'm going to say a little bit about one of those articles I'm going to riff a little bit on the old column which is entitled we heard the word gentrification we heard the word globalization I would like to put out there that the global real estate market is conspiring with the global credit the former military and industrial complex is quickly figuring out how to use these two markets to assert itself about a year ago Professor LaBoum across the street at Ashkelah 1 said something that stuck with me for the last year and that is he said that the construction market would decide when Syria and war is ending I want to pick up just quickly on self-volume as it was one of the cities mentioned as my home city we see the fetish of these cities in the global style as its terms and there was an example of a project called Noble Loose where the Swiss architecture for our Muretsat-Boumouron won a competition to build a new performing arts center in the older neighborhood of Loose some activists stocked this project and when I heard of what Professor LaBoum said last year about Syria I wonder will we see global architecture competitions at the last in the near future check out the articles on how that ended I suggest that we let them answer these three heavy questions I'm not contented do you have my comments? No? Shall we continue? They don't want to say anything I just want to say that I think that separating the issue of funding from this discussion is very risky and dangerous because this will drive we'll drive us to get stuck in issues of identities and the consequences against these identities while the core issue of colonization and decolonization cannot be separated from interests and from political interests I think so so I don't understand why did you want to do this separation Can I have an answer if you can about the German language We have another question so we'll be allocated to funding that's that easy I would like to say in Arabic that the idea is that when we separate the economic dimension from colonization of colonialism the reason is that sometimes we fear that there are much policies related to identities to removing identities and the whole relationship changes that's why I consider this separation as being dangerous so now the narrative that cannot see how culture is sometimes exploited by this is also something economic and it's not just it's not actually for a religious war thank you we could continue this discussion later on I think that a big part of it is the war is more about narratives more about rights and customs and it's also about I had a question about what I got to do about the political dimension and making decisions for example the partnerships that you have with different daughters and with the European partners and maybe we can speak about this later on we would of course remember this hello concerning the title decolonizing the art first of all I think that we have given a lot of force and strength to the world in colonization and then in secularization I don't think that we can colonize art at all in any way and it is not something that we have in our region because I don't see that we have a society with one identity so that another character is given to us in Lebanon we have thousands of cultures not the thousands tens of thousands of cultures so no one can identify them because we already have identities and if you look now at what's happening in Lebanon we don't have a unified kind of arts here in the same room we have 70 ways of dealing with arts if we're just speaking about performing arts and in other countries where we see that the colonialism aspect is very strong just like in India we see that their tradition is very strong and this relationship with heritage and with culture is very strong so I think it's more strong with colonialism aspects so what is the local art that is really close to the heritage of our so what are we going to do so that it's working since the 70s of course we're not doubting that it's belonging to Lebanon but what should I tell him and who is he? He is a Francophone director from the 70s and he was a director when no one was working before that before the 70s on the other side and it's completely strange if we go back to what Almas said the colonization aspects today are the opportunism opportunism in culture for example and we look at the others like others look at us and then they say that we are being colonized and this is so weird so instead of speaking about getting colonized instead of talking about this I'll be reading this with a very huge amount let's use the Syrian art as the model I think that this question of colonization of art this is the issue of colonization it's like the colonization that we have on the internet is what we have from abroad so the internal context also plays a great role because we have political colonization social colonization that the legacies and the history and if we're preserving the identity whether it's the Arab entity, the religious entity the sectarian identity and the difference between the modernity and the tradition inside and outside it says something normal that art is a part of the dynasty it's not a question also about the stronger and the news weaker although there is this question of who is relying on me and these things that we deal with on a daily basis so the main question for me is eventually at the end of the day within these polarizations the decision that is made that is what something mentioned by Abdullah and I have this question especially for the Syrian art is the decision made by the individual art that is working on this product or is the decision that is made by the institution, the institution that has a real vision a vision for a certain cultural change with objective and goal so do we have to answer the question ourselves or should we take our own decisions in an organic way that is in harmony with our objectives and maybe in the long run we will be answering this question so I have a question are we maybe using our energy when we always try as artists and as an artist sector to find an answer to this question we should not waste our energy because maybe we need to take our own decisions in an organic way and we need to see this negotiation space and eventually this question will answer itself by itself yes we need to be aware of this issue, that is at your eyes thank you good morning everyone I can feel it I think in Beirut but also it is finding expensive cars and putting stuff in traffic and doing nothing but producing pollution I think I like Tony's position because it leads us with a very important question and that is how to identify and organize against the forces of global political and economic movement and it's a question for us as intellectuals, artists and civil society last but not least I think when we are talking about the Neocolonialism the issue of subpowers is very important to consider that is the ability of getting others to want what you desire and there is no shame in recognizing that we all have been influenced by western culture one way or another to become an object of colonization colonization means actually to be ignorant about the roots of that by better understanding the western culture and its dominance and its global dominance which is not western anymore we have to cover the active subject and in terms of identity with the economy culture whatever we want to be engaged into a dialogue and to organize a global civil society against those forces that you are so well in your opinion what are your thoughts about this if you have any questions I would like to add I would like to I would like to if I can I would like to I would like to answer with these questions can I answer I think organic artists, also there are, these are words that I don't use, this is an misunderstanding. I'm not speaking about it specifically, but this idea of this organic intellectual, these are things that I don't use, microphone please. So we can't hear her intervention without an answer because these terms always make me become alert And I agree with what Tauman has said, we're the other in the colonial thinking. If you accept this, you don't have to accept to be in a position where you need to tell others who you are, what your identity is, and like have a performer identity. But also it's not necessary to say that if I don't want to do this, then I need to take the other forms so that I become familiar. No, this is not about the specificity of the individual, individual is something that was in the past in the 19th century. Now there are specific topics, specific issues that need answers. We need to know what these questions are, we need to identify them, we need to find them, and we need to find pertinent and irrelevant answers, not just any answer. So this is my own opinion, had I had a longer time, I would have been maybe softer. So I apologize if I was a bit rude, thank you. I agree with what Rohit has said, and I think that what we should do is not related to the region where we are, meaning it's not related to the Arab arts only, it's related to us in general. And it's about working with people who believe that we need to go out of these frameworks, we should go out of the box, especially that we're speaking here about the economic system. So we need to know also that we're not in big numbers. So the quantity of people that really believe in different definitions for individuals and really believe in a different thinking, a different way of thinking about arts, like Tony said, and about the topics that we should work on. So these people, we can find them anywhere in the world, but it depends on a certain way of thinking, certain way, or on a certain culture, they don't belong to a certain class or to a specific class of intellectuals or educated people know, but we need a way to identify each other and create a certain coalition so that we can work on global issues to be able to fight this huge thing that is somehow dangerous and makes us feel like ants. It's like the whole time we need to justify ourselves and represent ourselves with what is available. I'll stop here, thank you. So once again, I agree with what Rana said and it actually meets what Tony said. What Maya has just said is that we need to look at the wider picture. It's very important to see the specter picture to be able to think about these changes. What I really liked with you in the panel in this session is the sensitivity that you gave to each term, to each word. And Maya, I understand what you said and I think that we can speak about it in the future session about the funding. I only have a quick observation. I think that this is a sensitive topic because the entries to work with artists here is happening with a political background. So this is maybe something that we could discuss in length in the conversation. Layla, you have half a minute. Tony has to go, he has a lesson. So this is a direct threat. I want to speak a little bit about the relationship between the local and the global. I think also that what is important is the relationship between the individual and the group or the community. So I have these small structures and each of the artists has a different tactics for dealing with all these complexities that we face in our daily lives. And the one I'm shortly explaining to you is that these are artists from Beirut, also from others from Iraq who say, why do you go to this meeting? And I said, yeah, I was invited and I think it's important. And they only leave them because they haven't been invited. And that's why I think this is a base and a local base to talk about the art. Okay, we won't be allowed to do this. Yeah. Are you hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything? Hiding anything?