[-empyre-] beyond screens

[mirene arsanios]

Dear Nat, Ayah and Mayssa,

Interresting questions : )

I don't know precisely why the screen has had such importance in
contemporary Lebanese art, but I can think of a few reasons.
I know for instance that different artists, before becoming artists, have
worked for various TV channels. Roy Samaha once told me that he started
working and experimenting with video after reviewing hours of footage for a
TV program. I can imagine that coming from such professional background
conditions your relation to image making and diffusion.

The other explanation I can think of is that artists working with video
today often have a film backrgound and were trained in traditional film
schools (considering the lack of contemporary visual art schools) . Also
here, keeping a certain frontal or framed relation to the image.

I also think, as you rigtly mentioned, that this is changing and that a
younger generation of artists is moving away from the TV screen type of
presentation. Rather, what seems to guide the work of this new generation (
I am thinking here about Marwa's work, Raed Yassin, Mounira el Solh), is to
activate the image in relation to the material being addressed. For example,
to address the history of the Accapulco  (by Marwa Arsanios. Accapulco
addresses the history of  a modernist beach resort located in Beirut's
southern beach), the artist used video, photos and architectural models.
Raed Yassin activates footage from Egyptian film through his sound
performances, Mounira el Solh is able to produce paintings through a
fictional persona, on which she also produced a fictional documentary.
Rather than identifying these artist through a form or a medium,  (single
channel, multi channel, or installation) I tend to think their work as
"projects", which take different forms, depending on what they want to
explore.
Hope you are all well,

Mirene



-- 
Mirene Arsanios

www.mirenearsanios.wordpress.com
www.98weeks.blogspot.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20110217/9b4d96d3/attachment.html>