Oct 28, 2022 | 06:00 pm
Impulse II
The Sectarian-Image: Action
Fares Chalabi was born in Beirut in 1977. He obtained his BA in philosophy in 2002 from the Lebanese University (UL), and a diploma in architecture from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 2004. He continued his studies in philosophy at Paris 8 where he obtained a Master 2 in 2008, and his PhD in 2017. Chalabi taught philosophy and art theory at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Saint Joseph University (USJ), and the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) between 2012-2021. Today he lives and teaches in Bordeaux. His main fields of interest are: the study of ontological argumentation, ethics and aesthetics – in line with the Deleuzian approach.
Abstract
The talk aims at exploring the way action is conceived in the Lebanese context. This context is assessed as a sectarian regime having its own specificities as to the way perception, action and affection are configured. The talk will hence first present the modern and post modern conceptions of action, conceptions that pertain to what is known as the Great Democracies, in order to grasp the specificities of the sectarian way of taking action. Second the talk will show how in the sectarian context we witnessed a number of phases, or epochs, corresponding to the pre-war period, followed by the civil war years (1975-1990), then the post-war period (1990-2020), and last the years of the collapse. We will try to show how action, and its manifestations in movies and performing arts, has changed during these different phases. The aim of this presentation is to produce a conception of action specific to the Lebanese context in order to contribute to artistic and cultural production in view of resisting to the hegemonic dominant global culture and its way of configuring the way we act and perform.
Moderated by:
Maissa Maatouk (b. 1992) is an artist living and working in Beirut. Often taking the form of videos, her work looks for aesthetic strategies to overcome the neutralizing effect related to the sectarian power on the body, which is generated by local and regional power structures.Filming becomes a way to act in the state of suspension to generate time and space outside of the power-structure causing it. She graduated with a Bachelor degree (2014) and a Masters degree (2017) in Product and Global Design from Académie Libanaise des Beaux-arts and was a 2019–2020 fellow at Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program. Currently, she works as a studio assistant and production manager with artists in Beirut while developing her own projects.
