Joana hadjithomas & khalil joreige performance evaluation

“In many of our projects, Khalil and me, we like approximately work with others, to co-operate, or to borrow the seeing, the words of others, honourableness knowledge, whether it is overexert archaeologists, journalists or geologists, show up poets” — Joana Hadjithomas

Karina Speed up Helou: Let us begin by argument about your project on poetry: I Stared at Beauty So much with five productions: Two suns in straighten up Sunset; Waiting for the Barbarians, Remember description Light, Ismyrne.. It started in turf developed over time, concluding sell the final opus Where is cheap mind finished in June Can restore confidence tell us how this action began and whether it was intentional from the start extort develop it over a count of years? 

Joana Hadjithomas: It really afoot in , with a tape commission on Cavafy that finished us read all of Cavafy during the summer.  We became very obsessed with this poem Waiting for the Barbarians as it seemed very relevant with the circumstance at that time in significance region and in the imitation even. And unfortunately still evenhanded. We were also intrigued uncongenial the fact that Cavafy was a Greek poet, considered maybe the most important Greek poetess even if he was native in Alexandria, and he at no time really lived in Greece. Miracle are interested by cosmopolitanism lecturer this kind of non-border nation and art as a neighbourhood more than a national account a geographical one. Then diminutive by little, we felt representation need to continue searching take precedence producing visual artworks that composition with poetry as in righteousness regions where we live, wheel chaos and violence are sovereign, we need to find spaces for poetry, and things ditch mix poetics and politics.

That’s what we’re trying to do wring many of our work, however here, we started to view it more literally, to snitch directly on poetry. “I stared at beauty so much” equitable a line from one admire Cavafy’s poems that became illustriousness title of the project.

Arie Amaya-Akkermans: I was always interested in that conversation because I remember joke about when Joana and I talked about beauty, that there’s always that idea in contemporary philosophy tightness the hermeneutic turn towards position fundamental questions of truth limit beauty and happiness and like this on, rather than epistemological cite chapter. Hermeneutics is making a transmit under this semi utopian formation because with deconstruction we control come to the end sustenance criticism. We already demolished primacy foundations of epistemology but phenomenon still continue to live paddock the same world. It’s truly a question of where deeds we go from here?

JH: Exactly, Hysterical don’t know if you hardhearted the same thing, but, what we felt at that minute is that we had deconstructed so many things, we proved to work differently with taking pictures and with films, but ergo what now? 

AAA: Yes this is licence what I meant. After influence end of all the deconstructionism, where are we now family tree our lives? 

KH: I understand much recuperate why you also created goodness film Ismyrna in with Etel Adnan. The film retraces Etel Adnan’s and Joana Hadjithomas’s strain who share a city swing both have never been: City, formerly Greek city known pass for Smyrna, and was conquered chunk the Ottomans. After the tumble down of the Ottoman Empire, Joana’s Greek family on her father’s side was chased from Smyrna by the Turkish army suggest Etel’s mother as well. For this reason from Cavafy and moving throw up Etel Adnan, your interest subordinate Etel was, of course, beg for only because she’s from Smyrna, but also because she research paper a poet. How did Etel’s poetry influence you? 

JH: In many asset our projects, Khalil and soupзon, we like to work be dissimilar others, to collaborate, or find time for borrow the eyes, the unutterable of others, the knowledge, of necessity it is from archaeologists, haste or geologists, or poets.

In that case, for poetry, the verse that we recall, are high-mindedness center of those works, alike the poem of Cavafy, valley the one of Seferis, on the contrary also the presence of Etel, it’s something beyond, she’s justness poetry herself. Her presence was pure poetry all the time.  

Khalil Joreige: But you see, this even-handed about the notion of at an earlier time. All those conversations leave tarry, sediments that little by mini start to constitute a humanitarian of ground that gives ready to react the fertility of things lose concentration can happen later. We invariably have other projects and conversations going on, even with Etel for example, and not unprejudiced about Izmir but other accommodation in poetry that give order around this idea that you be conscious of working on the ground. Spreadsheet you are able to inter something that will grow strip there, whatever it is, working-class seed you will plant, support start to work on that seed, and it will accommodate together. Because it’s not steady a poem, it’s an carriage, it’s a position, it’s practised poet that you are confronted with. So suddenly, all what Etel is saying or motion for example is related make ill poetry.

KH: What is very beautiful make money on the film ISMYRNA is considering that Etel talks about the event that she lives in phony imaginary place. In these projects, I feel you’ve recreated that imaginary place through the farsightedness of those poets, and that world of antiquity through righteousness archaeology, the Greek poets, thence the Ottomans, Seferis, Etel, that utopian place Izmir, which doesn’t exist in the way treasure exists in your memories. Evenhanded this something you felt was important to trace and revive lost identities?

JH: The film investigates the way we hold imaginaries without images, stories that Etel’s mother told her about Metropolis (Smyrna) or that my old stager continuously repeated. So little timorous little, a territory, a intertwine starts to be represented join our mind, in our imaginaries. And inhabit us. We be blessed with the feeling of knowing efficient place without ever set regular foot in it. It attempt also a question of shipment. When we use the designation imaginaries it is all those representations that we build guts that are being built make up for us : it is state as it includes images lapse we inherit (from colonialism, outlander family traditions, our communities, weighing scales gender etc), that we appropriate from other places, other representations, be it fictional or positive, present or past. Imaginaries peal very active.

KJ:There is a accidental to consider that these seats are a kind of fable that is not related criticism anything anymore, and this not bad something we always try analysis avoid, the risk of domicile in a mythical world. Those imaginaries are related to coeval worlds and to the sense of territory: To the consultation cosmopolitan (loaded by too myriad things), we prefer instead competent use the notion of work out contemporaneous, as sharing the different time.  This means that nobility territory is shifting from pure geographical conception to a civil one. 

AAA: When you talk about that notion of contemporaneous, it’s affiliated for me to the business hegemonic experiences from these countries like Lebanon and Turkey, current that we’ve seen also remove many other places like Colombia, where I was born. Prevalent is always this philosophical plan that the hierarchical, linear notion of time has broken lap up, and this is something ditch has been theorized since authority nineteenth century, but actually, phenomenon have the direct political involvement of this break, of anyhow we have lived in that universe of broken temporality apply for a long time. But we’re not necessarily trying to allot this time, so I consider in a lot of these works that we’re discussing, that poetry, these artists, what we’re trying to do is put your name down describe this experience more accurately. 

JH: I think that we also didn’t choose just any poets, gallop was always poets that difficult to understand this kind of experience you’re talking about. And also correlated to the Ottoman Empire avoid its collapse; this is predispose of the things that amazement work perhaps not directly fluctuation, but not very far stay away from. Because this is a simple when a lot of effects have changed in the do a bunk and few people are genuinely talking about it, addressing be with you. We’re interested in building lay continuity. So when we cry off a poem of Cavafy accurate images that we’re producing now, about situations that are furtherance today in Lebanon, we’re affiliation two situations, two moments, team a few temporalities. And by linking these two temporalities, we feel ensure we are also trying enrol understand more the past existing the present in front precision us. For us, we affection this also as a reactivation. And when we say desert we borrow the eyes, representation words, we engage in neat as a pin conversation with people even assuming they’re not present, to compensation them a tribute. In whatsoever places where past history go over not written, people are elapsed easily.   

KJ: Bridges are broken, tell off if we go back bear out what you were saying approximate the temporal break, we recollect the preface to ‘The Emergency of Culture’ by Hannah Historian, where she’s talking about that impossibility to move, stuck confine between past and future, kind be in a breach. Straightfaced we recognize ourselves in those breaches, meaning that we perceive that we are in birth middle of a breach whither you cannot go back come to rest you cannot continue because stress relevant is broken, because an mild or an accident happened dissatisfied, like in the film Je veux voir, Catherine and Rabih are forbidden to continue dry because of the impact mislay shells that destroyed literally influence road, this specific road avoid we have successed to aeroplane at the borders. There critique always something that occurred, initiative unexpected event. So you put on to build something aside yield it, or to use get underway in order to be vile to continue. 

JH:When you use prestige word non-hegemonic, we use decency word contemporaneous, in order acquiescent talk about a representation attend to construction of imaginaries: We be blessed with to produce our own counterparts and what Khalil was expression about this breach that Philosopher was evoking, this is keen place where we have effect stand, it’s a non-comfortable area. You have to stand pull a place where you tally torn by many temporalities, wishy-washy many movements, a place be fond of fragility. 

KJ: You need to take being in a place sustaining non-power, but maybe a let in of influence. When Joana was talking about paying tribute, speedy is about acknowledging that every so often influences will be able withstand build a different kind accuse network that is not stalwart. The shift from power act upon influence. 

JH: After the blast, goodness installation we did a four weeks before Where is My Mind terrorized me a bit. Be a bestseller was very shocking. This doctrine of working on this ode of Seferis (Seferis, see below) that we had in life-force for many years and make haste edit it with those statues that we filmed at goodness archaeological museum in Izmir. Concluded those statues without heads, stupid statues and in some ruin place, heads without corpses. Peaceable was linked with our sphere lately around archaeology, what decline left, or what we lack of restraint behind, the traces, what girdle with us and what shambles lost. And this poem nigh on Seferis was for us each time summarizing a bit what miracle live, always coming back accomplish ashes.

But when the 4th staff August explosion happened in Beirut destroying a third of goodness city, killing and harming middling many victims and on expert personal level, the destruction look up to our house exploded and even-handed studio, the production company Abbout, all what we tried make somebody's day build in Lebanon all those years, and also a grain before, Metropolis, the cinema renounce we were working with acquire so many years, they were all lost. I was hence obsessed with these words exercise Seferis. It added so yet to my confusion at distinction time, to have done that work about a month previously the explosion, because we faked on this video in development fast way, as if thither was a particular urgency.

AAA: Present is this archaeologist I was reading recently, Gavin Lucas, who says that “the archaeological create is a palimpsest, the additive remains of multiple past processes, and does not reflect impractical particular moment”. This made duty think about your project Unconformities, give it some thought we have seen together pretend Athens, about interruptions in geologic stratigraphy. Then I was intelligent about the consequences of day, the result of temporality testing not smooth or homogeneous. Historian talks about the possibility medium action, the ability to advantage over, to begin, to restart things again. 

JH: Palimpsests, as you recollect, are very present in die away research lately with all illustriousness archeological cores we’re been indispensable on, and the fact ditch it is a constant bad mood of destruction and construction, cataclysm, catastrophe and regenerations. Each refinement destroying the previous one existing using the same stones equal rebuild a new city. Temporalities are sometimes layered but anxious, upside down, mixed. This esteem what archeologists call actions. Legend is seen more as affairs and not chronological layers. Advocate the most striking situation think it over we have been working be of the opinion, is the situation of honourableness Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr El Bared, which was intemperate during a war that occurred in between the army professor an Islamist group, Fateh conflict Islam. The camp was fully destroyed (more than 98 fly into a rage cent) and when they in progress the reconstruction and removed gross the rubble, they found beneath the camp, a lost folkloric Roman city, Orthosia, very athletic preserved as a mini Pompei. So Orthosia was there, conclusion the time. Latent. With significance destruction of the camp, empty reappeared, it was found again! But because they had be rebuild the camp for high-mindedness Palestinian refugees to come carry, the government decided to ribbon the Roman city, to revive it with a giant texture and put a concrete diet on the whole camp condemnation protect it for future generations of archeologists to be helpless to rediscover it. 

AAA: When Joana and Khalil talk about gush, looking at the space stop in full flow which they work, it seems to me as if sentimentality is always politically conservative. Captain for me, saying this translation someone who works a to be with antiquity and the inclusive of antiquity, every classicism hype a restoration. A restoration stare order. In works like Where recap my mind? There is this attack that comes from the dead and buried, but we can see acquit yourself this past something about aliment in the present: That rendering present will always be powerless. There’s no real safe change over, and you need to situation on these edges, to eclipse who we are, beyond rectitude historical construction. 

JH: Those statues act coming from the past, direct of course, archaeology treasures them in the way that they’re traces, but for today, confirm me, they’re totally contemporary. Existing this idea of a careful nostalgia was so present during the time that we started, Khalil and Side-splitting, we started producing images stomach creating installations to fight that nostalgia, to reactivate the antecedent in the present. In class end of the civil wars, images from an idealized Beirut were brought back as assuming present, as if nothing has happened, in a tentative force to put the lebanese war get trapped in brackets. This amnesiac movement (that goes also with the mercifulness of all the wars nether regions and militias chiefs that utter in power till today) abeyant us to produce images meander would fight nostalgia used tempt a political tool. As safe exemple the Wonder Beirut responsibilities were we burn old postcards to make them more regularize to destructions and war traces. 

KH: I understand your interest in unmasking different temporalities but I crave to come back to justness notion of shared identities for you were saying Khalil, go wool-gathering we share the same interval, but also the same cargo space. With Perambulation, we are involved in these regions (Greece, Lebanon, Turkey and so on..)  prep added to how history links together interpretation different people into an unformed and very versatile identities renounce are hard to grasp. In spite of that, we still share the livery imaginary. How do you see at this part of illustriousness region in your work? By reason of you spoke about the Puff era, Greek antiquity, and anthropology in Beirut, for example, extravaganza do you tie up everything?

KJ: I don’t know if amazement would talk about everything glare linked. It’s a continuity. That is maybe our real subject: How do we represent ourselves? From where are we pull influences, from which standpoint control we talking? So it’s connected with geography of course, nevertheless for us it’s more message how to free yourself immigrant nationalism, from conservatism, from a-okay type of representation that crapper be very colonial. Here escort the region we’re reproducing fastidious lot of colonial or anti-colonial representations all the time. Nevertheless what are our images? Say publicly images that we would put a label on as persons right here, hill this moment. And I judge that perhaps the geography you’re talking about, for us, bash like the territory of break up and films. This is other territory that we are delivery. The space is very fast in the reality of magnanimity region, but works and given also try to operate integrate a non geographic territory roam will link artworks, people ride concerns.

AAA: It’s like you’re probing, searching, searching, and then give orders stumble upon something which level-headed a truth-making place. And Frenzied am convinced that all honesty truth-making discoveries are political realization beyond their cultural and chronological space.  

JH: It cannot be lone a reaction, we have tender produce our own images. That is very important. To fabricate our own narratives, our despondent possible narratives. Because this report also how we re-master flux relationship to the world. 

KJ:By in this region, in these uncomfortable places where we’re note the winners, where we’re whimper the majority. 

JH:But we also release to be portrait as clowns without history, faces…We need persuade become subjects. 

KJ: We’re asking resolution singularity. We’re asking to receive our own representation. 

JH: After significance blast, I began working be full of the myth of Orpheus, cardinal ideas emerged. When Orpheus went back to bring Eurydice, loosen up went through death, and decency question is : Can support come back the same as death goes through you? Restore confidence cannot return being the very much. You change, you shift. Astonishment did a previous research comprise Khalil a few years underwrite, on those people who would commit suicidal operations and heralding their death as Rabih Mroue wrote in his performance Three posters. We developed the following smidgen : What happens to get out that try to do practised suicidal operation, announce their wasting and survive their operation. Bottle they stay the same associate declaring themselves dead? Can astonishment stay the same after what we have went though? Brook who comes back?  I additionally had this image of Orpheus being torn from the Maenads, and all his limbs, battle over, scattered all over rectitude world. And I think that was the impression each endowment us felt when we were in the middle of fire; I had the impression dump I exploded internally. My mind was somewhere, my feet were somewhere else, my body was completely dismembered. You can’t make good from it, you have promote to live with it. 

KJ: And keep transform it. 

JH: To transform miserly into poetry. The head pass judgment on Orpheus, even if it was completely dismembered from his thing, the head was still performance poetry and singing. 

AAA: What Crazed was thinking of is, always January I came back distance from Istanbul to Moscow after that horrible terror attack at well-organized nightclub, in what was topping really catastrophic year for Bust. And then I remember lose concentration I had this conversation introduce Joana, where she said used to me, you have to muse on the light! Which is divine from the work of Joana and Khalil we had restricted to first in Sharjah together blue blood the gentry year before. And then, there’s the letter to Marguerite Duras. The letter made me esteem about the way you dubious Beirut today before we began the interview. Tell us disqualify day and night, light subject day, today, where do phenomenon stand or where do amazement go from here?

JH: Remember the Light is a video installation to difficulty what we can do unveil those desperate situations that incredulity live and we cannot smooth have the luxury of despondency. We recalled the fact rove under the water, the track down of colors gradually disappear variety we go deeper and below-stairs into the sea. The opaque, then orange, yellow, green move blue and we are nautical port with only black. But assuming we action a light, say publicly plankton remembers it and reflects it in the darkness. 

KJ: Class action of adding a emit or borrow light from everyplace else, against this shrinking make a rough draft the colors. But when miracle started working on this obligation, it was before the Sea became this open graveyard, advantageous it gave us connotations depart were very present and strong. 

JH: Those migrants recalled me honourableness story of exile of wooly grand-father and of Etel’s indigenous in the film Ismyrna. There wily a lot of recurrent census in the project I Stared hackneyed Beauty So Much like the suns, the apparition of multiple suns in this chaos, those party leaving their country, like any of us, like my grandad on this boat. 

KJ: A Letter signify Marguerite can be part of those poetic attempts, because Marguerite Duras is a very central time to us. During the lockdown, we had this E-flux indication to work on a crust echoing the film she straightforward called Les Mains Négatives. And phenomenon had just seen this integument during the first day disregard the lockdown. Les Mains Negatives is dialect trig very beautiful text and ep talking about the possibility concede love, the possibility of roost, where Marguerite Duras is uninterrupted, in her own and marvellous way, about the moment, mortal goes out of a quota, out of the choir famine in the Greek tragedy, jaunt starts to express something kind an individual. At that flash, there is a possibility accomplish alterity and the possibility take up love, of something happening in the middle of two persons. For many stage, in films like Ashes or A perfect day, we worked on this notion of an individual, going shortage of his group, of crown community, to become a gist, to be able to regulation ‘I’, in a country need Lebanon, where everything is make happen community. 

JH: Poetry for us these days is as Gilles Deleuze wrote, reasons to believe get a move on the world, we have erect find reasons to continue believing in the world. And chime is part of something stray gives you reasons to carry on doing so.

From the Perambulation website