The body is here, off-screen

Unlike previous episodes of sectarian violence in Beirut, which were related to local events, the explosion in the port of Beirut on 4 August 2020 affected the entire city – and in a single moment. From that day on, Lebanese politics shifted to a state of status quo and deterioration. Because, Alia Hamdan believes, since the disaster its inhabitants no longer experience time as before. From then on, they have judged time in Beirut as ‘entropic’ : it is a time with a future, but only a future of decomposition. Residents see walls, schools, hospitals slowly crumbling. Strangely not followed by any political upheavals, or dismissals, or justice.   

In her lecture-performance, Hamdan explores how the explosion caused time to ‘freeze’. What impact did the event have on our experience of time? She asks questions about the impact of the disaster on the bodies of residents – including a woman in a coma. She was injured in the explosion at the port. The performance depicts her comatose state as experienced by her mother, an experience that proves all the more accurate in light of recent developments between Israel and Lebanon.  

Through the media of (recurring) video and sound fragments, rhythms, invisible events, or technical effects such as looping, Hamdan captures the decay. She ultimately questions our ideas in a chronological, linear flow of events in space.

• Alia Hamdan was born in Beirut. She is a performer and conducts research on the aesthetics of politics. Her interests circle around dance and performance and the Deleuzian theory of the image, specifically also in the context of Palestinian and Lebanese issues. She has been teaching performance and cinema theory at various universities since 2014.  

• Fares Chalabi was born in Beirut. He received a bachelor in Philosophy from the Lebanese University, as well as a diploma in Architecture from ALBA in 2004. He teaches philosophy and art theory, among other subjects. He currently lives and works in Paris. Like Hamdan, he is fascinated by the theories of Deleuze and Foucault, politics of resistance, and visual theory.