[spectre] New podcast: Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari contextualises his work 'Nature morte'

[Radio Web MACBA]

*Akram Zaatari contextualises his work 'Nature morte'*

In this podcast,
<http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/akram-zaatari-fons/capsula>*Akram Zaatari
<http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/akram-zaatari-fons/capsula> *contextualises
his work 'Nature morte', which is part of the MACBA Collection. This film
was produced for the 2008 exhibition 'Les Inquiets – 5 artistes sous la
pression de la guerre' at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which
explored the war in the Middle East and its representations.

Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/akram-zaatari-fons/capsula

The construction of memory, photographic objects, and a very broad
understanding of the notions of collectionism and archive have been at the
core of Akram Zaatari’s (Sidon, Lebanon, 1966) artistic practice since
1995. In 1997, Zaatari co-founded the Arab Image Foundation (AIF) partly to
contain this activity of collecting, but also to organise it within an
institutional framework and give it form through an expanding collection,
which itself is a result of multiple modes of acquisition. Less of a
repository of documents, the strength and originality of the AIF lies in
the critical intersection of two archival practices, institutional and
artistic. Over the past twenty years, the AIF was the medium through which
many of Zaatari’s projects and interests were developed.

Akram Zaatari is part of a generation of Lebanese artists who, in recent
decades, have focused their attention on armed conflicts and post-war life
in this Middle Eastern country.

In FONS ÀUDIO #48, Akram Zaatari
<http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/akram-zaatari-fons/capsula>
contextualises his work 'Nature morte', which is part of the MACBA
Collection. This film was produced for the 2008 exhibition 'Les Inquiets –
5 artistes sous la pression de la guerre' at the Centre Georges Pompidou in
Paris, which explored the war in the Middle East and its representations.
The video shows two men seated in a drab, white-walled room. The older one,
with a weathered face, is preparing explosives, while the younger one mends
a jacket. The two men go about their business at the same time, without
speaking. The only sound that can be heard is the call to prayer from a
nearby mosque, the noises the men make as they work, and the hiss of a gas
lamp. When they have finished their tasks, the older man leaves the house
carrying a rifle on his back, a rucksack, his lunch in a plastic bag, and
the mended jacket. The camera shows him receding into the distance at
daybreak. The young man is played by the actor Ghayth el Amine. The older
one is Mohammad Abu Hammane, a former Lebanese resistance fighter who had
already worked with Zaatari in his 1997 video 'All is Well on the Border'.
His participation in this new work brings to mind the resistance years: an
old man checks his fighting equipment. The lack of dialogue emphasises the
distance between two generations that approach war in different ways. The
scene was filmed in the village of Hubbariyeh in the region of Aarqub in
southern Lebanon, a mountainous area at the intersection of Lebanon, Syria
and Israel that has been the object of political dispute for almost a
century. The village is located a stone’s throw from Shebaa farms, which
have been occupied by Israel since 1967 and are a centre for the Fedayeen
Palestinean resistance fighters.

*Timeline*
*00:35* On 'Nature Morte' (2008)
*01:15* The Shebaa Farms in between Lebanon and the Golan Heights
*04:23* A film about military struggle, wether we continue or stop
resisting occupation
*06:54* Someone who lived under the Israeli occupation
*09:47* It's about the division of Lebanese public opinion
*10:09* A relationship between two men
*11:03* No talking
*11:18* Boyscouts, firemen and resistance fighters
*12:00* The history of the Lebanon Republic stops with independence
*12:50* Confronting the art public

Enjoy!
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