Curated by Jayce Salloum
We have (too) many images for this place/this region and as many names but none of them are accurate or adequate: Middle East, Near East, North Africa, Magreb, Levant, Holy Land, Arab world, Muslim world, the Orient. We have too few names for the people of these places. There is a certain violence in not naming, just as there is an innate violence in the naming (i.e. terrorist or prisoner) that we engage in.
This place (these people) has been over– and under–reproduced throughout the history of its representation by its visitors, its conquerors, its "allies" and those who are passing through. These representations are ours. We are implicated within these constructions.
in/tangible cartographies seeks to provide an audience for a range of work by Arab videomakers living in this (unnameable) region. It also includes the work of those in exile, or "dispossession," as are Palestinian videomakers inside and outside of the "occupied territories." In lieu of being silenced and having one's existence ignored or obliterated, these works account for marginalized voices of experience, composing a history denied and substantiating a concrete body of work.
The works in this program strategically blur the distinctions between conventional genres, not for stylistic reasons but in an attempt to find an appropriate form of representation for the issues tackled. Whether resurrecting tropes from the ashes of tradition or inscribing distinctive tendencies, they carve out a diction or landscape of their own. There is an additional weight here, the tradition of story telling; the oral, lyrical, musical, theatrical, and filmic heritage that resonates in Arab culture at large.
in/tangible cartographies is organized as six thematic chapters. The series continues in April with two remaining chapters and a one-person show of Jayce Salloum's work.
