Today whilst on line, I came across a blog written by the Lebanese artist Walid Raad whom I’d met in November of last year after a talk he gave in the CCA. Working in video and performance, he is also the founder of the Atlas Group a foundation set up between Beirut and New York. His blog, whilst beginning in his own words, was finished with an elegy to Beirut written by Robert Fisk. I have also attached this elegy, which I would also like to be read by anyone who is taking the time to read this blog. The elegy says everything.
I had hoped this new week would signify the shift from reading and researching into doing and making. However, I could not have anticipated these events and must take the time to reconsider and re align. My year in Beirut at the age of seventeen, was my first big adventure in life, my discovery, and territory, and nothing can touch it. My sister was safely evacuated with my niece and nephew but dear friends and family remain. This past week, as my sister put it, has been ‘’stomach churning’’ .The worry, sadness and onslaught of vivid memories were compounded by a phone call from her, after she finally returned home. She told me that Yvette had been asking all about me, and after asking what I planned to do post Mackay Country residence, reminded my sister that I always have a home in Beirut. I already owe Yvette so much. Without her support, faith and foresight in my ability, I doubt I would be where I am now. I am loyal to Lebanon and have never felt the need more strongly to express my political sensibilities through my practice. However, I have never been one to make overtly political work and as I have stated time and again in my personal statements:
‘’ I have learned to reconcile my political sensibilities with the personal perspective with which I approach my work, allowing the innately poetic aesthetic of my work to convey its own political message. ‘’
I am here in the privileged position of artist in residence for Mackay Country and yet I must address the devastating situation in Lebanon. In an effort to discover how I can address both, I have begun to investigate the idea of simultaneity as discussed in Fernando J. Rosenberg’s book, The Avant Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America, ’’ one might say that simultaneity is a way to understand what appears to be nonsynchronous, that is about coping spatially with a lag. The simultaneity of the radically different.’’
It is true that there are oblique connections between the two contexts: the ancient clearances in the Highlands and the movement of the Lebanese, northwards and to the mountains, also the voluntary evacuation of Eilean Nan Ron and that of the foreigners from Lebanon. I must do more research.
Incidentally, my friend, Nayla, in Beirut, sent me an e-mail today. Attached were a set of photographs taken recently of little Israeli girls. The girls are pictured signing missiles destined for Lebanon, (clearly being encouraged), in an Israeli munitions base. Their words read, ‘’from Israel with love’’…. What chance have they got?
