Bodies and Borders Launch Event

We are pleased to invite you to the Launch of Kohl's 4th Issue, the Geographies of Bodies and Borders.

The launch event will be held at Station, on Thursday December 8, from 6:30 to 9pm. The Launch includes an installation titled: Nothing to Declare by Dictaphone Group.

Nothing to Declare is a research-based video performance that explores borders within Lebanon, those between Lebanon and its neighbors, and across the Arab world.

We took a journey along the abandoned train tracks of Lebanon. Our starting point was a derelict station in Beirut, and continued as each one of us set off on a different trip following one of the three train tracks. Our travels revealed past and present uses of these tracks and the stations that dotted them. Some were abandoned. Others were turned into makeshift housing. Some had the markings of being converted into military bases and torture chambers.

Bio:
Dictaphone Group is a research and performance collective that creates live art events based on multidisciplinary study of space. It is a collaborative project initiated by live artist Tania El Khoury and architect/urbanist Abir Saksouk. Together along with various collaborators such as performance artist Petra Serhal, they have been creating site specific performances informed by research in a variety of places like a cable car, a fisherman’s boat, and a discontinued bus. The aim of these projects is to question our relationship to the city, and redefine its public spaces.

The issue is an attempt at understanding bodies and borders as recipients of assigned value and identitarian qualities, which makes transition, trespassing, and movement a source of threat to hegemonic contexts related to nationhood, geopolitics, neoliberalism, and patriarchy. Through understanding the construction of borders and affect, the issue explores the ways in which bodies are produced, controlled, and commodified.

The event is in collaboration with Heirich Böll Stiftung, Middle East Office, Beirut