Memory & Oblivion

Station, Beirut

November 18-29, 2015

Curators: Barbara Polla, Paul Ardenne

 

Curated by Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne, MEMORY & OBLIVION brings together a constellation of eight international artists, well known for their contemporary video art practice – Leila Alaoui (Morocco), Janet Biggs (USA), Laurent Fiévet (France), mounir fatmi (Morocco), Shaun Gladwell (Australia), Maha Kays (Lebanon), Ali Kazma (Turkey), as well as poet, writer and filmmaker Frank Smith (France).

Memory is an essential dimension of our relation to time: it makes life complex and rules out the eternal present. To express it, sometimes its form is nostalgia, that ponderous memory when the past sucks in the present. Sometimes, it is a memory of justice, a means of settling outstanding scores. Memory can also serve commemoration or reconstitution, its primary function being to sustain an event that has turned into a monument. Nor should we overlook its corollary, that indispensable companion of memory that is forgetting, which lightens, is a factor for relief and regeneration, for rebirth and life. Memory and oblivion, an inseparable couple.

 

Beirut, November 2015