Foreign correspondent Henley reporting.
BEIRUT, LEBANON - Dividing time and productivity into ninety-eight week increments has become common place for Marwa and Mirene Arsanios, the creative forces behind Beirut based 98weeks. According to the unique doctrine, of the namely research organization, the focus must shift at each increments end. The Arsanios pairing offer a balance of curation / criticism / and practice. This is highly evident in the projects to date. The strength of documentation and archiving throughout the research process has an effect of opening the findings to an audience that reaches far beyond the mere attendees.
The following is an excerpt an online Q&A session:
TRRF: Why not 97 or 99 weeks?
98 WEEKS: 98 sounded and looked nicer. The number is arbitrary and does not have a particular signification. It is an indicator of the time we dedicate to each research topic. We were thinking something around two years, like a biennale, 98weeks is a bit less than 2 years.
TRRF: Please detail the two themes for the first two 98week terms?
98 WEEKS: We started off with our first research topic in X 2007, spatial practices. The events we organized to day, such as Beirut every other day (a series of workshop on Beirut’s urban space) are meant to investigate different ways of practicing space and how this practice affects the every day in Beirut, how can we approach the life of the city, intervene though artistic projects, what are the limits and possibilities of such interventions. Spatial practices is a broad term and allows for investigations that are not strictly restricted to a topic per se, but are also concerned with modes of operating in a context such as Beirut. The research theme is more about developing a platform for debate, research and production around specific interests. The issue of how to develop these spaces is as important as the research topics. For instance, we are thinking now of opening a project space, artist run. This is a space that will allow another type of work and engagement with the city.
TRRF: How does Beirut, housing a population entrenched in living merely for ‘today and tomorrow’, inform the investigative themes and forums for engagement 98weeks choose to employ?
98 WEEKS: Beirut conditions our projects on different levels, which are all equally important. For example, the lack of financial structural support for cultural and artistic project for shapes the way our projects are unfolding (rely on private funds, try to find “other solutions” to materialize a projects, developing collaborations etc.).
The discourses, or assumptions on how a population lives “for today and tomorrow” are also very present. Rather than informing directly our activities and engaging with such discourses, our approach is more of a “detournement”; what method or what entry point can help us understand where we are, how to act upon this environment, starting from here. The engagement is practical. For example, the workshop the Ruin in the City, was a way of opening up the understanding of different temporalities coexisting in Beirut through concrete entry points (buildings with a specific history).
TRRF: Lastly, congratulations on gaining invitation to Subvision Festival, Hamburg. How will 98weeks go about working offshore, and can you briefly detail your proposal?
98 WEEKS: It is the first time we are curating a program offshore. The situation is exciting because the initiatives gathers 30 artists run space from all over the world. Although our research contextualized in Lebanon, our research process takes different forms (exhibitions, talks, etc..) and I think that the questions that we pose through our research are questions that can be shared in different contexts. For example self-organization, collaboration and education are three themes programmed for discussion at Subvision, and are all very close to our research interests.
We chose to work around the relation between words and action (Words…Action!) and the way words and language can be activated through different artistic and performative strategies.
