Saturday, January 12, 2008

Recurrencies



for Carolee

Tapping the blood prime image of them
pomegranate red a rose arose life like

a dream dreams us like linings for be-
coming paint stirs potentia menses deep
research stirred like red pomegranate
red a rose aroused from bed this firm-

ament sex to extricate from lips mouth
of that boundary red in perpetuity
information divides the self recombines

no one since these states were made by
psychos such hard won ambiguities re
course blood prime image of her erotica
pomegranate red rose arose a round as
here no dream can end no where with

the lips we kiss or can’t with what bound
aries dividends divide the soul image
makes its way as space your conscious

ness enduring mouth lips of that which
kiss them and are a face brightened by
expression and are this whole body taking
place blood red rose arise aroused not

merely the symbolic not merely a history
of the real those stakes of your willing.

Anecdote

for Kyle

Just the facts my friend the man
taken for dead literally ‘at his

word’ is undead like a sign we
point to or hold-up like any

logical picture of harm points
disconnected on which map

a march of engines set a match
to search the fire so be it for

substance reveals what’s seen in
the said and demonstrated don’t

repeat yourself this that ran deep
lining their real with the sym

bolic giving number to event
defacing space so stats reveled.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Wonder Beirut


We are attempting to find new ways to create images through evocation, absence, latency. Latency is a state which haunts all of our work. Traditionally, latency is defined as the state of what exists in a non-apparent manner, but which can manifest itself at a given moment. The latent image is the invisible, yet-to-be developed image on an exposed surface.

To this should be added the idea of "the dormant", of slumber, of slumbering, of something that can be awakened. To us, latency is beyond evidence. It is the reminiscence of an image, of knowledge but which can be barely grasped. How can one produce images, export them, move them around, while avoiding cut-and-dried definitions? As image producers, we try to avoid being made use of, or taken over by, propaganda within our country or region, or reduced to a simplifying , often "orientalist", vision. Our work takes into account this possible risk, this breach.

Aware of this situation, we resort to the idea of the anecdotal. Etymologically, the anecdotal appears as something unrevealed, something kept secret, at odds with a certain concept of history.

In our opinion, the anecdotal is not necessarily metaphoric, but rather symptomatic. It is not small history trying to reflect history at large, but a research around sensations, and the re-appropriation of events, like elements of space-time that record a specific, significant moment.

The symptomatic is therefore the possibility of an image, the manifestation of something made visible. A symptomatic image is intimately linked to its context, to a situation and to a history. It is a proposal, an experience. By going back to a personal fact, to a given event, or to "something secret", we refuse the spectacular aspect and the general sociological subject. The symptomatic image is the product of a situation that cannot be reduced to an allegory or a symbol.

The anecdotal is the possibility of approaching our history. If we consider official history as written by the winners, there is another unofficial and subversive space governed by the anecdotal, "the thing kept secret", which perforates that official frame. Latency is about affirming a presence. The anecdotal is the story and development of that presence.

~ from Joana Hadjithomas's and Khalil Joreige's "Wonder Beirut," in *Out of Beirut*, Modern Art Oxford, Manchester, 2006.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

For Martha

If we could find anywhere those points
of contact skin perfect tense nervous
make us commence breath gives us some

reason to be us here together and some
times delay I ‘provisional termini’ to make
a point is not always to identify to awake

fingers figures this meridian sense is deep
ceded on the skin how the brain blossoms
in between we too percepts mitochondria

was the mother of no one prehistory a cle
ave of cells tell us where it hurts the animal
talking out there in that open more harmed

than usual please take me on tour with you
points puncture misfire from more we too
blank dwellings in which worlds formed.