April 12 to June4, 2017

Opening: Wednesday April 12, 7 – 10pm

Opening hours: Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, noon to 8pm, Wednesday noon to 10pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am to 6pm.

Beirut Art Center, Jisr AlWati, Beirut

Free entrance

What you see is familiar and viable but has never taken place. All the images are constructions, replicas of worlds where things and events are slightly different. This can be a worrisome or more pleasant development, and some offer a skewed experience of the world. The images act like stages where things will happen, have happened, and are happening (again). But the artists have assembled them from scratch; they are products of imagination or sites on which to project thoughts and desires.

This exhibition could be about re-enactment, architecture, and sound, or any of the many recurring subjects addressed in the works, but what Both Sides of the Curtain remains across these possibilities is a site that communicates inventions, ambiences, and invitations.

-Mai Abu ElDahab

The exhibition includes a two-hour film program of seven videos that runs daily during opening hours at 12pm, 2pm, 4pm, 6pm and 8pm, and begins with the Arabic-subtitled versions and alternates with the English subtitled versions throughout the day.

The film program runs as follows:

00:00 – 00:15
Tamar Guimarães, Canoas, 2010
(PT with alternating ARA and ENG subtitles)

00:15 – 00:30 
Gülsün Karamustafa, The City and the Secret Panther Fashion, 2007
(ENG with ARA subtitles)

00:30 – 00:55
Dora Garcia, el helicóptero, 2016
(BAS and ES with alternating ARA and ENG subtitles)

00:55 – 01:00
Joachim Koester, Reptile brain, or reptile body, it’s your animal, 2012

01:00 – 01:15
Basim Magdy, A Film About the Way Things Are, 2010
(ENG with ARA subtitles)

01:15 – 01:30
Fatma Bucak, Suggested place for you to see it, 2013 
(TR with alternating ARA and ENG subtitles)

01:30 – 02:00
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Capitulation Project, 2003
(ENG with ARA subtitles)

Concerts, Performances and Talks

Wednesday April 12
7.30pm  Music for trumpet and modulating derbekah, performed by Joe Namy with Walid Sadek
9pm Without Certainty, an invitation or participation by Nile Sunset Annex with Andeel

Thursday April 13
7.30pm  An Index for the Flute of Sub, a performance by Zin Taylor 
8pm  Listening session with Tarek Atoui, Malak Helmy, Hannah Catherine Jones, Raimundas Malašauskas, Lina Mounzer, and Sam Shalabi 

Friday April 14
7.30pm By Written I Mean Made, a perfomance by Marnie Slater featuring Clare Noonan, Hanaa Safwat, and Jay Tan
8.30pm Afrofuturism and Gesamtkunstwerk, a talk by Hannah Catherine Jones

Saturday April 15**
8.30pm Concert by Josephine Foster with Victor Herrero
9.30pm Concert by the Dwarfs of East Agouza

*with Hady Aboukamar, Amy Arif, Shehab Awad, Chris Beauregard, Taha Belal, Olivier Castel, Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin, Faten El Disouky, Walid ElSawi, Jenifer Evans, Fadlabi, Ericka Florez, Malak Helmy, Mahmoud Khaled, Kareem Lotfy, Ahmed Nosseir, Mohanad Nur, Paul Simon Richards, Samira Ahmed Salim, Sarah Samy, Marnie Slater, Take to the Sea, Wadiaa Shenouda, Marianne Vlaschits, James Wright

**A live recording of the evening’s concerts will be released on vinyl by Mophradat and Unrock in autumn 2017.