Artist talk by Jackson Allers

As the Lebanese uprising enters its fifth month, the country continues to spiral downward into economic, social and environmental collapse. All of this takes place within a nation that has never fully recovered from the apocalyptic 15-year civil war (1975-1990) —a nation that has fomented a sectarian and class-based system which has never seen political or social parity among its citizens with a corrupt political and business elite that have proven completely tone deaf to the demands of the Lebanese protestors. For this public talk, Jackson Allers will focus on what he thinks is new about this revolution, as well as questioning whether what is happening in Lebanon can be called a revolution. Additionally, he will try to get at some of the root causes of the current unrest, and will highlight some of the cultural and artistic responses to the uprising that build on a tradition that started with the Arab uprisings in 2011.

Jackson Allers is a filmmaker, writer, and radio broadcaster focusing the majority of his work on the subcultures around him, Jackson has spent the better part of 25 years documenting independent arts and culture movements wherever he's been based. For the last 13 years that's been Beirut, covering independent cultural, political, and musical trends in the Arab world through numerous documentaries for TV/radio, and long form non-fiction narrative and investigative news reports for organizations like Al Jazeera English, Oxford University Press, BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, VICE, Red Bull Music Academy Radio/Magazine, CNN Inside the Middle East, Radical Media, BBC Culture, National Public Radio, and Free Speech Radio News.