FFF5 | Lecture Performances | 2nd Day

19:00 | "Dear Victoria" | In English | Duration: 30 minutes

Rayyane Tabet
"Dear Victoria" is a reading performance based on Tabet’s long-term research into Max Freiherr von Oppenheim’s excavations at Tell Halaf. Documents and photographs from Tabet’s family provided the first impetus to this research—his great-grandfather, Faek Borkhoche, was secretary and translator to Max von Oppenheim during his third expedition to northeastern Syria in 1929. The reading examines what happened to the objects excavated in Tell Halaf and through them weaves a tale of espionage, museological accessions and the fate of family heirlooms.

20:00 | "Water Blues" | In English | Duration: 30 minutes

"The stagnant and muddy water around which insects and bugs gather reflects a complex image, that of a dull, glaucous misery that engulfs and worries. The shapeless but non-amorphous mud devours and corrodes everything. Very few spaces embody the periphery of human exis­tence as well as swamps. Neither quite land nor water, swamps have long been con­sid­ered dreaded spaces, places with unknown dan­gers from which mists and scents escape. Their waters would be fundamen­tally con­tam­i­nated and dan­gerous spaces, enig­matic and ghostly landscapes that constitute a rich breeding ground not simply for practical resources, but also for the imagination. Through a journey into different narratives around muddy waters, stories of drowning but also of resurrections, "Water Blues" is a dive into the terrific 'dirty waters'."
—Ali Cherri

21:00 | ​Uncanny encounters | In English | Duration: 60 minutes

"A portrait is made when so many stories converge and produce an event of an extraordinary nature. An archeological excavation miraculously leads to finds. An ambitious artist makes his first steps away from painting into a conceptual and performance-based-work. An Imperial museum gets endowed with its most precious collection. A great necropolis is destroyed by the local population. A group of workers in a remote province meet a photographic camera for the first time in their lives.
We are in Saida, Lebanon, in 1887 and and nothing can prevent such an event form taking place."
—Akram Zaatari

22:00 | After lecture performances a discussion will follow among the artists and Marcella Lista, Art Historian and Chief Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou for the New Media Collection.