Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige: "Waiting for the Barbarians", 2013

Work inspired by the great Greek poet, C.P. Cavafy

"We live in troubled times, but this might have always been the case… we live in times of expectation, that of an impending disaster but also that of relief, waiting to be saved while fearing we will never be. We live in times of war, of recessions, of loss of ideals, of possibilities. Beliefs and ideologies seem to wane, leaving us in a world without consolation.

Alone.

And then, we hear Cavafy’s voice.

We share with him the fact that we live in the same region, in a period where, as he writes, eternity has never been so precarious. For us, in Lebanon, some of his poems echo very strongly, resonate in our endlessly disintegrating society, in a place where the unexpected always happens and where we have nothing but our desires to counter violence and power.

Starting with the poem 'Waiting for the Barbarians', we explore panoramic images of Beirut shifting from mobile to immobile, from the general to the constantly dug out detail that opens onto the world.

The image is constantly reworked by various temporalities: The video is made of still images, photographies composed of about 60 to 70 different images. The camera passes over the photos in a travelling, stops on certain parts which become animated through video overlays which are hardly visible, which compel us to look differently at the image, which displace our gaze and the expected representation. It is also a photography which becomes animated while we watch it. Arrested time, suspended time but also movement that cannot be stopped, which appears ever present. As if time, space and movement were constantly fighting. Temporalities become over imposed, nature is upside down and many suns appeared on multiplied horizons.

Cavafy, a voice from the past projected into the future, into our arrested present, similar to the images we’re producing, in which the city exhibits itself and where the expectation, the suspension are deeply felt, as before, before the 'barbarians' arrive but will they ever? And suddenly, the appearance of beauty, incongruous..."

—Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige