2023

And who are we now? (Part 2)

Haven for Artists (Cultural Examination) invited 19 artists and cultural practitioners from various backgrounds and experiences to discuss topics such as production, collaboration, and care within art spaces. The panelists approached the questions from 4 different angles and production contexts: festival curation, sound collectives, literature and publications, and archival practices. This series was hosted at the Beirut Art Center and was in partnership with the British Council Lebanon and the Momentum program.

“In a sense, I felt like I was forced to leave, especially after building myself a foundation of friends and connections in Lebanon,” said Ezzedine.
Beirut Today, Sandra Abdelbaki - November 8, 2021

Sunday lunches with the family have turned into whatsapp video calls, with every member in a different location. Dinner gatherings with friends have turned into photo exchanges of longing, where we begin to make plans to meet in Lebanon or somewhere that doesn’t require a visa. 

As immigration continues to grow in Lebanon, I begin to wonder what will the future look like? Will the country find its way back or more importantly will the people find their way back to the country? The notion of a collective future becomes challenging to imagine as the exodus continues to grow. The sonic journey is dedicated to the mass number of people around the globe that have had to leave their home, yet continue to find themselves drifting between two places and spaces. “And who are we now?”  is an ongoing research, it continues to shift and transform itself, its growth is affected by personal and global upheavals. The performance in itself is an act of mourning, inviting listeners to take part in this collective moment. 

Onion Is Definitely Tears

Kaspar Ravel (BE) and Nour Sokhon (DE) present "Onion Is Definitely Tears", an experimental film about the vegetable itself. It connects various stories collected via smartphone voice messages from people around the world who have left, or seen people leave their home countries. Each individual shares their personal connection to the vegetable, often recounting childhood memories or using its layers as a metaphor to describe earnest emotions. Far from delving away into profound metaphors, the story rather chooses to peer through the onion’s many fascinating cultural representations. From its complex family dynamics to its nuances within pop culture, the narration navigates a set of surfaces and effects, tied together by thousands of years of heritage.

In this project, the onion is used as an affective shorthand by the interviewed people whilst being raised as a symbol to be explored visually and sonically by the artists. It is a collaborative effort between Nour Sokhon and Kaspar Ravel, to create a buoyant piece with the desire to exhaust the onion for its audiovisual and emotional textures. The aesthetic experience and mood of the work are created by a combination of sonic and visual elements which can be thought of as memory fragments. These discrete elements are connected to the way we remember things through different mediums. To achieve this effect, Nour and Kaspar utilized an array of techniques that echo the layered structure of an onion and the process of memory loss. As a result the work offers a subtle subliminal space for us to experience these souvenirs as both critical aesthetics and cultural artifacts.

The work was supported by 25AV, Kiosk Radio, Radio Raheem, Radio 80000 and it is co-funded by the EU Creative Europe Programme. 

Revisiting: Resisting Turbulence

“Revisiting: Resisting Turbulence” is an audiovisual performance that serves to extend the work “Resisting Turbulence” into a live intimate shared journey with an audience. The work uses a selection of Myriam Bolous’s images from “What’s Ours” as a score to build the auditory landscape of the performance.
The initial project began in 2019, with both artists conducting a series of interviews arbitrarily as they were walking across the streets of their city, their home, Beirut. In a matter of just a few days, after the interviews had been recorded, the Lebanese revolution began. As carriers of intergenerational post war trauma, both artists are fueled by the notion of infinite possibilities for a reawakening to take place in a city that is burdened by a constant state of restlessness. The interviewees that willingly shared their personal narratives with meticulous detail shone light upon people's desire to be heard.
“Resisting Turbulence” morphed into a timeline of people’s state of paralysis before the revolution and awakening after it began. “Revisiting: Resisting Turbulence” stretches the timeline further as it questions the state of the country after its recent upheavals, being the economic collapse and the Beirut 2020 Port Blast.

Music composed & performed by Nour Sokhon/ Slideshow edit of images: Nour Sokhon/ Sound: Kristina Ringvold/ Light design: Nemanja Čađo/ Projected images: Myriam Boulos / Curated & produced by Svein Terje Torvik/Video: Madsen Visuals
Photos: Nabeeh Samaan
Performed in Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (2023)

Flight nr0

Focusing on personal archives that derive from text, sounds and movements, AKS creates an immersive installation of a multi- layered collage of narrations. Their artistic methodology responds to each other’s work and expands on each other’s space of imagination. For Beyond Home, they specifically focus on the limbo situation of migration. The words and sentences of AKS can be linked and contradicted with the exhibition’s own propositions from time to time. In their artistic construction, sounds and movements are woven into each other, fragmented and dispersed. There is an emphasis on the challenges to express oneself in the context of a different geography. Adding layers to the installation by using semi-transparent elements such as curtains and projection screens, allows the viewer multiple perspectives.

AKS’s ((Selda Asal with Gizem Akman, Gizem Aksu, Melika Akbari aka likabari, Nour Sokhon, Seda Mimaroğlu) artistic productions are based on bringing together micro- stories of women* through dance, poetry, music, and new media. AKS is a collaboratively conceived and produced audio-visual performance by contemporary artists from Iran, Lebanon and Turkey’s diaspora living in Berlin with diverse backgrounds. AKS’s work is in the form of multidisciplinary installations to create a new narrative by connecting individual and personal stories. This structure consists of a series of performance- oriented videos, linked together by a musical composition that combines voices, whispers, atonal melodies, and electronic music.

Text, voice and movement  contributions by Nour Sokhon, Gizem Akman, Melika Akbari aka likabari, Gizem Aksu, and Seda Mimaroğlu.
Videography and editing by Selda Asal
Music composition & mixing by Nour Sokhon
Music mastered by Melih Sarigol

The work was recently displayed in a group show, “Beyond Home: A Feminist Deconstruction” at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien.

Port Fiction

In 2021, Nour Sokhon and Myriam Boulos wandered together in the streets of Beirut. They interviewed people who were linked to the port by some means or another. Through videos, images, sounds and texts, their contribution consists of fragments of conversations around the port, the August 4th explosion, memory, loss, grief, and love. All the artistic elements of the work were curated and composed by both artists to narrate the intimate stories that were shared by the characters that they encountered in their walk: Michel lives in Karantina. He lost his hearing aid during the explosion. In the 70s, he was diagnosed with dryness and it affected his eyes and his ears. He said it was because of sadness, and Lebanon’s situation. Ghassan is a pigeon trainer. He lost his son in the Beirut Port Blast. Abed is a soldier who works at the port of Beirut. Hala is an Arab American journalist and former communications manager at the port of Salalah in Oman. She witnessed the blast on August 4th and was interviewing Elie for an investigative story for her upcoming novel. Elie grew up in Karantina and he worked at the port of Beirut for his entire career. His father was also an employee at the port and they both lived in their family home facing the Port of Beirut.  Nour Sokhon (sound design & composition) & Myriam Boulous (photography)

PORT FICTION is the work of Myriam Boulos, Moritz Frischkorn, Robin Hinsch, Ibrahim Nehme, Siska, Nour Sokhon and Kolja Warnecke. Kaya Behkalam and Katharina Joy Book supported the artistic process from a dramaturgical point of view.  The project was hosted by Kunsthaus Hamburg in collaboration with IMAGINE THE CITY.
To find out more about the project and to experience the entire work please visit the website.