19/10
Inkonst + Norient: Of Hauntings, Past, and Present: Sounds and Images from Beirut (Malmö Folk Festival)

Norient + Inkonst program for Malmö Folk Festival

This program brings together experimental audio and visual works from filmmakers, artists, and musicians based in the city of Beirut, Lebanon. In its exploration of sounds and images from a city in political and economic collapse, the program aims to cast light on the artists’ distinct approaches to the city’s past and present. Curated and presented by Rayya Badran, writer, editor, and translator from Beirut.

 

Program

TIMEZONES Beirut: Traces of a City – a Pod Poem (24’)
a podcast episode by Rana Eid and Nadim Mishlawi

TIMEZONES is an experimental podcast about artists and their practices. This episode is a reflection on the current uncertainties experienced in Beirut and how they have influenced creative processes. commissioned by Norient and the Goethe-Institute · https://norient.com/timezones · featuring Chaza Charafeddine, Muriel N. Kahwagi, Sharif Sehnaoui, and Rana Eid

 

Shabah El Rih (11’)
an experimental short film by Aya Atoui (film) and Anthony Sahyoun (sound)

Set in the abandoned historic landmark of Le Grand Théâtre des Mille et Une Nuits in Beirut, this experimental short stages a haunting ghost opera, an ode to a space for songs past and present.

 

Norient City Sounds: #BeirutAdrift (40’)
a virtual exhibition, curated and presented by Rayya Badran

This online publication by Norient (2022) presents a city that continues to witness an aggravating financial and economic crisis in the midst of prolonged political and social turmoil. The talented contributors of this virtual exhibition have responded to the sounds of the city through a generous collection of essays, sound pieces, mixtapes, photographic series, sound walks, and more. In Malmö, Badran presents her personal selection of #BeirutAdrift. commissioned by Norient · https://norient.com/beirut-adrift

 

Not All Things that Shine Are Beautiful (5’)
an experimental short film by Nour Ouayda

Nour Ouayda takes viewers on a walk towards Beirut’s seaside. Her camera is oriented toward the city’s texture, light, and colors, zooming in on the mundane details as if unable to see the city as a whole or at once. commissioned by Norient · part of #BeirutAdrift · https://norient.com/beirut-adrift

 

The Tidal Surge (9’)
a short film by Farah Awada

Farah Awada records the ebbs and flows of the city of Beirut during one of its most tumultuous periods. From the uproar of the 2019 uprising to the stillness of the global lockdown and the economic crises that took place in between, her video is a montage of sounds, images, objects, and people that populated her life during that time. commissioned by Norient · part of #BeirutAdrift · https://norient.com/beirut-adrift

 

Topologie d’une Absence (29’)
a short film by Rami Sabbagh (video/collage) and Sharif Sehnaoui (sound)

musicians: Sharif Sehnaoui, Abed Kobeissy et Gregory Dargent

The only reason why moving images of Beirut from the 1920s still exist today is because they were filmed by camera operators from the French production companies Pathé and Gaumont. At the time, Lebanon was under French mandate, and these images were tools for shaping colonial imaginaries. They were restored and archived far from the places and people that appear in them. Combining music and film, this work proposes a new way of looking at this archive, a hundred years after unnamed camera operators filmed the city of Beirut and captured bodies, faces, and eyes

 

 

Norient is an audio-visual gallery and a community (of practice) for the sound of the world: for contemporary music, quality journalism, cutting-edge research, projects, and events like the Norient Festival. Norient conceives music, sound, and noise as seismographs of our time, facilitates space and place for thinkers and artists from currently sixty countries to tell new and different stories of the now and tomorrow. The goal is to support (sub)cultural diversity, broaden horizons, and open up dialogue across people, continents, and disciplines.

Rayya Badran
Based in Beirut, Rayya Badran is a writer, editor, and translator whose practice centers on sound, music, and contemporary art. Her writings have featured in various publications such as Bidoun, Art Review, Art Papers, Norient, The Wire, and more. She was guest editor of the Beirut Art Center’s online publication The Derivative in 2020 and curator and editor of the Norient City Sounds Online Special: Beirut in 2022. She taught courses on contemporary art and sound studies at the department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut from 2014 to 2021. She is co-curator of the second edition of the Listening Biennial in 2023. norient.com/rbadran