I had started doing watercolors, but casually, with friends. My mother was away at the time, so I settled myself in the dining room with oils. When she came back she said, “Hey, you’re ruining my carpets!” So, I rented a studio of my own and moved there. I lived alone, which nobody did at the time. Not men, not anyone… On the roof, there was a small apartment with two rooms and a living room. I had a big mirror and a bar for dancing… There was a big wall I could paint on, too. I always painted standing up. I lived there until 1974, then I moved again, also to a top-floor studio, this time with a perfect view of Mount Sannine…
The first paintings were like self-discovery, like being born. They were very colorful, very lush, probably because I would go to the forests of the Chouf District for inspiration. But, little by little, my attachment to color evolved into a fascination with white. I remember the painter PaulGuiragossian came to see me and said, “Of course you paint in white, all you see is light here on the 11th floor.”…
Fadi Barrage was one of my closest friends. He was a painter. He later moved to Athens, where he died in 1988. In addition to Guiragossian, there was Huguette Caland and, of course, EtelAdnan. I met Etel at the end of 1972, when she came to Beirut to be the culture editor of the Lebanese newspaper, Al Safa. — Simone Fattal
Murari Jha’s performative video THE LONGEST MARCH: STRETCHED BODIES “offers a unique psychological view touching on certain traumatic experiences that stretch the body far beyond its limits of bearability, sanity, and cohesion, to the point where pain becomes unindividuated and the body gets transfigured into a universal affect, similar to a landscape.”*
Presented by abr, “an alliance of cultural practitioners—Anne Couillaud, Adwait Singh, Priyanshi Saxena, and Shaunak Mahbubani—coming together over shared vulnerabilities, to create a circle of care, communality, and conviviality in these uncertain and difficult times,” THELONGEST MARCH is streaming now.
To make use of the rupture and increased connectivity afforded by this universal moment of crisis for encouraging new convergences and incipient growths that are governed by the ideals of sustainability and equity. To corral our individual isolation into a moment of collective reflection on our present condition as well as our imminent futures, possibly establishing precedents for what sustainable, equitable, and meaningful collaborations can be like in a post-Covid world.
To facilitate the circulation of resources within the arts ecology, by commissioning meaningful digital art, videos, performances, and other performative works from artists for our social media pages by mobilizing small sums of money as honorariums. To set up mechanisms so that young artists in need can be reached via members and partners, or can reach out to us via open calls for inclusion in our networks of support and collaboration.
To mobilize our privileges through the pooling of time, energy, funds, and networks, as much as possible, in an attempt to move towards a more level playing field. We extoll the principles of self-help, DIY cultures, gift-economies, creative commoning and time-pooling to go hand-in-hand with an embrace of the rudimentary/ improvisational aesthetic to foreground practices that are situated and marginal to mainstream commercial circuits.
To actively strive for an affirmative diversity of gender, caste, class, religion, race, location, language, ability, and sexual orientation in our inclusion of participants and partners.
To harness the potentials of the digital to foster real-time connections and meaningful discourse as much as possible. To temper its competitiveness, toxicity, celerity, and solipsism with attentiveness, tenderness, sensitivity and care, and to imbue our newly embraced digital spaces with the communal, serendipitous and ludic aspects of the art world that we love and miss.
To strongly favor community over viewership, content over numbers.
To actively question the chrononormative regimes and capital-based models of productivity that regiment our bodies, while moving forward in ways that allow for slow sustained cultivation and support for each other’s needs to rewire and reset.
To initiate a gesture of empowerment and attempt to understand what makes art resilient to the vicissitudes of time. To witness and manifest its strength, its aliveness, its resourcefulness as well as its capacity for regeneration in adversity.
To participate in, and proactively strengthen the nexus of solidarity amongst independent, para-institutional concerns in the arts by formulating opportunities for sensitive collaborations.
I am not a man I am not a woman I am not heterosexual I am not homosexual I am not bisexual. I am a dissident of the sex-gender system. I am the multiplicity of the cosmos trapped in a binary political and epistemological system, shouting in front of you. I am a Uranian confined inside the limits of techno-scientific capitalism. — Paul B. Preciado, An Apartment on Uranus
The queer-studies philosopher, curator, and author Paul B. Preciado will launch his latest book AN APARTMENT ON URANUS: CHRONICLES OF THE CROSSING—published by Semiotext(e)—which explores his transition from Beatriz to Paul, the Greek economic crisis, the refugee crisis, and the Catalonian independence movement.
LACMA and Sky Hopinka present his first full-length feature film MALNI, TOWARDS THEOCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE. This “poetic exploration in his signature style… follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier’s perambulations through their worlds—sometimes overlapping, sometimes not—as they wonder and wander through the afterlife, rebirth, and the place in-between. Spoken mostly in chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Columbia River Basin, their stories are departures from the Chinookan origin of death myth, with its distant beginning and circular shape.”
Hopinka will participate in a post-screening Q & A.
A founder of the French New Wave who became an international art-house icon, Agnès Varda was a fiercely independent, restlessly curious visionary whose work was at once personal and passionately committed to the world around her. In an abundant career in which she never stopped expanding the notion of what a movie can be, Varda forged a unique cinematic vocabulary that frequently blurs the boundaries between narrative and documentary, and entwines loving portraits of her friends, her family, and her own inner world with a social consciousness that was closely attuned to the 1960s counterculture, the women’s liberation movement, the plight of the poor and socially marginalized, and the ecology of our planet. This comprehensive collection places Varda’s filmography in the context of her parallel work as a photographer and multimedia artist—all of it a testament to the radical vision, boundless imagination, and radiant spirit of a true original for whom every act of creation was a vital expression of her very being. — The Criterion Collection
The new box set THE COMPLETE FILMS OF AGNÈS VARDA features digital restorations of thirty-nine films as well as the television productions Agnès de ci de là Varda, Nausicaa (1970), Quelques veuves de Noirmoutier, and Varda’s segments from Une minute pour une image.
Also included: rare archival footage, tributes and interviews, segments from unfinished works, and a 200-page book with contributions by Amy Taubin, Michael Koresky, GinetteVincendeau, So Mayer, Alexandra Hidalgo, and Rebecca Bengal, as well as a selection of Varda’s photography and images of her installation art.
The feature films are divided into fifteen programs:
Agnès Forever — Varda by Agnès (2019), Les 3 boutons (2015).
Early Varda — La Pointe Courte (1955), Ô saisons, ô châteaux (1958), Du côté de la côte(1958).
Around Paris — Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Les fiancés du pont Macdonald (1962), L’opéra-mouffe (1958), Les dites cariatides (1984), T’as de beaux escaliers, tu sais (1986).
Rue Daguerre — Daguerréotypes (1975), Le lion volatil (2003).
Married Life — Le bonheur (1965), Les créatures (1966), Elsa la Rose (1966).
In California — Uncle Yanco (1968), Black Panthers (1970), Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (1969), MurMurs (1981), Documenteur (1981).
Her Body, Herself — One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977), Réponse de femmes (1975), Plaisird’amour en Iran(1977).
No Shelter — Vagabond (1985), 7 p., cuis., s. de b. . . . (à saisir) (1985).
Jane B. — Jane B. par Agnès V.(1988), Kung-Fu Master!(1988).
Jacques Demy — Jacquot de Nantes (1991), The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993), The World of Jacques Demy (1995).
Simon Cinéma — One Hundred and One Nights (1995).
La glaneuse — The Gleaners and I(2000), The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002).
Visual Artist — Visages Villages, codirected with JR (2017), Salut les cubains (1964), Ulysse (1982), Ydessa, les ours et etc. . . . (2004).
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