Around the Square of the Martyrs, the place where, for 16 years, the civil war raged most savagely, modern office buildings, luxury apartments and American lifestyle cafés are now springing up like mushrooms. There is no longer any trace of bullet-scarred facades or burnt-out skeletons of houses. Ten years after the end of the conflicts, the former Paris of the East, which used to attract artists and intellectuals, is in the reconstruction phase. The art festival Ayloul (Arabic for September), which took place for the fifth time from 8 to 13 September, has an important function in this regard. The organizers, among them the writer Elias Khoury, one of the outstanding figures in Lebanese intellectual life, want to provide contemporary artists with a platform. For Elias Khoury, the Lebanese art scene, which was »put on ice« during the war, is undergoing the same process of change that is taking place throughout the entire international art scene in the course of globalization. According to him, it is now no longer a matter of creating something new, but of calling existing situations into question. He says the theme of the Ayloul Festival was chosen with this in mind: Faces of Truth. »For truth is so important for a country after such a long civil war. And I think that the relationship between reality and art, and the various faces of truth are the main theme of art here.«
The universal validity of the festival's theme speaks for itself. It is a flexible one because, at the end of the day, the organizers are not concerned with concrete content, but with creating a platform for young contemporary art. For, although the civil year ended a whole seven years ago, Beirut is still far from finding its way back to a well-organized form of public life. There is only one public art gallery, and, apart from a few exceptions, the private galleries in Beirut limit themselves to undemandingly accessible, but lucrative, imitations of classical modernity. New tendencies in contemporary art find it hard to gain acceptance, and would be barely imaginable were it not for the commitment of private initiatives such as the Ayloul Festival. After Ayloul had established itself as a noteworthy institution, after only two years, it began inviting artists from European countries as well. Even the director of the festival, Pascale Feghali, was unable to say exactly what criteria were followed during selection procedures in September 2001. What was important for her was »to establish different forms of presentation and perception.« Ayloul is an interdisciplinary festival, to which theater performances, video installations and dance were also invited. In the past years, it was conspicuous that technical aids such as video and computer are much less frequently employed by Lebanese artists. According to Feghali, this has nothing to do with the financial possibilities of the festival, which is subsidized both by the state and by the European Union. »They are often works that define themselves less through their form than through their content.« This was also the tenor of the opening event, which was a highly unusual one for an art festival. The Lebanese attorney Chibli Mallat spoke about his investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as the person mainly responsible for the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Sabra, and Shatila.
The other Lebanese participants in the festival who, for instance, thematized the conflict in South Lebanon or, in the case of Mohammad Ali Attasi, a Syrian living in Beirut, violations of human rights in Syria, denied any concrete political intention when asked. The installation by the Lebanese artist Paola Yacoub and Michel Laserre from France interrogated the different aspects of a landscape. Photographs of South Lebanon recalling landscape paintings hung on the walls of the Goethe Institute (which had once more made its rooms available to Lebanese artists), or stood on the floor like a line of demarcation. The endless acoustic loop that resounded in the room disturbed any contemplative viewing. The voices coming from »offstage« were those of taxi drivers who worked for non-governmental organizations after Israeli troops invaded South Lebanon in 1978, transporting the wounded and the dead. Because of their local knowledge, they were the first to localize the battlefield and thus define the front. Even though the atrocities committed by the Israelis in South Lebanon were here rendered audible, Yacoub and Laserre also object to a purely political interpretation of their work. According to them, the theme and title of their installation are the aspects of a landscape: Al Manazer in Arabic. The two artists are concerned with various forms of perception, which is dependent on context and, in Lebanon's case, mostly ends up being political. »The pictures we show can be seen on the one hand as picturesque landscape paintings, but just as well as a theater of war that has experienced three invasions in 20 years, with many clashes. This means you also find politics in the landscape. A city has its language, too, that – according to aspect – is understood in different ways. Esthetics are closely associated with politics here,« explains Paola Yacoub, who at the last Biennial in Venice thematized Beirut as a war-torn city with her installation »Garden of Eden, monument for Beirut,« again with Michel Laserre.
Like many other young Lebanese, Yacoub left her country to study architecture at a London university. Because of the difficult economic situation in their homeland, most Lebanese remain abroad, including many artists. The cultural infrastructure in the Western world provides them with working conditions that are still unimaginable in their country. »Here, you have to fight for every penny that you get from the state for local art,« says Christine Thomé, chairperson of the Lebanese association for plastic arts, Ashkal Alwan. She sees it as her task to remind the minister for cultural affairs of his obligation to art. The amount of financial aid received is not decisive, but the contribution in itself. »The state must become aware of its responsibility, but also of its chance to participate in forming social opinion in this way.« For Christine Thomé, art in Lebanon is politically or socially committed by its very nature. »It's not a matter of analyzing the war. From a historical point of view, that's behind us. But in fact it still surrounds us, and raises questions that we have to look at. What about responsibility? Where did I stand? And where do I stand now? The war affected our lives so massively in every regard that it is simply always present.«
The civil war occupies literally every cranny of Beirut. The prestige objects put up by the private company Solidére seem almost like facades. Scarcely has one left the completely renovated but now deserted pedestrian precinct in the heart of the city, when one begins, without street lights, to stumble over the holes and rubble that are typical for the whole city. »Beirut is nothing like a destroyed city as we know them from the Second World War, where whole districts were razed to the ground. Here, the houses were worn down by being shot at 16 years long. This excess of violence can be felt even today.« But for the artist and architect Michel Laserre, who came to Beirut from Paris for the first time shortly after the civil war, in 1991, the act of destruction also contains enormous creative potential, which receives additional impetus through the lack of a cultural infrastructure. »The city itself is creative, in all the improvised projects taking place here. But the energy here does not disappear into thin air.« In Beirut, Laserre experiences a livelier exchange between artists and the public than in Paris. The Beirut intellectuals are very well-educated, having often studied abroad for several semesters before returning home. The way the people of Beirut are interested in new directions, especially those from abroad, was also seen in the large number of visitors to the Ayloul Festival. The various events took place throughout the inner city: at the university, the Goethe Institute, and in a former restaurant. The discussions offered after the events, an offer passionately taken up by the Lebanese audience, were informative. Works of European artists concerned with their own sensitivities, such as the dance performance of Thomas Lehmen from Berlin, particularly came under fire – not so much the fire of criticism as that of sincere interest in the message of the presentation. Insistent questions were asked about the attitude and intention of the artist. If this directness is astonishing from our point of view, for Elias Khoury it is all too understandable. Even before the attacks on America on September 11 2001, he said:
»Here there is something akin to a thirst for meaning. And I think that the whole world is thirsting for meaning, now that it has experienced the biggest crises, the Cold War and the total rule of the USA with all the new liberalistic ideology.« According to the author Khoury, this meaning lies in the humanistic values of equality and justice. »The present ideology in the whole world is directed at destroying precisely these two values. I think we have to give these two words a new, real meaning.«
The Ayloul Festival does not have a big name as an event. At least, not yet: some artists were approached during the festival by Catherine David, and will be able to be seen again in Barcelona in May at the exhibition about the Arabic world that David will be co-curating.
Translated by Tim Jones