Were all the candidates’ faces posted
on the walls of Lebanon during the parliamentary
campaign of 2000 waiting for the results of
the elections? No. As faces, they were waiting
to be saved. Far better than any surgical face-lift
or digital retouching, it was the physical removal
of part of the poster of the face of one candidate
so that the face of another candidate would
partially appear under it; as well as the accretions
of posters and photographs over each other that
produced the most effective face-lift, and that
proved a successful face-saver for all concerned.
We have in these resultant recombinant posters
one of the sites where Lebanese culture in specific,
and Arabic culture in general, mired in an organic
view of the body, in an organic body, exposes
itself to inorganic bodies
Premiere:
— 6th Sharjah Biennial,
United Arab Emirates, 8 April–8 May 2003.
Distribution:
Part of the Lowave compilation Resistance[s] II: Experimental Films from the Middle East and North Africa (www.lowave.com).
