Meeting Points 8 : Both Sides of the Curtain

نقاط لقاء ٨: جهتي الستار

Both Sides of the Curtain is the eighth edition of Meeting Points – a multidisciplinary contemporary arts project that takes place every two years in several cities in Europe and the Arab World. Meeting Points invites curators to imagine and interrogate models for the production and presentation of contemporary arts, developed through their research in the Arab World. Inspired by German artist Oskar Schlemmer’s experiments with art at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, Meeting Points aims at inventing ways for new kinds of art to be created and shared between artists and publics. Many of Schlemmer’s ideas at the school were developed through social events where costumes and choreographies were put to practical use and tested. It is this logic of considering art as a form of enthusiastic developing and sharing of ideas—an interaction that creates a community—that is shaping Meeting Points into a space where participants move along together on an expedition through different sites and times.

At La Loge Both Sides of the Curtain unfolds in letters, situations, objects, meanings, and sounds. What began in Cairo, lands now in Brussels, and moves on to Beirut for the spring. A conversation between many bodies, minds, cities, and times, Both Sides of the Curtain behaves like an improvisation though it’s also a score. This slippage and arbitrariness – an everyday cause for invention for an artist in the Arab World – makes for an artistic production that thrives on instability and masters elasticity.

Imagined as a walk into a music album, Both Sides of the Curtain brings mutable artistic practices together. Artists convene and bring in their own tracks if disguised in different mediums – sculptures, videos, performances, concerts, publications. As they come together, the masquerading continues musically, lyrically, sensually, and also in readings and study sessions, screenings and talks. As it’s infused with frequencies and energies, Both Sides of the Curtain might dream up new materials to work from, build language from (for thinking about the present), build new relationships from, and will accumulate references with a growing whirlpool of authors, performers, dancers, musicians, artists, and publics.

Both Sides of the Curtain conjures an artistic production that wants to blend into the sonic, the sung, and danced; That withstands the sanctity of the temple and the uncertainly of the dance club; That needs to move, talk, escape, imagine, dream, and gather through other bodies and other tongues, speaking up for a desire to listen in and to hear things differently.

Curated by Mophradat

Mophradat is an international non-profit association that supports and organizes contemporary art projects in the Arab World and elsewhere. www.mophradat.org
Mophradat is supported by Ford Foundation (Cairo office) and Vlaams Gemeenschap.

Participating artists

Objects, music, performances, readings, and other moments... with Alaa Abdullatif, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sophia Al Maria, Mirene Arsanios, Uriel Barthélémi, An Breugelmans, The Dwarfs of East Agouza (Alan Bishop, Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi), Alix Eynaudi, Entissar Al Hamdany, Laura Huertas Millán, Cindice Lin, Joe Namy, Elena Narbutaitė, Marnie Slater, and Nile Sunset Annex with Doa Aly, Shehab Awad, Chris Beauregard, Olivier Castel, Ericka Florez, and Marnie Slater.

And a screening program of documentaries by Jumana Manna, Sherif Nakhla, Salma El Tarzi, and Heba Yousry, proposed by Alia Ayman (Zawya Cinema, Cairo)

Meeting Points 8: Both Sides of the Curtain is a project by Mophradat taking place in Beirut, Cairo, and at La Loge in Brussels. Curated by Malak Helmy and Raimundas Malašauskas.