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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

Screenings:
— Premiered at the 6th Sharjah International Biennial, United Arab Emirates, 8 April - 8 May 2003.
DisORIENTation: Contemporary Arab Artistic Practices from the Middle East, House of World Cultures, Berlin, April 12, 2003.
14th Festival Internacional De Arte Electrônica—Videobrasil, SESC Pompéia, Sao Paulo, 23 September 2003.
Festival International du Cinéma Méditerranéen Montpellier, 25 October and 1 November 2003.
Home Works II: A Forum on Cultural Practices, Madina Theater, Beirut, 1 November 2003.
— “Focus Jalal Toufic,” 16th International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA), 22 and 25 November 2003.
— Popular Art Center, Ramallah, Palestine, 21 January 2004.
— Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, 28 January 2004.
— Al-Ma‘mal Foundation, Jerusalem, 18 February 2004.
— International Center of Bethlehem, Palestine, 11 March 2004.
— Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine, 27 March.
— Centre pour l’image contemporaine, Geneva, Switzerland, 18 May 2004.
Nuevo Video Árabe, Centro Cultural Cajastur, Muralla Romana, Gijon, Spain, May 2004.
Love it or Leave it, the 5th Biennial of Cetinje, 20 July - 19 September 2004.
Né à Beyrouth Festival, Beirut, 30 August 2004.
— “Flicker at Buffalo: Correspondences in New Media, Film, and Poetry,” Squeaky Wheel, 17 November 2004.
The Face on Film, organized by the Documentary Filmmakers Group, the Other Cinema, London, 21 November 2004.
— Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, USA, 23 November 2004.
— California College of the Arts, 2 December 2004.
Nuevo Video Árabe, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, August - September 2005.

 

© Jalal Toufic 2005. All rights reserved

 

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