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The organic dying of a (resurrectable) human is as nothing compared to that of an animal, exemplarily of a bull in a corrida; the only phenomenon that equals in intensity the death of a bull in a corrida or of a cow in a slaughterhouse is the resurrection of a human, Lazarus coming out from the grave. The living woman in T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is found settling her pillow to sleep when she encounters the undead. Why are you settling the pillow, why are you so sleepy? What disclosure are you thus trying to elude? “Tell you all,” Lazarus says in Eliot’s poem, and would that “all” not also include himself? Did Lazarus come back to tell himself about death? And did he find himself sleeping then?

 

Screenings:
- Premiered in Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices in the Region: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Ashkal Alwan, Madina Theatre, Beirut, Lebanon, 7 April 2002.
- Part of né @ Beyrouth, Centre Culturel Français, salle Montaigne, Beirut, 23 August 2002.
- 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, 12 April 2003. - "Focus Jalal Toufic," 16th International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA), 22 and 25 November 2003.
- Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, 28 January 2004.
- Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine, 27 March 2004.
- "Flicker at Buffalo: Correspondences in New Media, Film, and Poetry," Squeaky Wheel, 17 November 2004.
- California College of the Arts, 2 December 2004.


© 2005–2017 by Jalal Toufic. All rights reserved.

 

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