#ArteEastArtsCulture

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Kinan Azmeh performs with his quartet at ArteEast's 2013 forum in New York, 2013. Photo by Anne Billingsley.

Clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh, a Damascus native who today resides in New York, was a guest on WNYC’s The Takeaway on Feb. 4,* where he discussed his process of living the tragedy that has befallen his home country of Syria through his music.

Azmeh describes his music as “a little prayer for home,” for the small house he has in Damascus, where he sleeps the best, and where he recalls the smell of coffee.

“I took a time of silence for a year before I was able to write music again, because I was questioning the role of the artist, the role of music, if music can stop a single bullet at any time – of course it doesn’t, but what it can do is it can inspire,“ said Azmeh.

Azmeh recently held a concert at Carnegie Hall, a Doctors Without Borders benefit titled “Shostakovich for the Children of Syria” during which he performed his piece “A Sad Morning, Every Morning.”

“ … You get up in the morning here in NY, [and] the day has already passed in Damascus … And you know the first thing you do, you open your computer and you hear the terrible news, coming from home. So it became, really, a sad morning, every morning,” said Azmeh on the inspiration behind his composition.

In Spring of 2013, DOX BOX Syria Global Day represented just such an adjustment: the Syrian film festival DOX BOX, which had taken place every year in Syria since 2008, was canceled due to constant disruptions and violence on the ground.

Screenshot from feature film Damascus My First Kiss, Lina Alabed, 2012.

In response, the 2013 program, comprised of amateur footage titled "A Citizen With a Moving Camera" as well as feature films by acclaimed filmmakers, was screened simultaneously in theaters and by participating television channels across the world, with ArteEast making the screenings available to a wide audience online, with a collection of short films and citizen documentaries. 

Screenshot from shorts collection from 'A Citizen With a Moving Camera,' DoxBox 2013.

The concept of displacement, of finding an alternative home, shelter and space to create, are recurring struggles for artists who dwell in places of conflict, upheaval and violence. In the case of Syria, whose citizens have put forth an array of artistic performances and collections since violence broke out in 2011, the marks of war and conflict in art are everywhere.

“It’s … some kind of therapy, for me to speak out. Because I think that music is an act of freedom in some way.”

As Azmeh relates in the interview, occupying of space can take on new meaning, and mediums, when facing conflict. With conflict creating impossible barriers for the artist to carry out everyday practice, alternative routes must be constructed. Art and conflict will always require both viewers and artists to navigate unchartered waters. 

Says Azmeh, “Am I able to experience, really, what people are going through on the ground? Of course not. But that’s the way I can react to it. That’s the only thing I can do.”

*(Kinan Azmeh's interview appears in the WNYC audio file at the 10:27 mark).

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ArteEast’s Winter 2014 Quarterly ArteZine issue, titled Propaganda, Aesthetics and Ruptures, guest edited by Adham Hafez, explores the power dynamics of art and politics in Egypt with the aim to “situate the actual moment” of said tensions through performance art. 

A few days after its publication, on Jan. 17, Jehane Noujaim’s documentary “The Square” debuted on Netflix, after receiving critical acclaim on the international film circuit and being the first Egyptian film to earn a nomination for best documentary feature for the 2014 Oscars.

This was also a few days following Egypt’s third vote on a constitutional referendum in as many years, and about a week preceding the country’s third anniversary of the Jan. 25, which is being observed today in Egypt with mixed emotions.

Noujaim’s lens captures the sheer volume and chorus of voices, opinions and outrage that bore the mass uprisings to fruition in the initial 18 days of sit-ins that overthrew former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. What followed, however, and what exists today, is testament to the fact that power relations between civil society and creative communities and the state, whether predominant society or government regime, is age-old and inevitably complex.

Abdullah Albayyari’s essay Resi[lience]stance, featured in the current issue of ArteZine, looks at the role of bodies, both corporal and other, in the creation of state control, resistance and knowledge-building. With a studied approach to “expressive movement,” Albayyari delineates the “moments of revolt and of spatial manifestations that reveal the significance of the body and its reaction to ruling power relations over space and bodily existence.”

 As Noujaim indicates, “The Square” focuses on the geography of Tahrir Square as a site for collaboration, a reality within reality of daily life in Egypt, and a phenomenon which has driven her to become “fascinated by [the featured characters’] use of a piece of land as a political tool and their experience being inside of it.”

Writes Albayyari, “The body can be considered as an effective force when it is possible to produce it/ to position it, given that the body is both an objective entity, and an entity that is produced, simultaneously. Producing bodies is not merely done through creating it as a tool of violence or an ideological structure or construct, but can also happen by directly subjecting the body to a physical relation with its immediate environment, as part of the duality of the influential and the influenced, without even a direct violent intervention.”

“The Square” is punctuated by interstitial segments of an artist’s brush filling out bold color on the walls surrounding Tahrir, political banners depicting scenes of revolutionaries taking over the square, army tanks and stenciled crossed-out faced of the deposed leaders. It also features scenes of singer Ramy Essam rallying crowds of protesters with popular slogans-turned revolutionary anthems.

In an inverse look at the spread of popular messages through performance art, Ismail Fayed explores the use of state propaganda  in his essay  Reconstituting Identities: Performing Propaganda 1958-1965, which examines the state’s use of propaganda through popular art and media campaigns dating back to the Nasser era. The essay reflects on deep-seated tensions between the military and civil society, which has infiltrated educational, creative and civil circles to this day.

As Egypt continues its transitions, these multiple texts and media bring insight to construction of state regimes, internal splits, power plays and multi-layered social tenets that govern arts and artists in Egypt. 

Propaganda, Aesthetics and Ruptures features a collection of essays by Adham Hafez, Ismail Fayed, Sawsan Gad and Abdullah Albayyari.

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ArteEast call for submissions

As we celebrate the arrival of a new year, ArteEast is seeking submissions from talented and dynamic writers, arts professionals and commentators to join our ongoing discussion of the contemporary Middle East arts and creative communities across the world by contributing to ArteNews.

What have been the stand-out events of 2013? What new developments do we anticipate in 2014 for arts communities based both in the region and abroad?

We especially welcome conversations and interviews with artists, curators and experts, as well as engaging and unique insights into exhibitions and events.

We look forward to hearing from you, and to another year of celebrating the contemporary arts and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. Please send all inquiries and submission ideas to Clarissa Pharr at cpharr@arteeast.org.