Riwaq Biennale 5: Ingredients

RB5 Ingredients



See Biennale Statement & Ingredients for more background information on RB5 with Khalil Rabah and Tirdad Zolghadr.

Response by Salim Tamari (sociologist).



This workshop is part of Traction 2: Workshopping the Riwaq Biennale, a seminar by Resident Professor Khalil Rabah, taking place from November 17 – 21, 2014 at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut. The seminar is presented as part of Rabah's workshop for HWP 2014-15: Setups / Situations / Institutions.



Traction 2 doubles as the 5th Riwaq Biennale’s (RB5) contribution to Home Workspace Program (HWP) 2014-15 at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut. As a whole, it will reflect all the key components of RB5. The seminar begins with an introduction to the biennale program and the Riwaq agenda, and features extensive tours of sites that were pivotal to the Palestinian experience in and around Beirut. In an exploration of HWP and the RB5 educational program NADI, Traction 2 also addresses the promises and pitfalls of informal art education over recent decades. Finally, the seminar ends with a transregional investigation of the institutional memory of contemporary art since the 1990s. The seminar forms the second part of the RB5 public program, Traction, which is structured as a long series of responses to institutions and events throughout Palestine and its immediate neighborhood. It aims to push the biennale to be thinking “through” the structures of contemporary art, as opposed to thinking “about” or “against” them. In this spirit of chronic infiltrations and slow tenacity, RB5 will span a full two years, which may allow this brief visit to Lebanon to become a lasting contribution to a longer, accumulative conversation.



Traction is a programme proposed and organized by the 5th Riwaq Biennale in Palestine.



Traction 2 is an event produced and organized by the Homeworks Program Ashkal Alwan and the 5th Riwaq Biennale in Palestine.



The seminar is open to the public. Some events have limited capacity and require registration.



Khalil Rabah is the Artistic Director of the Riwaq Biennale, and co-founder of al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem as well as the Riwaq Biennale. He is also the founder of the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind. He served as a member of the curriculum committee of Home Workspace Program between 2010-2014. Rabah has participated in several biennials including Istanbul (2005), Liverpool (2008), Venice (2009) and Sharjah (2010). His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Review’, Beirut Art Center (2012), and ‘Art Exhibition, Ready Made Representations’, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg (2012), and ‘Pages 7, 8, 9’, at E Flux, New York 2013.



Tirdad Zolghadr is a curator and writer, currently affiliated with Al Quds Bard College and the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah. His writing includes novels, essays and criticism. The working title of his third novel is “Headbanger”. Curatorial work includes a large number of discreet durational projects and several biennial settings. Zolghadr is currently the curator of the 5th Riwaq Biennale.



Salim Tamari is a social scientist and senior fellow at the Institute of Palestine Studies (IPS) and former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat at AlQuds. He is also a professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent publications include Year of the Locust: Palestine and Syria during WWI (UC Press, 2010); Ihsan’s War: The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Soldier (IPS, Beirut, 2008); The Mountain against the Sea (University of California Press, 2008)





View Larger Map Ashkal Alwan | Home Workspace Jisr el Wati, Street 90, Building 110, 1st Floor

Near Souk Al Ahad, facing IMPEX Garage, Pink Building next to Beirut Art Center

Phone: +961 1 423 879

www.ashkalalwan.org