Nothing to Declare: A Lecture Performance
by Dictaphone Group
Monday 22 April 2013
1:30pm
Lecture Hall 1
George Mason University
Performance Synopsis
Nothing to Declare is a research-based lecture performance that explores borders within Lebanon, those between Lebanon and its neighbors, and across the Arab world. Our journey starts at a derelict train station in Beirut, and continues as each one of us sets off on a different trip following one of the three train tracks that used to connect Lebanese cities with each other and with other Arab cities. Our travels include visits to sites along the train tracks and abandoned stations to discover past and present uses of these spaces as playgrounds, makeshift housing, torture chambers and military bases. We aim to tour this project throughout the Arab world, including Palestine. In each Arab country, the performance will be expanded through site-specific oral history about people’s mobility in that particular country and about our journey crossing the borders to get there.
About the Dictaphone Group
Dictaphone Group creates live art performances based on findings and stories produced through research on space and oral history. It is a collaborative project initiated in 2009 by live artist Tania El Khoury and architect and urbanist Abir Saksouk. Together with performer and producer Petra Serhal, they have been creating site specific performances informed by research in a variety of places such as a cable car, a fisherman’s boat, and a discontinued bus. The aim of these projects is to question, as citizens, our relationship to the city, with a focus on public space, and the goal of its redefinition. Click here to read Laleh Khalili`s review of Dictaphone Group`s last project, This Sea Is Mine.
Additional Event Details
This event is free and open to the public. Free pizza will be provided.
Sponsored by the Middle East Studies Program and the Middle East Etc Film Club at George Mason University.
