Tuesday, 22.3.2011
Adel Abidin in conversation with Lamia Joreige

Tuesday 29.3.2011
Monthly Cultural Meeting with Dr. Faisal Darraj:
How to read Mahmoud Darwish
This lecture will take place during the month in which the great Palestinian poet was born, and will discuss the recently published book entitled How to read Mahmoud Darwish, collaboration between Dr. Abdul Ilah Balqazir as well as other Arab critics including Jamal Barout, and Mohammad Dakroub. The lecture touches on the main visions the artistic elements that are expressed in the work of Darwish.

Tuesday 05.4.2011
Film Screening: Around The Pink House
By Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil JoreigeAn old mansion known as La Maison Rose (The Pink House) stands in Beirut as the place where the Nawfal families found refuge from the civil war. Today, many of the old shell-ridden buildings are being torn down for vast new construction projects. When Mattar, the owner of the Pink House, decides to transform the mansion into a large commercial center, the residents of the neighborhood become divided between the businessmen and shopkeepers who welcome the chance for economic development.

Tuesday, 12.4.2011
The Museum of Everything:
Presentation by James Brett and Tamara Corm Since its opening in 2009, The Museum of Everything has showcased the odd, the spectacular and the extraordinary, celebrating the creativity of makers kept outside the art realm. It also invites the visitor to reconsider the role of a museum, what we preserve and what we leave out, unveiling the cracks plaguing the dominant art historical narrative. Founder of The Museum of Everything, James Brett has a background in film, design and architecture. He opened The Museum of Everything in 2009 to showcase creativity by non-traditional artists during which time it has become one of the most successful new independent museums in the world. A graduate from MIT in Architecture, Tamara Corm assisted in establishing the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris. In 2009 Corm collaborated with James Brett to create the Museum of Everything and is currently involved in setting up the Pace Gallery in London.

Tuesday, 19.4.2011
Presentation by Rijin Sahakian: Echo (Sadda) Web Platform for Contemporary Iraqi Art
Rijin Sahakian founded the Echo (sadda) foundation in 2010 to support, document and strengthen Iraqi arts practices in both Iraq and the diaspora in order to create a sustainable social shift in regeneration and preservation of critical art practice and discourse. This discussion will center around new initiatives being built to address these issues, from new geographies of practice that integrate dispersed populations, to digital tools and platforms designed to facilitate trans-global learning and production, as well as significant spaces for archive and exchange.
Rijin Sahakian (b. 1978, Baghdad, Iraq) recieved her MA in Contemporary Art and Cultural Policy from New York University, and serves as founding director of Echo (Sadda) for Contemporary Iraqi Art.

Tuesday, 26.4.2011
Monthly Cultural Meeting with Dr. Faisal Darraj:
Taha Hussein and the Palestinian Issue
This lecture seeks to shed new light on Taha Hussein’s thinking and political stance, while concentrating on the Palestinian people’s struggle against occupation before and after The Catastrophe (Al Nakba). The lecture will take the book Taha Hussein and Zionism by Helmy El Namnam as a departing point, which draws from an unused documentation, and therefore corrects many of the opinions and attitudes unjustly attributed to the dean of Arabic literature.

Tuesday, 03.5.2011
Film Screening: Our City Dreams | 2008 | Color | 85’
Chiara Clemente
Filmed over the course of two years, ‘Our City Dreams’ an invitation to visit the creative spaces of artists Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero, Marina Abramovic, Ghada Amer and Swoon, each of whom possesses her own energy, drive and passion. These women, who span different decades and represent diverse cultures, have one thing in common beyond making art: New York, the city to which they have journeyed and now call home. Director Chiara Clemente combines an intimate style of documentary filmmaking with the ephemera of city life surrounding each woman and the work she creates.

Tuesday, 10.5.2011
Lecture by Saleem Al-Bahloly: The Forms of the Fedayee
This talk traces the origin of allegory in Iraqi modern art and its deployment in giving form to the new figure of the Fedayee that emerged in the wake of the 1967 June War. It looks at how the mode of expression introduced by Kadhim Hayder’s 1965 exhibition “Epic of the Martyr” to render tragedy in Iraq is taken up in the work of Dia Azzawi to render tragedy in Palestine.
Saleem Al-Bahloly is a Phd Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tuesday, 24.5.2011
Monthly Cultural Meeting with Dr. Faisal Darraj:
The West’s Attitude Towards The Prophet of Islam
The book entitled Around Mohammad – Other Western points of View On Islam from the 18th Century Onwards published in English in 2010 comprises studies around the personality of the venerated Arab messenger. The study by Abul Wahab al Efendi uncovers the roots of western animosity towards the Prophet whilst demonstrating historical evidence of the west’s respect towards the prophet. The lecture seeks to question whether or not the image of Islam in the west is variable or constant.

Tuesday 31.5.2011 at 7:30 pm - the Archaeological site
The Time That Remains - Film screening in the presence of the director Elia Suleiman | 2009 |Color |109’
The Time That Remains is a semi-biographical black comedy film written and directed by the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. Suleiman recounts family stories inspired by his father’s private diaries starting from when he was a resistance fighter in 1948, and his mother’s letters to family members who were forced to leave the country during the same period. In addition, Suleiman combines his own memories in an attempt to provide a portrait of the daily life of the Palestinians who were labeled “Israeli-Arabs” after they chose to remain in their country and become a minority.