workshop: personal archives

Media - photography / video
Date: March – May 2008
Location: Beirut
Facilitator: Lamia Joreige
Participants: Lana Daher, Gheith El Amine, Lina Hakim, Anna Christina Ogden-Smith, Yasser Mroueh

This workshop focused on the theme of personal archives to explore the related themes of history, documentary and narrative. The works produced employed a range of media that brought together text, object, photography and video.

Revolving around the different potentialities and uses of “documents” in an artistic practice, this workshop explored how to create narratives from existing or newly produced “documents”. Participants were encouraged to ask the following questions: How does one creatively revisit material collected in the past? What does it mean to leave this material as it is, versus transforming its content and form? What are the artistic and ethical problems that arise when using archival material? How does one adapt personal material into a story that can be of interest to wider audiences? More generally, participants were invited to think through questions of rhythm and pace in montage and the significance of editing and temporality in the creative process.

Watch the videos: Gheith | Lana | Lina (more available later)

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