Curators Angela Harutyunyan and Nat Muller take the cue for their latest exhibition 'This is the time. This is the record of the time" from Laurie Anderson's 1982 song "From the air" where she describes the duration between becoming conscious that the plane will crash and its actual impact - a moment when time and space collapse. It represents the ultimate loss of control, over time or anything else for that matter. The curators argue that this idea and feeling resonate with our time, which is characterized by perpetual crises, be it economical, political, social, ecological or personal, as well as the continuous overload of information and updates. Tempted to find ways to pause and reflect, Harutyunyan and Muller invited nine artists based in Lebanon and the Netherlands to produce new works for the exhibition.
In this video, the two curators discuss the development of the project which premiered in September in Amsterdam, and take us on a guided tour of the second iteration of the exhibition, currently showing at the American University in Beirut Art Galleries.
Artists Kristina Benjocki, Diana Hakobyan, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Peter Fengler, Daniele Genadry, Walid Sadek, Rayyane Tabet, Esme Valk and Cynthia Zaven took part in the show.
This exhibition is part of the Stedelijk Museum's Global Collaborations program.