Memory of Birds at Belluard Bollwerk
Memory of Birds is an interactive sound installation that takes place in trees, in collaboration with a trauma therapist and migrating birds. With this work, live artist Tania El Khoury explores political violence that literally and figuratively gets buried in contested lands. It centres the artist’s complicated relationship with the land – one that holds trauma, mass graves and toxicity, a repository of political struggle, a record of power dynamics and a site of various species migrating for survival. A guided somatic experience for seven people at a time, Memory of Birds is a work that eats itself, designed to be forgotten.
20160623: Gardens Speak
20240628: The Search for Power at Belluard Bollwerk
History takes shape between zones of light and zones of shadow. But when we decide to shine a light on those elements that have been buried or left in the dark, they too can be read and scrutinized. In The Search for Power, we are invited to join Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury and her husband, historian Ziad Abu-Rish, in an unusual collective investigation. Following yet another blackout, the couple embarked upon a wide-ranging inquiry into the history of power cuts in Lebanon. The result is a dizzying, vast fresco revealing the sparks that fly when colonial powers, resistance movements and nation-building all rub against each other. A tale told in two voices brimming with love and with rage, an attempt to short-circuit the power dynamics that seep into the remotest corners of our lives.