Written for Exeunt
The Arab world comprises of twenty-two countries that spread across two continents, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. A wave of change is rippling from its core, igniting a process of political and cultural transition that will reshape Arab identity. Shubbak: A Window into Arab Culture attempts to make an incision into the fabric of this mosaic of cultures in the first London-wide festival dedicated to contemporary Arab art. Organized by the Mayor of London, the festival covers a plethora of artistic forms in London’s most prestigious venues: visual arts, music, film, poetry, dance, architecture and performance.
This curated landscape of contemporary art is underlined by an exploration of the relationship between personal politics and the public sphere. This is reflected throughout the festival’s programming, from Barbican hosting an evening of music from artists who could be heard playing in Tahir Square in the midst of the protests, to the ICA’s Interference, a three day exploration of the relationship between art and agitation.
From Palestinian director Amir Nizar’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony at the Young Vic to Tanya El Khoury’s one on one encounter Jarideh and Egyptian director Ahmed El Attar’s On the Importance of Being an Arab at the ICA, the performance programme explores Arab identity at a time of transition- it’s a formally daring and surprisingly soft-spoken collection of live works.
There is a constant tension between how each live artist appropriates the notions of a shifting Arab identity into their personal politics, and how this is turns materializes in the individual performances. In the case of Tanya El Khoury’s one on one, she blends personal references with historical accounts of women from the Lebanese Resistance Group as well as current British policies regarding terrorists. This is a caustic blend of archives that is performed by you as the other ‘one’ in the dynamic. El Khoury communicates through an Arabic newspaper which becomes a guide through this social game. As the whole experience takes place in public, you’re placed in a constant game of negotiation; you can chose to follow El Khoury’s forensic instructions and become her accomplice in this crafted narrative. The option of breaking the theatrical rules becomes harder as the performance unfolds, and it is the clashes between this evolving narrative and the public context of the performance that gives real weight to the piece. There are moments of negotiation where you are forced to make a decision and are only able to evaluate it after; this is experiencing and articulating different perspectives and sides of Arab identity and its global perception. Jarideh’s form is its most potent element- this performative play places you at the heart of a social issue, providing you with an emotional vocabulary to understand the different elements that comprise an Arab identity, particularly in reference to Lebanon and its tumultuous history.
If El Khoury’s performance is intimately challenging, Ahmed El Attar’s multimedia live art piece is more like a series of puzzle pieces that you are disabled from putting together. El Attar is sat on a concrete plinth looking down into the audience, reciting extracts from a personal archive of letters, phone conversations and diary entries that are fed to him through an earpiece. Behind him, a projection screen illustrates some of these conversations and on either side of the stage two large speakers blast a heavy wave of Arab new wave music. El Attar has been recording his own conversations for two years, when he started work on the piece- and although the form remains the same, the content changes every four to five months. His London performance contained extracts from his conversations through February, from the start of the protests in Tahir Square to the fall of Mubarak on the 11th of February. He recites his own words without any nostalgia or emotion, powerful in his rigid posture and dominating with his voice.
The blend of music puncturing through his words and the mechanic recitation form a wall of noise that’s hard to break through. El Attar is staging his own personal politics in the most mechanical of forms and in this way, he remains reticent to impart his own views. There’s a tension between his factual delivery and the content of his text that remains unreconcilled in the performance; it seems El Attar is interested in the tension between acting and performing, being a character through your own personal experience, yet it’s hard to ignore the political undertones of his cropped speech. His bringing of personal politics to the public sphere is so reticent and controlled that is almost feels inconsequential.
However On the Importance of Being an Arab has its enthralling moments when the sound, the words and the delivery are brought together to glimpse into the different elements that form Arab identity of travelled artist- the father figure, the personal conflicts, the changing positions and the hopes for the what the future holds. In a similar way, El Khoury paves her one on one with glimpses into her personal archive, some more transparent than other. Alongside each other, these two performances provide a powerful gateway to understanding an identity that is shaped by so many factors, from the religious to the social. Yet in both cases, there’s a lot of specificity that leaves you wanting more.
Amir Nizar’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story explores the changing moral and religious landscape of a society in transition. Set in an unspecified colony, a Visitor comes on an official trip to observe the last use of a torture device that inscribes the sentence onto the Prisoner’s body. The Executioner shows him how the device works and as the plot unfolds, a power game between the three develops. Nizar keeps the general structure of the story yet emphasizes the shifting political background, suggesting that the Visitor is a representative of a new regime, whilst the Executioner is a symbol of the old.
What becomes really powerful in the performance is the symbolism Nizar introduces into the story- a torture device alongside a field of sunflowers. Through the characters Nizar explores the elements that shape and form a nation’s mentality, and their fragility in light of change. Unlike El Khoury and El Attar, Nizar uses the stage as a space for contrasts and juxtapositions, making reference to religious and political wars of the 21st century, and despite presenting a series of questions through Kafka’s story, there is a real sense of positivity behind the work. This is the public played out in the personal, and where the performance really succeeds is to create an allegory of the ideology of transitions onstage.
Shubbak: a Window into Arab Culture is a textured and diverse festival that addresses the contemporary in relation to a changing landscape of cultures. On one hand, the festival brings together a range of work that directly addresses the current problems of a region at the brink of change. El Khoury, El Attar and Nizar’s performances are provocative in form, bringing into the discussion the position of the artist at such a time of crisis. If El Khoury and Nizar respond with a challenge, either formally or thematically, El Attar is concerned with breaking apart the fragments that make an Arab identity.
Yet the one aspect of the festival that doesn’t resonate as powerfully when it comes to its theatre programming is the lack of specificity. El Attar, El Khoury and Nizar all present personal politics with a softly-spoken voice, somehow reticent to challenge their content further, to peel off the layers of the problems that they bring to the stage. What the performances lack is local nuance, as Arab identity is comprises of so many endlessly fascinating local cultures, and it is these that together help paint the cultural landscape of the region.
Despite its scale and ambition, Shubbak Festival hasn’t managed to create as wide a discourse as anticipated, given the blend of provocative and politically apt work in its programming. And whilst this is the first year that London embraces such a festival, Liverpool has been hosting the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival for ten years, providing an ongoing platform for contemporary Arab art, including hosting performances by both El Attar and El Khoury.
In the context of the polyphonic cultural microcosm of London, a festival dedicated to contemporary Arab art has significant currency- it capitalizes on the current interest in the Arab world and its political and social shifts, and brings together work by local and international Arab artists. So the question remains: how can a festival like Shubbak negotiate its cultural import?