Category Archives: Blog

Your thought is interested in ruins and museums, mummies and petrified objects.
But mine hovers in the ever-renewed haze and clouds….

— Khalil Gibran

I passed by this graffiti this morning on my way to play with the children at the Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon/St. Jude in Beirut. And play we did–from drawing exotic animals to throwing a tea party that got rowdy. One of the three-year-olds even turned his thermometer into a pretend cigarette–and smoked it. Forget three cups of tea–today, I must have served 30 cups of (imaginary) tea. Playing with the kids at CCCL/St. Jude is always the highlight of my week…

While my students and I were reading al-Ghazali (d. 1111) this week in Beirut, I found myself drawn to the passage below about his time in Damascus. After all, Sufism in Syria has a long and rich history…

In due course, I entered Damascus and there I remained for nearly two years with no other occupation than the cultivation of retirement and solitude, together with religious and ascetic exercises, as I busied myself purifying my soul, improving my character and cleansing my heart for the constant recollection of God most high, as I had learnt from my study of mysticism. I used to go into retreat for a period in the mosque of Damascus, going up the minaret of the mosque for the whole day and shutting myself in so as to be alone…

— al Ghazali

They say that the mirror-like heart is wonderful.
See within it the faces of your beloveds–wonderful!
No one wonders at the beloved’s face in mirrors.
To be oneself both beloved and mirror–
that is wonderful!

— Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm

As I’ve been studying Chinese and practicing tai chi in Beirut (貝魯特的太極練習課), I’ve also been researching how Islamic thought in China was informed by Sufism and Neo-Confucianism. When Muslim scholars in China in the 17th and 18th centuries began adapting Chinese traditions and beliefs to accommodate Islam, they turned primarily to Sufi philosophy. For example, the four main books on Islam which were translated into Chinese before the 20th century were all translations of celebrated Persian Sufi texts.

Apart from the Real Substance, nothing is to be thought a substance, and apart from the Real Function, nothing is to be thought a function. Thus it is said that there is nothing, only the Real.

— Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm

“Great Learning of the Pure and Real” and “Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm” blend together Confucian social teachings, Neo-Confucian metaphysics, Buddhism, and Taoism with Islamic thought. Since not many people have heard of these texts or Islamic Neo-Confucianism, perhaps I’ll share more gems from these texts in upcoming posts…

“Asserting unity” [tawhid] is to make the heart one. In other words, it is to deliver and disengage it from attachment to what is other than the Real, both from the side of seeking and desire, and from the direction of knowledge and gnosis. In other words, seeking and desire are to be cut off from all objects of seeking and desire, and all objects of knowledge and intellect are to be eliminated from its insight’s gaze. It turns its attentiveness away from every face, and no consciousness or awareness of other than the Real remains.

— Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm

From acupuncture to tai chi–along with many other remedies–alternative medicine in Beirut is alive and well…

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.

— Martin Heidegger

Though I never play video games at home, each week at the Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon I play video games (like Grand Theft Auto) with the children in the playroom while I volunteer. This week in the playroom, as I was watching our avatars spring back to life after dying each digital death, I began thinking about the possibilities of “digital reincarnation” in many different forms–from heritage preservation to consciousness replication.

Assuming, as many prominent scientists have recently proposed, that the universe is a computer simulation–what then are we to make of “permanent death”? Though some video games end in “permadeath,” most video games allow the player to press “continue” and play on–after being hit by a truck, or shot in the head. How might we also be digitally reincarnated? If the universe is a simulation, then the program would be backed up on multiple drives and scattered servers–leading not only to the likelihood of multiple selves, but also to possibility of digital reincarnation(s).

A few days ago, on the Daily Show, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku discussed two types of digital reincarnation–though he didn’t use that term. For instance, he suggested that scientists will eventually be able to upload memories into the minds of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s. Further, he predicted that in the future humans will be able to download the entire contents of one’s consciousness onto a CD-ROM–to be saved and engaged with generations after the body has passed on. What he doesn’t mention, however, is the possibility that an external copy of our consciousness could be copied and distributed millions of times over–dispersing a single consciousness into unlimited forms (not unlike in the movie Her).

Would it be a blessing or a curse to be digitally reincarnated ad infinitum–for the consumption of others who one never met while “alive”? Is it–or will it be–impossible to have the luxury to just die and be forgotten? With Facebook already transforming the pages of the deceased into public memorials, these aren’t just questions about the future–but now. So, does it matter if we have no control over who curates our consciousness–or digital reincarnations–long after we’re gone?

The Daily Show
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Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.

― José Saramago

This week in Beirut, my Egyptology students practiced writing their names in Meroitic–an ancient language from the Kingdom of Meroë in modern-day Sudan. Though the grammar of this ancient African language has not yet been deciphered, the transliteration of Meroitic letters is thankfully known. Now that my students have learned Meroitic letters–along with ancient Egyptian grammar–perhaps it’s time to starting teaching them some Coptic or Ge’ez?

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham has claimed responsibility for firing rockets yesterday on a Lebanese town in the Beqaa…

A photo that I took while working in Sudan will be appearing on the cover of the upcoming book “The Road to the Two Sudans”–which will be published in April 2014. I took the photo while walking through the desert from our mudhut home to the Royal City of Meroe. With violence and chaos still plaguing South Sudan, this book will be a timely and welcome resource for those seeking to understand the roots of the current conflict…

Traces of Disappearance
January 18th – April 13th 2014
Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo

This winter, when my colleague Kasper told me that he was making an entire art installation out of gummy bears for “Traces of Disappearance” at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, I was tempted to hop on a plane to Japan to see it installed. Unfortunately, I missed my chance, since I was on my way to Sudan. But I’m still hoping to catch a glimpse of his candied masterpiece in person–before the gummy bears melt away.

Conceived by curators Murielle Hladik and Eva Kraus, “Traces of Disappearance” invites visitors to reflect upon “what is about to vanish,” by contemplating the current condition of our fragile world. In a way, Kasper’s “The Sheer Size of It” strikes me as a modern art mandala (沙坛城)–made with candy instead of sand. Over time, as the heat of the sun begins to melt this gummy bear panel of “paradise,” paradise will be transformed from a utopian vision to a grotesque mess.

Here’s an excerpt from his artistic statement about the piece…

                                      ***

Utopia has two equally possible translations as ‘good place’ and ‘no place’. I found on the street one day a discarded religious publication and in it illustrations of a paradise. I was immediately struck, a room full of anonymous illustrators in the headquarters of a religious sect diligently conjuring the afterlife, free from artistic pretensions merely elucidating the ‘facts’ of paradise, a banal narrative of harmonious coexistence in an idealized landscape. The paradise I present here is a compilation of disparate images from this literature…

Thinking about a reconstruction of the illustrators’ work in a different format and with different materials, with the particular choices that I faced in the process, I realized that for me, a non-believer, the subject of paradise had to be a grotesque one in terms of its size and materials. The process had to reflect a futile (because of its temporality), enormous undertaking. So, the landscape is now not simply punctured by the image that diverts from its endemic language of universal peace and harmony but, most importantly, by its size and the process of its material decomposition as the more than 100,000 individual candies melt into each other.

To produce this work was impossible for me alone and because of the typical financial constraints of most artists, I made a call for help to my immediate community. The result was that my neighborhood in Los Angeles rallied and came out in force to help. Friends brought their friends and we worked together on this seemingly endless task of constructing an image of a paradise together. This is and will be the most enduring and endearing memory that I carry away from this project.

Kasper Kovitz, Beirut, November 2013

Mountain of Skin – 9 Videos by 9 Artists
Mansion
Friday, Feb 28
8pm

Mountains of Skin is a screening of 9 videos by 9 artists who are all born in Iceland but live and work around the world. They come from various artistic backgrounds – dance, writing, visual art and film-making – which clearly effects the way each one of them uses the video medium. Although their artistic aims span a wide spectrum, these videos share an extremely corporal approach to the expression of human existence.

Videos will be screened in the following order:

Rationalize by Páll Haukur Björnsson. Flaggskip by Sunneva Ása Weishappel, Elasticita by Katrín Ólafsdóttir.Domesticated and Surface by Bryndís Björnsdóttir. Shedrone by Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir. untitled by Haukur Már Helgason.You Can’t Stand in the Way of Progress by artists duo Angeli Novi ( Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir and Ólafur Páll Sigurðsson ). Sun by Unndór Egill Jónsson

One of the artists, Steinunn, will be available for q&a after the screening.

This upcoming event in NYC will discuss the recent discovery of vital testimony from a U.S. officer who in 1943 was forced by the Nazis to watch as they exhumed thousands of Polish officers who had been killed on Stalin’s orders in the Katyn forest. Krystyna Piorkowska uncovered the Paris-dated testimony–given by former American prisoner of war Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. on May 10, 1945–in the U.S. National Archives, along with other World War II documents from the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Critical Machines (Exhibition)
Exhibition Opening: 6 March, 2014, 6:00 – 9:00PM
Location: AUB Byblos Bank Art Gallery

Artists in the Exhibition
Art & Language, Burak Arikan, Freee art collective, Janah Hilwé, Khalil Rabah, Vadim Zakharov

*And*

A Bookshelf with critical machines by: André Breton, Critical Art Ensemble, Marcel Duchamp, Andrea Fraser, Heresies Collective, William Hogarth, György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay (Artpool), Kenneth Goldsmith, Hans Haacke & Pierre Bourdieu, Pablo Helguera, Garnet Hertz, Wassily Kandinsky, Allan Kaprow, Hassan Khan, Andrei Monastyrsky, William Morris, Walid Raad, Ad Reinhardt, Temporary Services, Gregory Sholette, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi and others.

In the language of contemporary labor processes and manufacturing equipment, a “critical machine” is a piece of equipment designated and programmed to monitor and report on other machines in the production chain. Critical machines are deployed as preventive maintenance measures to guard against equipment malfunctioning and the disruption of the production flow. The main goal of the critical machine is to inform the human operator about urgently required systemic adjustments.

We apply this machinic analogy to the world of contemporary art as a central motif, even a provocation, that might unsettle certain assumptions about the modes of production and the circulation of art today. Within the broader scheme of things, Critical Machines is about Critique. It is about a specifically modern attitude, which relies heavily on rationality and reason, enjoys questioning authority and accepted practices and seeks to determine – as Immanuel Kant did consecutively with his logical machines, the three Critiques – the conditions of possibility under which we may learn what we can know, what we ought to do, and what we may hope…

For more information on this exhibition, please click here.