The Beirut Experience

The exhibition The Beirut Experience brings together 10 international artists selected for their interest in notions that are essential to the context of Beirut and Lebanon, such as architecture, urban planning, memory, history or cultural identity, as well as their capacity to adapt themselves to the complex but stimulating Lebanese situation, where anything can change every day.

The subject of the exhibition is precisely Beirut and Lebanon. Every artist is asked to produce a new work specifically linked to this context. The title points to the experience of the context, with all the nuances that this word contains. Every artist has stayed at least twice in Beirut, once in November 2010, and then during the installation period, planned just before the Opening in October 2011. Some went to Beirut to work during the summer of 2011. All works are commissioned and produced by attitudes.

A book will be published after the show in 3 languages: English, French and Arabic. It will contain an introduction by the curators, documentation of the works, and a long essay by Paris-based German art critic and author Jens Emil Sennewald.

This book will be ready for the second occurrence of The Beirut Experience, planned at Art Center Villa Bernasconi in Geneva / Lancy (CH), in April 2012. (www.villabernasconi.ch)


THE CURATORS & PRODUCERS:
Attitudes is an independent art structure based in Geneva (Switzerland) founded in 1994 and directed by Jean-Paul Felley and Olivier Kaeser. It conceives, organizes and produces projects in the fields of contemporary art, in Geneva, in Switzerland and elsewhere. Among the main projects elsewhere, Buenos días Buenos Aires at MAMBA, Buenos Aires in 2003, and Buenos días Santiago – an exhibition as expedition at MAC Santiago de Chile in 2005. It has worked with about 400 artists, and organized about 250 exhibitions and 250 other special events such as performances, film screenings and lectures. Attitudes had an exhibition space in Geneva up to the end of 2008. It is working now on two axes: publishing editions of books, mainly by artists, and the curating of exhibitions in various places. Attitudes has the status of a non-profit cultural association. www.attitudes.ch

Jean-Paul Felley and Olivier Kaeser are also co-directors of Centre culturel suisse (Swiss Cultural Center) in Paris, their main project since the end of 2008.

The project The Beirut Experience is supported by the following organisations:
Pro Helvetia – Swiss foundation for culture / Swiss Exhibition Award given to attitudes by Julius Bär Foundation and Swiss federal Office for culture / Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, Etat de Genève (Contemporary Art Fund, State of Geneva) / Mondriaan Foundation / Institut français (French Institute) / Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation / Georges Foundation / Swiss Embassy in Lebanon.