The Search for Power (Installation)
Tania El Khoury
On a night with a sudden electricity outage in their Beirut neighbourhood, the artist and her historian husband discussed the history of power cuts in Lebanon.
Born during the Lebanese Civil War, the artist had grown up with the understanding that the problem with electricity in Lebanon began during the war. The historian, however, recalled finding a government document dated 1952 that announced scheduled electricity outages across Beirut. The two decided to research the history of power outages in Lebanon, delving into the intersection between public utilities infrastructure, people’s relationship to the state, and various popular mobilisations to shape both.
In time, they reach as far back as the introduction of electricity in Beirut before it was even possible to imagine a Lebanese state. In space, they collect documents across Lebanon and beyond its borders, visiting the archives of colonial powers: Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What they find is a transnational story that locates electricity at the intersection of colonial legacies, the machinations of political and economic elites, and everyday acts of resistance, survival, and sabotage.
The Search for Power is a lecture and installation performance featuring the artist, the historian, and the audience.
See both the installation and performance as part of Kyoto Experiment.
Tania El Khoury is a live artist whose work focuses on audience interactivity and its political potential. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is a witness and an active collaborator. Tania’s work has been translated to multiple languages and shown in 32 countries across six continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Soros Art Fellowship, the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award. Tania is Distinguished Artist in Residence of Theater & Performance and the Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College in New York. She holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. She is associated with the Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK and is a cofounder of the urban research and live art collective Dictaphone Group in Lebanon.
Creation: Tania El Khoury
Performance: Tania El Khoury, Ziad Abu-Rish, and Petra Abousleiman
Research: Ziad Abu-Rish with support from Owain Lawson
Graphic Design: Jana Traboulsi
Production Design: Petra Abousleiman
Sound Design: Ali Beidoun
Dramaturgy: Deborah Pearson
Co-commissioned by Anti Festival and Shubbak Festival. Supported by Arts Council England and brut Wien.