Let’s Talk About The Weather

Over the month of July 2016, marra.tein turned into the editorial office for the publication series “Elements for a World: Stone, Wood, Sky, Water, Fire”, edited by Ashkan Sepahvand and commissioned by curators Nora Razian and Natasa Petresin-Bachelez for their exhibition “Let’s Talk About The Weather” at the Sursock Museum. Addressing for the first time in the Middle East region the concept of the “Anthropocene” in relation to contemporary artistic practice, the exhibition project showed works of art that engage with ecology and climate change in critical and creative ways - including projects from local, Beirut-based artists such as Marwan Rechmaoui, Joanna Hadji-Thomas and Khalil Joreige, and Jessika Khazrik.

The five-volume publication series took the five “elements” as its point of departure, proposing our current “times of crisis” as an opportunity to re-evaluate and re-design our knowledge systems beyond modern disciplinarity and objectivity. “Elements for a World”, in this sense, refers not only to the material entanglements of knowledges and direct experience, but also the elemental building blocks needed to re-imagine a different world into existence. Going beyond mere “Anthropocene” discourse, the publication series specifically engaged with local, non-Western, and indigenous cosmologies that are parallel to and critical of epistemological Modernity, offering different perspectives on how to “be in the world”. Each author was commissioned to write a new piece, experimentation was urged, and cross-overs between artistic and scientific practice encouraged. Contributors included Marwa Arsanios, Lara Khaldi, Fadi Mansour, Namik Mackic, Forensic Architecture, Adrian Lahoud, Elizabeth Povinelli, amongst many other. A series of conversations accompanied the publication launch in July, held at the Sursock Museum, with private gatherings at marra.tein. For more information, visit the Sursock Museum.