Curator: Karina El Helou (STUDIOCUR/ART)
In partnership with: Anissa Touati Corporation for Mexico
Cycles of Collapsing Progress is a month-long contemporary art exhibition organised by non-profit organisations BeMA and STUDIOCUR/ART, taking place at the Rashid Karami International Fair, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer- located in Tripoli, North Lebanon and at the Citadel of Tripoli.
The concrete run-down structures of the Fair, considered as one of the most important legacy of modern architecture in the Middle East, will be in dialogue through contemporary art, with the citadel, a monument to the layers of history. The locations current states provoked reflection, in the context of the exhibition, on cyclical time and the cycles of collapse.
The notion of cyclical time, common to past civilizations, is now considered archaic, for according to Romanian intellectual, Mircea Eliade modern societies have a linear understanding of time. This contemporary understanding considers progress as the only possible outcome and therefore does not take into account repeated cycles of collapse.
The contemplation of the life and death of civilisations can be traced back to the medieval Tunisian-born historian Ibn Khaldoun, who suggested that historical cycles function in a loop, starting as Umran Badaoui (bedouin civilisation) evolving into Umran Hadari (urban civilisation) before collapsing. Recent studies by American historian, Joseph Tainter on the collapse of complex societies, like the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Mayas, show there are several possible causes for their downfall, including natural disasters, wars, and epidemics. But one theory can be singled out. When a society becomes highly stratified, it is more likely to fall, as the cost of maintaining it is high. In the aftermath of the collapse of modernism or as Bruno Latour actually suggested we have never been modern, scientists affirm that since the anthropocene era, our future decline will be caused by an impending ecological disaster due to global warming. If -human beings, nature, and even history - functions cyclically, it is possible to think about the limits of progress and the cost that entails.
The exhibition will present 18 projects in total, including 8 commissioned artworks along 10 produced works by artists from Lebanon and Mexico. The meeting of the two scenes allowed the exchange of geographical perspectives on the theme. This project includes residencies in Beirut (BAR-Beirut Art Residency) and Guadalajara (PAOS GDL).