ELIE MOUHANNA 2021
SobaZaGoste I 3.9.2021
Elie Mouhanna: Hotel sem biti dovolj dober zate.
V okviru spektra psiholoških raziskav, je koža pogosto opredeljena kot membrana ali meja, ki omogoča izoblikovanje in zaznavo razlike med notranjostjo (na primer miljejem biološkega telesa) in zunanjostjo (na primer zunanjim svetom, naravo ali drugim telesom), temu ustrezno pa omogoča zaznavo telesa kot celote, kar predstavlja tudi izhodišče tvorbe in zavedanja individualnosti. V nasprotju s tem v okviru antropoloških raziskav tehnologije, to mesto meje in hkrati pogoja možnosti izoblikovanja individualnosti zaseda natanko tehnologija. Tehnologija je v tem primeru razumljena kot človekovo sredstvo pozunanjenja spomina (primer pisave in drugih oblik procesiranja in shranjevanja podatkov) in osvobajanja organov (primer orodij), na ravni vizualnega zaznavanja pa tudi izhodišče za razlikovanje figure in ozadja kot primarnim principom človeškega (vizualnega) zaznavanja. Kaj je v razmerju do kože obleka—nekakšna dodatna plast kože ali orodje za gretje telesa, ki hkrati zakriva in potencialno še poudari individualnost?V svojem delu se Elie Mouhanna umešča na široko področje tako poimenovane religije tehnologije, ki ne zadeva le dolge zgodovine kultiviranja narave—vključno z naravnim v človeku—, ampak tematiko preoblikovanja ali, bolje, širjenja človeških zmožnosti preko premagovanja njegovih naravnih ali kulturnih danosti. Tehnologija v tem primeru ni le sredstvo tvorbe kulture, tehnična proteza namreč povratno vpliva tudi na izvorno človekovo naravo in kulturo. Medijske tehnologije sicer izraščajo iz kulture, vendar delujejo kot avtonomne entitete, ki transcendirajo to isto človeško kulturo. Ni naključje, da tehnološki in znanstveni razvoj od srednjega veka dalje pogosto poganjajo težnje po približevanju človeka božji omniprezentnosti in nesmrtnosti. Na tej podlagi je mogoče tudi premike v zgodovini povezati s spremembami, ki jih v organizacijo družbenega vnašajo medijske tehnologije, podobno kot trdi ena pomembnih teoretskih referenc Mouhanne—Paul Virilio, ki denimo kulturne spremembe med drugim misli skozi pospeševanje hitrosti zaradi tehnoloških inovacij, predvsem pa konfliktom le-teh z logiko bioloških ritmov in sezonskimi vzorci človeškega.
V razstavi Mouhanna preigrava tri ključna tematska polja, ki jih uokvirja omenjeno področje religije tehnologije. Prvič, vpliv medijskih tehnologij na medčloveško komunikacijo, identiteto in intimnost, na kar med drugim nakazuje tudi umestitev figure očeta (portreta umetnikovega očeta), ki ga osvetljuje svetloba telefonskega ekrana na pročelje fasade Galerije K18. Drugič, sorodnost tehnologije in statusa kože kot membrane, ki ločuje milje biološkega telesa in zunanjosti, hkrati pa umeščanje prakse oblačenja v to relacijo. Tretjič, razmerje in razlika med digitalnim in materialnim. Figura očeta v kombinaciji z naslovitvijo razstave »Hotel sem biti dovolj dober zate« naštete tematike na prvi pogled potisne v izrazito osebno smer, vendar jo je potrebno misliti širše. Figura očeta je namreč lahko bodisi božja figura, ki se ji poskušamo približevati skozi tehnološki razvoj, skozi psihoanalitično optiko je lahko figura, ki strukturira naša osebna razmerja, ali pač simbol države oziroma političnih elit, ki razstavljena dela uokviri z nedavno politično zgodovino Bližnjega Vzhoda in aktualno libanonsko politično in ekonomsko krizo.
Večino galerijskega prostora na razstavi zavzema delo naslovljeno »Telo_ponovnaPodoba: Tehno-Arheologija Intime in Digitalna Transcendenca«, sestavljeno iz izbora arhiva digitalnih podob, ki jih je umetnik zbiral med letoma 2012 in 2014 na najpogosteje rabljeni gejevski spletni strani za zmenke na Bližnjem Vzhodu pred razširitvijo aplikacij na pametnih telefonih. V obdobju, ko so bile digitalne podobe zbrane, so namreč uporabniki—da bi se izognili družbeni diskriminaciji in pravnemu preganjanju—skrivali lastno identiteto, ta ista okoliščina uprizorjenega samo-cenzuriranja pa je, kot pojasni Mouhanna, vzpostavila zanimivo situacijo dvojnosti med samoizbrisom in ponovnim ustvarjanjem v kibernetskem prostoru. Razstavljeno delo torej predstavlja transformacijo umetnikovega osebnega digitalnega arhiva v materialno obliko, a razmerje med digitalnim in materialnim je bolj neposredno nagovorjeno v (izvorno digitalni) seriji risb naslovljeni »Pričevanja sramu«. Na razstavi so sopostavljene digitalne risbe iz serije, ki v nekem smislu nimajo fizične materialnosti in »prevod« ene od risb v materialno obliko. Zelo dolgotrajna aktivnost prenašanja piksla za pikslom v vbode na mrežni površini stare tekstilije, v prvi fazi izpostavi določeni odpor fizičnega materiala: tako vmesnik ekrana, na katerem se izriše digitalna risba, kot tekstilija sicer imata strukturo mreže, vendar so niti tekstilije organsko neenake, kar proizvede razliko, ki se manifestira v risbi. Onstran možnosti ozavestitve odpora in posebnosti fizičnega materiala, je mogoče na dolgotrajni postopek prenašanja digitalne risbe v materialno obliko hkrati pogledati s stališča zaznavanja in kognicije—predvsem tudi zato, ker Mouhanna poskuša preko zelo osebnih tematik in vzgibov nagovarjati univerzalne teme, ki že stoletja zaznamujejo človeško eksistenco. Okvir zaznavanja in kognicije tako odpre širše polje pomena pozunanjenja v fizičnem smislu nematerialnih podatkov, kjer se nakaže vzporednica med digitalnimi podatki in ponotranjeno mislijo ali občutjem. Človekovo pozunanjenje misli in občutij je, kot je denimo izpostavila heglovska in marksistična filozofska tradicija, nedvomno njegovo samoodtujevanje, a šele to samoodtujevanje je predpogoj za tvorbo (samo)zavedanja in komunikacije, torej tudi intersubjektivnih izmenjav. Prevajanje digitalnih risb v materialno obliko je istočasno gesta njihove avratizacije—vpisovanja v konkretni prostor in čas, nekakšno podeljevanje enkratnosti in neponovljivosti, v nekem smislu celo telesne prezence, temu ustrezno pa eliminacija (potencialne) tehnološko podprte nesmrtnosti digitalnih objektov.
Kljub analitičnemu pristopu Mouhanne k relaciji tehnologije in transcendentalnega, razstavljeno prevevajo izrazito osebne tematike, kot je frustracija nad nezmožnostjo komunikacije in tvorbo intimnosti (»To je prostor, kjer človek čaka«), predvsem pa tematika, kako se le-te ponotranjijo in prevedejo v nasilje nad samim seboj. Slednje je denimo bolj neposredno zastopano v instalaciji »mojetelojebilotvoje_kopija(1)«, v kateri umetnik preko reference na svetega Jerneja, svojo kožo transformira v površino, nekakšno zmes oblačila in zemljevida, še bolj očitno pa v brutalnih prizorih iznekaženih teles iz serije »Pričevanja sramu«.
Kaja Kraner
GuestRoomMaribor I 3.9.2021
In his works, Elie Mouhanna places himself on a broad field of the religion of technology which not only concerns the long history of cultivating nature—including the natural in man—but the theme of transforming or, better, expanding human capabilities by overcoming his naturally or culturally given capacities. In this case, technology is not only a mean of creating culture. Namely; technical prosthesis also has a reciprocal effect on the original human nature and culture. While media technologies undoubtedly grow out of culture, they act as autonomous entities that transcend this very same culture. It is no coincidence that since the Middle Ages onwards technological and scientific developments have often been driven by the tendency to bring humans closer to God-like omnipresence and immortality. On this basis, shifts in history can be linked to the change media technologies enforced into the organization of the social, as claims one of the important theoretical references of Mouhanna, Paul Virilio, who perceives cultural changes on the background of speed acceleration due to technological innovation and its consequential conflicts with the logic of biological rhythms and seasonal patterns of the human.
In the exhibition, Mouhanna replays three key themes framed by the religion of technology. First, the influence of media technologies on interpersonal communication, identity, and intimacy, as—among others—indicated by the placement of the father figure (a portrait of the artist’s father) illuminated by a telephone screen on the façade of Gallery K18. Second, the proximity of technology and the status of the skin as a membrane separating the milieu of the biological body and the exterior, as well as the placement of dressing practices in that very relation. Third, the relationship and difference between the digital and the material. The father figure in combination with the title of the exhibition »I wanted to be good enough for you.« at first glance pushes the listed themes in a distinctly personal direction. However, if perceived in a broader sense, it could either indicate the figure of God we try to imitate through technological development—in psychoanalytic optics, a figure that structures our personal relationships—or a state or political elites that pushes exhibited into the framework of recent Middle Eastern political history and the current Lebanese political and economic crisis.
Most of the gallery space is occupied by the work titled »Body_reImage: A Techno-Archeology of Intimacy and Digital Transcendence« consisting of archival images collected between 2012 and 2014 from a gay dating website that used to be the most used in the Middle Eastern region before the proliferation of smartphone apps. During the period digital images were collected, people had to conceal their true identities to avoid social discrimination and persecution, and this very circumstance of performed self-censorship, as Mouhanna explains, created an interesting situation of double-faced self-effacement or re-creation in cyberspace. The exhibited work, therefore, represents a transformation of Mouhanna’s personal digital archive into a physical version, however, the relation between the digital and physical is most explicitly addressed in the (originally digital) drawing series »Testimony of Shame«. The exhibition thus juxtaposes digital drawings from the series which in a sense lack physical materiality and the »translation« of one of them into a material form. The long-lasting activity of transmitting pixel by pixel into stitches on the woven surface of the old textiles in the first phase exposes a certain resistance of physical material: both the interface of the screen on which the digital drawing is projected and the textiles have a network structure, however, the threads of the textile are organically uneven which produces a difference that manifests itself in the material drawing. Besides the possibility of becoming aware of the resistance and specifics of physical material, the long process of transferring digital drawing into material form can also be interpreted from the point of view of the cognition process—mainly because Mouhanna tries to address universal themes that have marked humans for centuries. The framework of cognition thus opens a wider field of the function of externalization of intangible data, where a parallel between digital data and internalized thought or a feeling is indicated. As the Hegelian and Marxist philosophical traditions have pointed out, humans’ externalization of thoughts and feelings undoubtedly leads to their self-alienation. However, it also presents a precondition of (self)consciousness and communication, and therefore also intersubjective exchanges. Translating digital drawings into a material form is at the same time a gesture of their auratization—inscription into a concrete space and time, a kind of granting of uniqueness or in a sense bodily presence, and consequently also the gesture that eliminates (potentially) technologically supported immortality of digital objects.
Despite Mouhanna’s analytical approach to the relation between technology and the transcendental, the exhibition radiates highly personal themes, such as frustration over the inability to communicate and form intimacy (»This is a place where one waits.«), and above all how this frustration is internalized and transformed into violence against oneself. The latter, for example, is more directly represented in the installation »mybodywasyours_copy(1)«, where the artist—while referring to St. Bartholomew—transforms his skin into a surface, a mixture of clothing and a map, and even more obviously in the brutal scenes of mutilated bodies from the series »I wanted to be good enough for you.«
Kaja Kraner
Elie Mouhanna: I wanted to be good enough for you.
In the framework of psychology, the skin is often defined as a membrane or border that enables the formation and perception of the difference between the inside (for instance the milieu of the biological body) and the outside (for instance the outside world, the nature, or the other body), and this difference enables the perception of the bodily whole as a condition of the individuality formation and apperception. Unlike that, anthropological inquiries of technology attribute this very function to technology understood as the human means of externalizing memory (for example, writing and other forms of data processing and storage) and liberation of the organs (for example, tools) as well as the starting point for differentiation between the figure and the background as the basis for human (visual) perception. What is then a dress in relation to the skin—some additional layer of the skin or a means of insulating the body that at the same time covers and potentially further emphasizes individuality?In his works, Elie Mouhanna places himself on a broad field of the religion of technology which not only concerns the long history of cultivating nature—including the natural in man—but the theme of transforming or, better, expanding human capabilities by overcoming his naturally or culturally given capacities. In this case, technology is not only a mean of creating culture. Namely; technical prosthesis also has a reciprocal effect on the original human nature and culture. While media technologies undoubtedly grow out of culture, they act as autonomous entities that transcend this very same culture. It is no coincidence that since the Middle Ages onwards technological and scientific developments have often been driven by the tendency to bring humans closer to God-like omnipresence and immortality. On this basis, shifts in history can be linked to the change media technologies enforced into the organization of the social, as claims one of the important theoretical references of Mouhanna, Paul Virilio, who perceives cultural changes on the background of speed acceleration due to technological innovation and its consequential conflicts with the logic of biological rhythms and seasonal patterns of the human.
In the exhibition, Mouhanna replays three key themes framed by the religion of technology. First, the influence of media technologies on interpersonal communication, identity, and intimacy, as—among others—indicated by the placement of the father figure (a portrait of the artist’s father) illuminated by a telephone screen on the façade of Gallery K18. Second, the proximity of technology and the status of the skin as a membrane separating the milieu of the biological body and the exterior, as well as the placement of dressing practices in that very relation. Third, the relationship and difference between the digital and the material. The father figure in combination with the title of the exhibition »I wanted to be good enough for you.« at first glance pushes the listed themes in a distinctly personal direction. However, if perceived in a broader sense, it could either indicate the figure of God we try to imitate through technological development—in psychoanalytic optics, a figure that structures our personal relationships—or a state or political elites that pushes exhibited into the framework of recent Middle Eastern political history and the current Lebanese political and economic crisis.
Most of the gallery space is occupied by the work titled »Body_reImage: A Techno-Archeology of Intimacy and Digital Transcendence« consisting of archival images collected between 2012 and 2014 from a gay dating website that used to be the most used in the Middle Eastern region before the proliferation of smartphone apps. During the period digital images were collected, people had to conceal their true identities to avoid social discrimination and persecution, and this very circumstance of performed self-censorship, as Mouhanna explains, created an interesting situation of double-faced self-effacement or re-creation in cyberspace. The exhibited work, therefore, represents a transformation of Mouhanna’s personal digital archive into a physical version, however, the relation between the digital and physical is most explicitly addressed in the (originally digital) drawing series »Testimony of Shame«. The exhibition thus juxtaposes digital drawings from the series which in a sense lack physical materiality and the »translation« of one of them into a material form. The long-lasting activity of transmitting pixel by pixel into stitches on the woven surface of the old textiles in the first phase exposes a certain resistance of physical material: both the interface of the screen on which the digital drawing is projected and the textiles have a network structure, however, the threads of the textile are organically uneven which produces a difference that manifests itself in the material drawing. Besides the possibility of becoming aware of the resistance and specifics of physical material, the long process of transferring digital drawing into material form can also be interpreted from the point of view of the cognition process—mainly because Mouhanna tries to address universal themes that have marked humans for centuries. The framework of cognition thus opens a wider field of the function of externalization of intangible data, where a parallel between digital data and internalized thought or a feeling is indicated. As the Hegelian and Marxist philosophical traditions have pointed out, humans’ externalization of thoughts and feelings undoubtedly leads to their self-alienation. However, it also presents a precondition of (self)consciousness and communication, and therefore also intersubjective exchanges. Translating digital drawings into a material form is at the same time a gesture of their auratization—inscription into a concrete space and time, a kind of granting of uniqueness or in a sense bodily presence, and consequently also the gesture that eliminates (potentially) technologically supported immortality of digital objects.
Despite Mouhanna’s analytical approach to the relation between technology and the transcendental, the exhibition radiates highly personal themes, such as frustration over the inability to communicate and form intimacy (»This is a place where one waits.«), and above all how this frustration is internalized and transformed into violence against oneself. The latter, for example, is more directly represented in the installation »mybodywasyours_copy(1)«, where the artist—while referring to St. Bartholomew—transforms his skin into a surface, a mixture of clothing and a map, and even more obviously in the brutal scenes of mutilated bodies from the series »I wanted to be good enough for you.«
Kaja Kraner
SobaZaGoste I 25.8.2021
Interesni Safari
Interesni safari je iskanje stičišča med temo zanimanja gostujočega umetnika in lokalnim okoljem. Trenutni gost rezidenčnega programa SobaZaGosteMaribor Elie Mouhanna se zanima za tkanine in z njim povezano socialno zgodovina. Mariboru, nekoč poznanemu po nazivu jugoslovanski Manchester, je usodo krojila tudi tekstilna industrija. V obdobju med obema vojnama ga je povzdignila v pomembno industrijsko središče, sama panoga pa je pomembno vplivala na strukturo zaposlenih, saj so v njej delale predvsem ženske.Tokrat smo se s Simonom Žlahtičem in Eliejem Mouhanno sprehodile_i po kompleksu bivše tovarne MTT (Mariborske tekstilne tovarne) v Melju. Obiskale_i smo različne predele tovarne in se pogovarjale_i o pomenu, ki ga je predstavljala v lokalnem in mednarodnem kontekstu.
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Simon Žlahtič, samozaposlen v kulturi, je doštudiral umetnostno zgodovino na Filozofski fakulteti v Ljubljani. Predava umetnostno zgodovino, med drugim na Univerzi za III. življenjsko obdobje in v Galeriji K18. Piše prispevke, članke in druga besedila ter sodeluje pri nastajanju katalogov in publikacij. Kurira različne razstave doma in v tujini. Kot kulturni producent in kurator deluje v Pekarni Magdalenske mreže. Občasno sodeluje pri Mednarodnem filmskem festivalu posvečenemu stop animaciji - StopTrik. Kot izvršni producent sodeluje tudi z gledališko skupino ZIZ. V okviru programa SobaZaGosteMaribor se je udeležil rezidenčne izmenjave za tandeme, kjer je gostoval v okviru galerije za sodobno umetnost v Gradcu.
GuestRoomMaribor I 25.8.2021
Interest Safari
Interest Safari is a search for the intersection between the research subject of the residential artist and the local environment. The current guest of the GuestRoom Maribor residency program Elie Mouhanna is interested in fabrics and related social history. Maribor, once known as the Yugoslav Manchester, was also shaped by the textile industry. In the period between the two wars, it was elevated to an important industrial center, and the industry itself had a significant impact on the structure of employees, which were mainly women.This time we took a walk with Simon Žlahtič and Elie Mouhanna around the complex of the former MTT factory (Maribor textile factory) in Melje. We visited different parts of the factory and talked about the importance it has represented in the local and international context.
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Simon Žlahtič, self-employed in culture, finished art history studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He teaches art history, among others at the University of III. life span and in Gallery K18. He writes contributions, articles, and other texts and participates in the creation of catalogs and publications. He curates various exhibitions at home and abroad. He works as a cultural producer and curator at Pekarna Magdalenske mreže. He occasionally participates in the StopTrik International Film Festival dedicated to stop motion animation. As an executive producer, he also collaborates with the theater group ZIZ. As part of the GuestRoom Maribor program, he participated in a residency exchange for tandems, where he was a guest at the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Graz.
SobaZaGosteMaribor I 19. 8. 2021
Spoznajte rezidenta
Predstavitev dela in prakse aktualnega rezidenta Elija Mouhanne.Elie Mouhanna je bil rojen leta 1990, odrasel je v obmorskem mestu Sarba (Jounieh) v Libanonu, trenutno pa živi in deluje v Feytrounu v Libanonu. Leta 2012 je magistriral iz grafičnega oblikovanja na Univerzi USEK, deluje kot multidisciplinarni umetnik, izdelovalec tekstila in pedagog. Na oddelku za modno oblikovanje Libanonske akademije vizualnih umetnosti (ALBA) poučuje pletenje in zgodovino tekstilnih tehnik.
Za Mouhanno je umetnost katarzična ter osebna ali kolektivna potreba, ki izhaja iz občutka nujnosti, določenega s specifičnim kontekstom. Četudi njegova umetniška praksa izvira iz osebnega, osebnih izkušenj in osebnih arhivov, vedno - četudi implicitno - korespondira s kolektivnim. Tekom let so se v njegovi praksi izoblikovala ponavljajoča se področja, ki usmerjajo njegov raziskovalni interes: telo kot materija in figura ter relacija telesa do drugih (živih in neživih) bitij, prostora in časa; raznolike manifestacije jezika kot sredstva interaktivnosti; tehnika, razumljena kot sklop znanja in metod, ki telesom omogočajo delovanje.
Meet The Resident
Artist talk with Elie Mouhanna.Elie Mouhanna was born and grew up in the coastal town of Sarba (Jounieh), Lebanon in 1990. He is currently working and residing in Feytroun, Lebanon. In 2013, he graduated with a master’s degree in graphic design from USEK (The Holy Spirit University of Kaslik), but spent most of the following years participating in art exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad. He’s a multidisciplinary artist, as well as a self-taught textile practitioner and pedagogue. He is a professor of knitwear and the history of textile techniques at the fashion school of ALBA (The Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts).
For Mouhanna, art is cathartic and a personal/collective need, and the act of making art is necessarily driven by a sense of urgency that is often particular to a specific context. His artistic practice emerges from the personal and feeds on his personal experiences and archives, but for him, the personal must always be capable of functioning as an analogy of the collective even if implicitly. Throughout the years, he has come to recognize the recurrent themes that govern his creative endeavors: the body, in the literal and figurative sense, and its relationship with other (animate and inanimate), time, and space; language in its various manifestations, as the backbone of interactivity; technique, as know-how and methods that allows for the generation of bodies of work.
