A round table moderated by Dr. Joseph Rustom will take place on Tuesday, October 30, 2018 at 6:30pm in the Amphitheater Samir Abillama, Building A - 2nd floor; with the participation of Dr. Grégory Buchakjian, Mrs. Catherine Cataruzza, Mr. Gilbert Hage, Mrs. Houda Kassatly and Mrs. Hala Younes, curator of the exhibition.

"The Pavilion of Lebanon at the 16th Biennale of Architecture in Venice, questions the conditions of Architecture in our country. Under the title The Place That Remains, This is a diagnosis of our territory and its commodification. A century after the great famine that depopulated the mountain and was one of the reasons for the creation of Greater Lebanon, the entire Lebanese territory now produces only ground rent. The whole country is to be built, the whole country is gently covered by the homogeneous fabric of the real estate economy which digests, levels and normalizes it according to an implacable logic of productivity. The real territory loses its meaning, it is no more than an abstract space "not built", a continuum to build. Qualifying and giving meaning to the land, however, seems a prerequisite for building it. Photographers, geographers and videographers have looked at ways to make this territory visible, to underline its tangible and tangible reality, in order to inventory, catalog, identify and highlight the place that remains and the conditions of its preservation. "

Lebanon Pavilion, 16th Biennial of Venice Architecture 

Arsenale of Venice (May 26 - November 25, 2018).

lebanesepavilionvenice2018.com

Facebook - Instagram

The contributors of the Lebanon Pavilion:

Gregory Buchakjian (born in 1971 in Beirut) is an art historian and photographer living and working in Beirut. Doctor in art history at the Paris IV Sorbonne University, he is an assistant professor at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA), where he co-founded the ALBA Research Workshop (1997-2004), transdisciplinary platform that has sparked public interventions on issues such as the appropriation of memory and space.

Buchakjian's research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Lebanon while focusing on the city and history. From 2009 to 2016, he explored abandoned buildings and produced a photo. This photographic project that involves cartography, architectural exploration, archival collection and narratives generated his doctoral thesis: Abandoned Dwellings in Beirut. Wars and transformation of urban space. 1860-2015. The relationship between photography and urban and social narratives is also present in his recent publications: Fouad Elkoury, Passing Time (Beirut, Kaph Books, 2017) and Photo Crossings. The journal of Dr. Cottard (Beirut, Arab Image Foundation, 2017).

He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Saradar Collection and is often invited to participate in academic and artistic juries including the Sursock Fall Salon (2009), the Boghossian Prize of Villa Empain (2012), Exposure of the Beirut Art Center (2013) and Beirut Art Residency (2017).

Catherine Cattaruzza (born in Toulouse in 1968) is a photographer and visual artist who works between Lebanon, where she spent most of her life, and France. She graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse. Since 1992, she has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Cattaruzza's work explores the territory, the trace, the falsification of national identity, the division of political culture and post-war conditions. His Body video installation was acquired by the permanent collection of the Vehbi Koç Foundation in Istanbul. The New Worlds was presented in Belfast, Beirut, Tangiers and Lisbon. His latest opus Beneath my skin, home is a permanent installation for the American hospital in Beirut. She is currently preparing, in collaboration with director Jean Michel Vecchiet, a test film based on the novel by Lebanese writer Yasser Bazzi Yasser Arafat looked at me and smiled at me. Since 1992, she has been working on a photographic project on Beirut. His latest Israeli-Israeli photography project, Infrared Border, earned him an 8-page portfolio in Le Monde. The series is part of a long-term project that attempts to represent latent war in conflict areas such as the Yalu River between China and North Korea (2017) and a documentary on Nagorno Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Gilbert Hage
Gilbert Hage (born 1966 in Lebanon) is a photographer. He lives, teaches and works in Lebanon. Her photographic projects include: What If Celine Jiged on the Right Flute? (2017), Here and Now (2017), Why Do We Feel Like Kafka? (2011), Eleven Views of Mount Ararat (2009), Strings (aka With Strings Attached 2008), Pillows (aka Ana, Berthe, Emmanuelle ... 2007) Screening Berlin (2006), 242 cm2 (2006), Homeland 1 (aka Toufican Ruins ?, 2006), Phone [Ethics] (2006), Here and Now (2005), Beirut (2004), Anonymous (2002), and Roses (1999). He is the co-publisher and co-editor, with Jalal Toufic, of Underexposed Books.
Among the exhibitions in which he participates: Poetics, Politics, Places, BienalSur, Argentina (2017), Here and Now, Hellerau Dresden (February 2017), Screening Berlin, Tanit Gallery, Munich (July 2012), Phone [ethics], Fomu, Antwerp (June 2012), Anonymous, Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (October 2011), Eleven views Of Mount Ararat, Sharjah Biennale (March 2011)

Houda Kassatly
Houda Kassatly (born in 1960 in Beirut) is an ethnologist and photographer. His work focuses on memory and heritage in Lebanon and the Middle East. She is a research associate at the Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Memory of Saint Joseph University and the University of Balamand. She is also responsible for the capitalization department and the cultural program of Arcenciel, a Lebanese association for sustainable development. She has published numerous books and articles on rituals, places of worship, urban architecture and mud architecture in Lebanon and Syria, calligraphy on trucks, Syrian refugee camps ... Her photographs have exposed in Lebanon, France and Belgium.
In 2010, she founded a small publishing house, "Al Ayn", specializing in the cultural, architectural and especially photographic heritage of the region. Its mission is to preserve memory through images and texts, at a time when wars, conflicts and reconstructions erase places, architectures and other local heritages.

Talal Khoury
Talal Khoury (born 1976 in Beirut) is a filmmaker established since 2006 based in Lebanon. He graduated from the Bournemouth University of Arts (former Bournemouth Art Institute) in the UK in 2002. He directed and shot August 9 (Special Award at the Dubai Film Festival 2009) and was Director of the photography by Nadim Michlawi's Sector Zero (First Prize at the Dubai Film Festival 2011), Monika Borgmann's Tadmor (2016, Silver Sesterce, Best Swiss Feature Film, All 2016 Combined Sections, Special Mention, International Feature Film Competition Jury 2016 at Visions du Réel), Mazen Khaled's Martyr (2017), Rana Eid's Panoptic (2017) and Taste of Cement by Ziad Kalthoum (19 awards since May 2017 including the Golden Sesterce The Best Feature Film 2017 at Visions du Real)

Ieva Saudargaité
Ieva Saudargaitė Douaihi (born in 1888, Lithuania) is a Lithuanian-Lebanese artist based in Beirut, who grew up between Lithuania, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. Ieva studied architecture at the American Lebanese University of Byblos and the Special School of Architecture in Paris.
Often site-specific, his practice covers different media and addresses the spatial and political context by examining the physical and / or virtual materiality of the subject. Finalist of the Gabriele Basilico 2016 prize, his work has been exhibited in Lebanon and abroad.
Her participation in group exhibitions: Berlin Experimental Film Festival (2017), Beirut Noise - The Colony, Paris (2017), City Struck, Danish Architecture Center, Copenhagen (2017), Videowork, Beirut Art Center (2017), Art Interventions on Dalieh, Beirut (2017), Mediterranean Landscapes at Mediterranea 18 - Young Artists Biennial, Tirana (2017), Bejrut Bratislava, Goethe Institute, Bratislava (2016), Bitassarof, National Library, Beirut (2016), 7 Rooms 7 Artists, Boustany Art House, Beirut (2016), Building Images, Sto Werkstatt, London (2016), Tracce dal Limes, Architettura in Citta Festival, Turin (2015), Based in Beirut, Beirut Design Week (2015)

Hala Younes
Hala Younes is an architect and geographer, graduated from the School of Architecture of Paris la Seine in 1993 and from the Institute of Geography of Paris IV, the Sorbonne, in 1997.
In her professional practice as well as in her teaching, Hala Younes pays close attention to the complexity of the territories and their history in order to initiate the project. The achievements of his workshop, founded in Lebanon in 1995 and in France in 2000, bear witness to this.
Between 2001 and 2009 she taught in Paris, at the School of Architecture of the City and Territories of Marne la Vallée, then in several universities in Lebanon, and currently at the Lebanese American University where she teaches a history course landscape and a workshop