I have recently pondered how to write about war – or armed conflict for that matter – and art, and I have come to the conclusion that I simply cannot do it, when I find myself in the midst of it. It’s all cool and funky to theorise about these matters in the safety of fortress Europe, but when you hear the gunshots out of your window and the sound of RPGs being fired, your perspective changes slightly. A friend once chided me – after my 2006 Lebanon summer war experience – that I simply do not have the genetic make-up for it.

In any case, my endeavour is a priori a failure, because immediately I resort to personal narrative, which pales in comparison to the hardships others have to endure, as my Dutch passport is a sure ticket out of any war zone, sooner or later. My tendency for being overtly emphatic is probably why I will never become a journalist or a war correspondent. So in May 2008 I find myself again in Beirut, and in a similar situation to July 2006: marooned, with access to Syrian borders and airport blocked, following the news wires to the minute, my world reduced to 2 streets. It was a bit of a déjà-vu. The big difference was of course that now it was not the Israelis bombing us, but the Lebanese militias battling each other on the streets of Beirut and beyond. Granted, there’s an enormous difference in scale and severity, yet the other time gunmen roamed the streets of Beirut, they were at it for about 15 years. So if history has the nasty tendency to repeat itself, this was not a very promising start. The other big difference was that I was stuck with 5 other international curators, all participating in the Festival International de Film et Video de Creation. I had participated in this festival before in March 2006, and now was delighted to have co-curated a screening for the festival together with my Dutch colleague Bart Rutten. We had decided on putting together a program focusing on the “seasonal”, in and by itself a recurring and tried subject within the arts, especially in the visual arts and film. We had dubbed our selection “Seasonal Cuts”, wherein we wanted to stretch and twist the idea of the seasonal by redirecting the passage of time into the realm of politics and the realm of the playfully absurd. In addition, the works presented each shared a concern with the technical and aesthetic properties of the moving image, so that the edits and cuts become carefully crafted indicators of moments where the slippage of time marks a condition of stasis, or the other way round, where inertia signifies change. The artists we featured were: Driessens Verstappen, Guido van de Werve, Michael Blum, Meiya Lin, Adel Abidin, Manuel Saiz, and Yane Calovski & Fos. Reading our screening concept in retrospect, I think it actually quite aptly describes the Lebanese political condition, where status quo took a seasonal change for the worst, and inaugurated the violence of summer. This being said, it is equally absurd that our screening, which we still held after some intricate debating with the organisers and our tiny audience, was the last cultural event to be held in Beirut, before things really got nasty. Needless to say that the last 2 days of the festival were cancelled. Also the Spring Festival, organised by Al Mawred, with events running simultaneously in Cairo and in Beirut, had to cancel its Beirut program.

For cultural organisers in the region, political instability is something they just have to grapple with. In Europe we fret about enough funding coming in so we can realise our projects, and we hope to keep our staff and colleagues from succumbing to burn-outs, but in addition to these global stresses of the cultural sector, our colleagues in the more unstable regions of the world have to worry whether the political situation will allow them to realise their projects at all. This is of course very much the case for Lebanon and Palestine.

However, let’s get back to the real story. I was glad that I had broadened my repertoire of war time drinks. In 2006 I resorted to gin&tonic, while now I alternated with white wine and mojitos. As in 2006, we (that patchwork group of 6 international curators, journalists, few tourists, and few brave Lebanese) ventured to the only bar opened in deserted Gemayzeh: Torino. In the morning our routine, after breakfast, would be to read the news wires and blogs, and speculate on the developments. To be honest, I did get a bit fed up with that: there’s nothing more irritating than hearing someone’s political analysis, who has just set foot in a place, and who obviously cannot discern Hizbullah from Mustaqbal, let alone what their tiffs and demands are, and who cannot manage to understand why the sending of the USS Cole into Med waters is bad news. So ignoring other hotel dwellers’ nerves and wild political assessments became a bit of a game I played: how many minutes before I start rolling my eyes up to the heavens in irritated despair. It has to be said: patience is not my best virtue, especially not in conflict situations.

What did keep me more in suspense, were the tireless efforts of the Goethe Institut Beirut and ALBA, on whose invitation we were invited to the Festival, to get us out of Lebanon. (thank you Norbert and Ricardo!) Our itinerary kept changing due to the prolonged closure of the airport and Lebanese/Syrian borders, but eventually we heard we could depart via Tripoli along the Northern border. Unfortunately the site of some heavy fighting. Departure wasn’t as easy as it seemed because we could not squeeze ourselves in the cab they had ordered for us. By now it was 7 of us, a very antsy French script doctor, who kept huffing and puffing the 6,5 hour ride from Beirut to Damascus, had joined us.

I could not help but think that there, divided over two taxis, was the metaphorical evacuation of art. Art and culture are the first things to cave in during conflict, because they are (wrongly) regarded as a luxury, and because – more importantly - they require a minimum of mobility on the part of audiences and artists. Once again I had to hear accounts of Lebanese artists having to cancel participation abroad because they simply could not leave the country, or vice versa international artists not being able to come in.

In Tripoli it was first the Lebanese Army who greeted us, a comforting sight, the guys we met some 400mm later, were not so friendly, shuving their Kalashnikovs in our faces. They looked too scruffy and Islamic to be affiliated with Mustaqbal, and later I read that about 500 Salafist Jihadis were operative around Tripoli. Our cab driver had repeatedly yelled “Ajanib, Ajanib” (foreigners, foreigners) to them. Luckily our car did not get pulled over. I do not want to think what that action would’ve done to our poor nervous French script doctor. At the Syrian border there was surprisingly little traffic, but lots of bribing. The reality of war time economy: my Syrian transit visa cost $15, but $35,- was spent on bribing officials into a “smooth” procedure…which still took over an hour. My fellow co-curators drove further on to Amman, where they had respective flights and hotels awaiting them. I remained in Damascus with friend and colleague, the Norwegian artist and curator Per Platou.

The picture you see is of our hotel lobby in Damascus, because I refuse to take part in the visual commodification of war. I refuse to align Beirut and Lebanon’s image with one generic encompassing visual: that of eroticized militia fighters wielding their guns, rubble in deserted streets, and destroyed buildings. The evacuation of art also means the evacuation of a complex and layered image. As culture workers in and outside of Lebanon (or any mediatised site of conflict), we must prevent this from happening.

[While posting this entry, the airport in Beirut has become operative again and border crossing are being reopened. The Arab League has brokered an agreement between the government and opposition parties, further to be discussed tomorrow in Doha. This post is dedicated to all my friends in Beirut, wishing them all the best, and for calm and common sense to prevail.]