My PNEK trip to Beirut for the FIFVC experimental video festival became somehow different than what anyone had expected. It all started very nicely with a good crowd, a mix between teachers and students at the ALBA art academy in east Beirut, european curators and filmmakers, and local artists and audience. The Norwegian Embassy had sent out a press release about the topic of my lecture, and the english language paper The Daily Star even wrote an extensive preview of the whole event. I had the pleasure of presenting the first couple of programs, which was generally well received, especially the first part where I had the possibility to talk abput the works and the contexts they had originally been made and presented.
Then, after a heated roundtable discussion on the second day of the festival hell broke loose and nervous Beirut inhabitants had to rush home before the rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), machine gun firing and roadblocks of burning tyres would prevent them from getting through the city. My dutch friend and colleague Nat Muller, currently on a one-year residency in Cairo, has written this text about our war adventures in her blog at LabforCulture.org.
