Dictaphone Group

2011-12-18T23:09:00.000+02:00

Dictaphone Group was created with the aim of using the research of existing spaces in the city to inform and create public events that use live art as a means to comment on these urban landscapes.
It is interested in making multi-disciplinary work through open collaborations based on urban research, oral history, site specific performances and encounters involving the inhabitants of these spaces, within a wider interest in political and social landscapes.

The effort also arises from a recognition that there is a need to collectively 'think' about notions of 'public' in Lebanon, and to 'imagine' collective ways of tackling them.

Based on this approach, the aim is to celebrate and 'use' public landscapes and to prioritize communal spaces within the context of political, social and spatial injustices in Lebanon.

This project has several objectives: for it to be an on-going long term project that will take different shapes and forms depending on the area’s history and the material space in which it takes place, and that will also allow us to build an oral urban history and aim to publish a documentation of our research and event in each space. We are also hoping that this project is an exchange between the many artists from different practices and backgrounds and the users of these spaces as they will inform the project, participate in it and gain from it.

A site-specific public event is therefore our ‘field’ and a knowledge-intensive zone of learning and collaboration. Through it we update our understanding of place and how we experience it today in Lebanon. It is where we interact with the public through art, and it is where we derive the basic ‘pleasures’ of such a practice: to conceptualize a public event and witness its realization in the mix of culture and place.

مقبرة الباصات

2011-12-12T01:01:00.000+02:00

الخريطة / المشروع: شبكة نقل الباصات في بيروت عام 1923 مدموجة مع مسار باص خيالي يجول على مساحات واقعية ويتوقف عند مقابر وجنائن مسلوبة في بيروت.

مجموعة الدكتافون تخلق عروض حيّة من شأنها أن تفتح نقاشاً عن مفهومنا للحيّز العام في لبنان.

ضمن هذا السياق، نرى فقداننا للمواصلات العامة و"موتها في المدينة" كإستكمال لمنطق فقدان المساحات العامة في لبنان مثل الشاطئ والحرش والرصيف... فقد اعتدنا على ايجاد الحلول "الفردية" لمشاكلنا العامة باتقان. نحاول هنا أن نتخيّل سبل جماعية للتصدي لفقداننا لما هو عام.

عرض لمجموعة الدكتافون

أداء بترا سرحال

كتابة تانيا الخوري

تصميم الصوت رمزي ماضي
تصميم المكان ريما نجدي

مكان العرض هو داخل باص من باصات النقل العام الغير قابلة للاستعمال والموجودة في موقف "مقبرة الباصات" في منطقة مار مخايل، بيروت.
إنتاج آفاق.

Other projects

2011-10-22T01:08:00.000+03:00

For more info, click on the titles of the projects

المأسوف عليه

Abjad Hawaz أبجد هوز

هذا البحر لي

2011-10-04T21:20:00.002+03:00

“This sea is mine” is part of our ongoing project of claiming back public spaces in Lebanon.

It is a 'protest performance' emanating from the state of revolution the Arab world is going through whereas people in different Arab cities took over public spaces and transformed them into 'stages' for protest, encounter and dialogue in the aim of political and social change. The project tackles the role of live art as a mean of protest and starts by claiming back the beaches of Beirut.
We will protest and perform from a little boat in the middle of the sea.

'This sea is mine' is supported by Afac. We are currently working on the research. The show will happen at the beginning of the summer in 2012.

المأسوف عليه

2011-05-21T13:26:00.010+03:00

تنعي إليكم مجموعة الدكتافون وفاة المأسوف عليه

المأسوف عليه" هو عرض تفاعلي حي نحاول فيه تخطي فترات حدادٍ معلق"

تقبل التعازي في بيروت أيام ١/٢/٣/٤/٥ من شهر حزيران عند الساعة الثامنة مساءً ، في بيت الصنائع
اللباس أسود

سوف تقوم بترا سرحال برثاء المأسوف عليه

بالتلفريك

2011-05-21T02:40:00.001+03:00

Bit Telefrique is a live art site specific performance based on an urban research on Jounieh city. Tania El Khoury takes the audience on a tour in one of the teleferique cable cars. It’s an immersive experience based on the audience’s interaction with each other and the space.Includes a ride on the teleferique and a short walk in the mountain. For 3 audience members only.

ه"هذا العرض المبدع تمثيلاً ونصاً وإخراجاً وتنظيماً، خصوصاً لناحية البحث التاريخي والأنتروبولوجي لمنطقة جونية حيث ترعرعت الخوري، قلّما يشاهد مثله اللبنانيون."ن

الحياة

A Dictaphone Group production

Written and Performed by Tania El Khoury
Urban Research by Abir Saksouk
Production manager: Petra Serhal
Art Design Petra Abou Sleiman
Sound Design Ramzi Mady
Poster by Houssam Abdel Khalek
Photos by Matthew Cassel
Funded by YATF

Abjad Hawaz أبجد هوز

2010-07-02T03:55:00.010+03:00

تدعوكم مجموعة الدكتافون للمشاركة في ورشة عمل مجانية ضمن مهرجان اللغة العربية في شارع الحمرا. ورشة العمل مفتوحة للجميع بكافة الأعمار والخبرات وهي تدور حول التعبير الجسماني لأحرف الأبجدية العربية . سوف يتعلم المشاركون كتابة العربية بأجسادهم وهي محاولة للعب باللغة والتذكير بحيويتها.

المشاركون مدعوون بعد الورشة للمشاركة بعرض هذه الأفكار في شارع الحمرا عبر تمرين شبيه بألعاب الحزازير يشارك فيها من يشاء

Abjad Hawaz is an interactive piece that happened in Hamra Street, Beirut, commissioned by the Arabic Language Festival. Performers and Audience members used the Arabic calligraphy to draw movements in the air that will allow them to communicate with each others across the street.

2009-12-31T03:28:00.017+02:00

“Natures of your kind, those with strong and delicate senses, the inspired, the dreamers, poets, lovers, are almost always superior to us men of intellect. Your origin is maternal. Your kind live life to the full, to you is given the power of love and the capacity to experience. We intellectuals, although we often appear to lead and govern you others, do not live life to the full. We live a parched existence. To such as you belong the fullness of life, the juice of the fruits, the garden of love, the beautiful land of art. Your home is the earth, ours is the idea. Your danger is of drowning in the world of the senses, ours of suffocating in a vacuum. You are an artist, I am a thinker. You sleep on your mother's breast, I keep vigil in the desert. On me shines the sun, on you shine the moon and the stars…” Herman Hesse from Narcissus and Goldmund.

Indeed, bridging the fields of “social scientific research” and “art” is a challenging yet powerful approach to create any public work. We will use this form of interdisciplinary process in order to create site-specific public art performance that is the product of the site research.The process will include:

- An in-depth research of a specific site in the city through interviews with inhabitants, documentation of oral history, collection of old photographs, analysis of social and physical transformations, etc.
- A detailed documentation and archiving of the collected and researched material in order to produce a document telling the story of the place in its multi facets.- Conceptualizing the nature of the public event and performance based on the conducted research, and the use of collected materials in the research process as part of the performance tools and elements.

The study of place, as a process and field of knowledge, is therefore uniquely positioned to engage all these factors with the open experimental nature of urban research, which incorporates multiple tools of understanding and exploring places.

We envision our process of work as part of a wider effort of direct political actions towards change in Lebanon; change that we would like to see in our society.

Spaces

2009-12-31T03:24:00.020+02:00

Place is a complex phenomenon. Its complexity stems from the multiplicity of social, economic, material, historical and symbolic factors that contribute to its formation. In the context of war and changing geographies in Lebanon, the ironies of the war did not spare the post-war reconstruction projects that ended up involving additional destruction. In the place of lively little streets in need of renovation, forms would emerge with disregard to history and social context. We witnessed up close how decisions were made at upper levels to maintain development friendly and clean spaces in the city at the expense of the undesirable classes and their public spaces in the city.The socio-spatial transformations that have occurred in our cities have indeed heightened our sensitivity to cultural borders and we quickly grew more aware of the mechanisms by which politics, economics, and identities conflated in the creation of boundaries in the places that we inhabit. A certain lack in the conception of a past and a future was palpable, but in the surrounding feverish rush to put the wars behind, we found more questions than answers.

Spaces Projects
for more info, click of the titles of the projects

This sea is mine هذا البحر لي

Bit teleferique بالتلفريك

About

2009-12-30T03:44:00.033+02:00

Dictaphone group was established in London during the summer of 2009 and since then has been working on researching specific urban spaces in Lebanon. It is based on a collaboration between Tania El Khoury, a performance artist, and Abir Saksouk-Sasso, an urban researcher architect. They have recently been joined by performer and producer Petra Serhal and designer Petra Abousleiman.As a group, we will be open for collaborations, suggestions, stories and feedback throughout the many years we are aiming for this project to sustain.

TANIA EL KHOURY

Tania creates immersive and challenging performances in which the audience is an active collaborator. Tania sees art as a political and relational practice and performs in real sites ranging from the great hall at the British Museum to an old church in Beirut once used as a war base. taniaelkhoury.com

ABIR SAKSOUK-SASSO

Abir is an architect and an urban researcher. Her interests include multi-disciplinary theories on place, researching the built environment and the social production of informal spaces in the Middle East.

PETRA SERHAL

Petra Serhal is a performer and a producer who has been working in collaboration with other artists, companies and production houses. Her interests involve dance and live art performances. petraserhal.blogspot.com

PETRA ABOUSLEIMAN

Petra Abousleiman is a Lebanese-American production designer and has worked on several feature and short films in Lebanon, Europe and New York. She also collaborates with performance artists to bring live art into everyday non-conventional spaces and hosts artsy-fartsy events. She is a hands-on designer who is obsessed with space, markets, street art and everything vintage. petraabousleiman.blogspot.com

Bit Teleferique بالتلفريك

2009-08-18T14:44:00.026+03:00

بالتلفريك هو عرض حي خاص بالموقع مرتكز على بحث مديني لمدينة جونية

.تانيا الخوري سوف تأخذ الجمهور في رحلة بالتلفريك. هذا العرض هو تجربة تفاعلية مرتكزة على علاقة الجمهور ببعضهم البعض تتضمن رحلة في التلفريك ونزهة في الجبل

A Dictaphone Group production
Written and Performed by Tania El Khoury
Urban Research by Abir Saksouk
Production manager: Petra Serhal
Art Design Petra Abousleiman
Sound Design Ramzi Mady
Poster by Houssam Abdel Khalek
Photos by Matthew Cassel
Funded by YATF (Young Arab Theatre Fund)

2009-02-18T15:25:00.005+02:00

Dictaphone Group

E: dictaphonegroup [at] gmail.com