Since 2009, Beirut-based artist and filmmaker Haig Aivazian has examined the deployment of light and darkness as a tool of control. In his three most recent films, which comprise an informal trilogy, light and its withdrawal is both a visual motif and an apparatus of subjugation to be investigated.
Prometheus (2019) draws parallels between the 1992 Olympics and the Gulf Wars. Compiling found footage from VHS tapes, YouTube videos, and cartoons, the film scrutinizes the celebration of violence in the literal and figurative “passing of the torch.” Using a similar editing technique, All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes (2021) takes up the ongoing state of corruption in Lebanon, which is made manifest by the regular power outages that have occurred since at least the 1950s. Intercutting found footage with the artist’s own smartphone videos taken during the 2019 revolution, the film situates infrastructural collapse within a broader associative genealogy of mass surveillance, statism, and modes of obfuscation.
In You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light (Pt. 1 Home Alone) (2022), Aivazian’s concerns take on a new aesthetic register. Departing from the harsh cuts of his compilation films, he worked with several animators in Beirut to redraw found material from an array of cartoons into an eerie narrative. The program will close with a look at works in progress, followed by a discussion between Aivazian and May Makki, curatorial assistant in the Department of Media and Performance, that will delve into the artist’s process.