Fisher Center LAB and CCS Bard present Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish’s lecture performance and installation, The Search for Power at CCS Bard / Hessel Museum of Art (installation: February 1–23, with live performances February 1–3 and 7–9).
On a night with a sudden electricity outage in their Beirut neighborhood, the artist and her historian husband discussed the history of power cuts in Lebanon. Born during the Lebanese Civil War, the artist had grown up with the understanding that the problem with electricity in Lebanon began during the war. The historian, however, recalled finding a government document dated 1952 that announced scheduled electricity outages across Beirut. The two decided to research the history of power outages in Lebanon, delving into the intersection between public utilities infrastructure, people’s relationship to the state, and various popular mobilizations to shape both.
In time, they reach as far back as the introduction of electricity in Beirut before it was even possible to imagine a Lebanese state. In space, they collect documents across Lebanon and beyond its borders, visiting the archives of colonial powers: Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What they find is a transnational story that locates electricity at the intersection of colonial legacies, the machinations of political and economic elites, and everyday acts of resistance, survival, and sabotage.
The Search for Power is an interactive sound installation and a live lecture performance that features the artist, the historian, and the audience.
EXPERIENCE
The Search for Power can be experienced as a ticketed live performance or as an open installation without a ticket or reservation.
FOOD ALLERGY NOTICE
Please be aware that the table featured at the center of the performance will be set with—among other items—candles, tree nuts, grapes, dried apricots, and wine.
TICKETED LIVE PERFORMANCE
• Saturday, February 1 at 6 pm
• Sunday, February 2 at 6 pm
• Monday, February 3 at 6 pm
• Friday, February 7 at 6 pm
• Saturday, February 8 at 6 pm
• Sunday, February 9 at 6 pm
Tickets may be purchased here or by calling the Fisher Center’s box office at (845) 758-7900.
NON-TICKETED OPEN INSTALLATION
In the open installation, the audience is invited to listen through headphones to a pre-recorded text and explore the archive box in their own time.
The Search for Power will be on view at CCS Bard / Hessel Museum of Art from February 1–23. On performance days (above), exhibit hours are 11 am – 4 pm. On days when there are no performances, exhibit hours are Monday through Sunday 11 am – 5 pm.
The last admission for the open installation will be one hour before the museum’s closing.
About Tania El Khoury
Tania El Khoury creates interactive and immersive installations and performances that reflect on the production of collective memory and the cultivation of solidarity. Her work is activated by tactile, auditory, and visual traces collected and curated by the artist and her collaborators, and they are ultimately transformed through audience interaction.
El Khoury’s work has been translated into multiple languages and shown in 5 countries across 6 continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award, the Soros Art Fellowship, the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award.
El Khoury is a Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Theater and Performance Program and Founding Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College. She holds a PhD in Theater Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London. El Khoury is a co-founder of Dictaphone Group, a research and live art collective in Lebanon, and is associated with the Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK.
About Ziad Abu Rish
Ziad Abu-Rish is Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle East Studies at Bard College, where he also directs the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts. A scholar of the modern Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, his research centers around state formation, economic development, and popular mobilizations, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan. He earned his PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and his MA in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Abu-Rish is coeditor of The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (2012), among other edited volumes. He is the author of several articles and chapters, including “Garbage Politics in Lebanon,” “Municipal Elections in Lebanon,” and “Lebanon Beyond Exceptionalism.” He serves as coeditor of Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya e-zine, and codirector of the Lebanese Dissertation Summer Institute.
Funding
The Search for Power was originally co-commissioned by Anti Festival and Shubbak Festival, and additionally supported by Arts Council England and brut Wien. The sound installation was commissioned by Sharjah Biennial 15.
Tania El Khoury is a 2024–2026 Fisher Center LAB artist in residence with lead support from the Mellon Foundation. Fisher Center LAB is the signature residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center at Bard.
