SA: How did you meet, and how did this collaboration come about? I read that the project was initiated by Delphine, with AIN. I’d like to understand the birth of the project.
DL: We met in Damascus. I spent 14 years involved in the art scene: working first with two main local cultural institutions: the French Cultural Center (responsible of the cultural program) then the General Secretary of Damascus Arab capital of Culture 2008 (exhibition manager), before working as a freelance curator. I launched AIN in 2008, an association that aims to support contemporary art, and then created the Visual arts festival. I’ve organized several art festivals in Damascus (especially a photo and video international festival: the Journées de la Photographie from 2001 till 2007) through my previous function and wanted to propose a totally independent art festival.
In 2010, I asked Charlotte to be guest curator and to curate a part of the festival. We then pursue our successful collaboration.

CB: I spent 12 years living between Syria and Europe. At first my work in Syria was as an archaeologist and historian of Islamic art. With time, my interest in contemporary and modern art in the region became more important and I switched my professional focus.

SA: Your respective relationship with Syria and Arab art.
DL: I spent all my professional life working with Syrian artists and the Syrian art scene. I arrived in Damascus in 1998 just after I finished art studies in Paris.

CB: For the past 7 years, modern and contemporary art in the Arab countries has been my professional focus. I am also involved in a research project at the University of Geneva that focuses on modernity in art outside of the West.

SA: You were working together with the 2013 edition of the biennial Mediterranea 16, which this year took place in Ancona. The themes of this edition were focused on two main issues, as we can read in the concept: “regimes of knowledge and mechanism of formation in the field of art, but also reflecting upon these processes in the wider society.” How were you developing these issues, and what did selecting the artists mean for you?
DL/CB: These topic choose by the curatorial team is totally linked with the current Arab art scene.
The past years have been particularly turbulent, violent and stressful in most countries of the Arab world. These upheavals and the questions accompanying them have left their traces in the works of many artists of the region. The search for new definitions of social and geographical identities and roles, the need to create new notions of belonging and a general turn towards centering the human experience within artistic practice are themes discernible in these new productions. Many of the selected projects addressed important social issues and many had a distinctive activist character, expressed in the direct and frank language common to new online activist networks.
One of the most striking changes within the art scene in the Arab countries of the past few years is the change from art as a largely elitist practice (albeit often also socially engaged) towards a practice addressing and involving all social strata. This fact is closely related to the democratic character of online forums that have developed into important sites for artistic exchange since the beginning of the Arab revolutions.

SA: As you said, the Mediterranean area and its problems are brought to the attention of the European “public” in recent years (also and especially through the Western media representation). In this way, the Mediterranean is more and more a notion that is charged with “sense” and at the same time loses “meaning”. What does Mediterraneo mean to you now? Does this “area” really exist?
DL: I have a French passport, my father is Greek, my childhood memories are in Greece, and I spent the most important part of my life in Syria. I can’t say I feel French, I feel at home when I’m in a Mediterranean country. I feel more connection, common culture, language roots, between France and Syria than between France and UK.
CB: I think it is important to remember that while we might feel connected around the Mediterranean, it is not a connection on equal terms. We from the “Northern shore” can travel around freely and also easily visit the “Southern shore”, but vice versa is not possible. I found it very sad some years ago at a conference to hear an elderly Tunisian writer talk about how he travelled to Italy and hitchhiked through Europe in the 1970s, freely and without difficulties. When we compare this to today, anybody who would express a similar wish would be considered almost insane. Maybe as cultural workers, we can stress the necessity to free travel, since we are confronted with the issue almost on a daily basis.

SA: I read a very interesting article by Charlotte “the constant dilemma” about the role of the curator of contemporary art in relation to the problem of a correct representation of Middle Eastern art, outside the stereotypes. What’s your experience of this in these recent years?
DL: Past years suddenly the world was excited by Syria, and the fact that there are artists-activists in Syria. Beside supporting a new emerging art scene, I think it was our role to present videos, movies, artists who were active on the Syrian art scene for years and didn’t suddenly emerge from the chaos. The Visual arts Festival aims to be a platform for this new art scene but also to present confirmed artists (it was the case with our program during the Rotterdam Film festival where we proposed Syrian film makers movies from the 80s and 90s and 2000s). In Istanbul we had both also different generations of artists shown together.

CB: Unfortunately, we are still seeing exhibitions that rather confirm than dismantle stereotypes about the Middle East, even after many years of Middle Eastern presence on the international art scene. For this reason, I think it is very important to continue working along the lines we have chosen, both for our common projects, but also for our individual projects and to go on working against common stereotypes. It is important to counter the notion of artists “emerging out of nowhere”, whether in Syria or in other countries of the region, to show art historical relations in the region and to present artists who are less represented internationally.

SA: In your previous answer about this Biennial you made reference to a political and social dimension crossing the works of many artists. You know that Europe comes out from a long period (80/90) in which the artists and the art system were focused on self-referential languages and representations escaping from reality and the political commitment that had characterized the previous era. What’s the situation “on the other side”? How does the art scene move out of the post-colonial culture?
DL: Concerning Syria, the beginning of the fine art (end of the 19th Century) was totally influenced by European movement. Artists went to study to France and Italy and came back with European influences. Before that, art was linked to what we call applied art (decorated artifact, miniatures, painting on the wall or the roof of the houses), or religious art (icons, calligraphy). Since the 60’s (creation of the faculty of fine arts and the ministry of Culture) there is a specific visual art language in Syria, influenced by its own tradition and culture. On the other side, while the government was developing an official art during the 60’s, the opposition as well develops a subversive language that exploded with the beginning of the revolution.

CB: In an authoritarian context (like Syria, but also other countries), it is difficult to escape the political in whatever you do (if indeed the political is possible to escape, no matter where your location is).
If an artist choses to produce “l’art pour l’art”, i.e. art that is purely concerned with aesthetic problems of form and colour, it is already a political decision. For instance, formerly in certain Eastern European countries with an official ideology pertaining to art production, doing “l’art pour l’art” would mean a dissident act to protest official ideology. But in Chile under the military dictatorship, “l’art pour l’art” would conform to official ideology, that art should refrain from making political comments. So, critical artists tried to find ways to contest the political situation in their works. The particular context always plays an important role in what kind of art an artist choses to produce. In Syria, it is interesting to note that for a group of young artists who started working after ca. the year 2000, socially critical themes became very important, even with some attempts at political criticism.

SA: Cultural meeting and dissolution of boundaries: do you think these issues are really affecting the point of view of the artists, too? How?
DL/CB: Concerning the south of the Mediterranean area there is a real geographical border that is not just a figurative meaning. When they find the way to cover their accommodation and are invited to international meeting, events or study at university or in art schools, artists are struggling with visa issue and residency cards. There is no festival who is not facing the cancelation of one of the artist invited due to visa issue.

SA: So let’s talk of cultural institutions. How do they move in Syria and what are the differences between the policies of public institutions and the privates? What kind of research do they do on the contemporary?
DL: Concerning the visual art field, in Syria there were three kinds of institutions: official art centers, under the control of the government; foreign cultural centers; private galleries. All of them, of course, should ask to the Ministry of Culture in advance of the event, for the authorization to present an event. There was a very tight space for artists between the official language and the art market (controlled by collectors with traditional conventional tastes). It was a bit different in other fields like contemporary dance, theater or cinema-documentary where interesting independent initiatives take place. New events were taking place in the city.

CB: I think it is interesting to mention some of the independent initiatives that developed during the latter part of the 2000 years. The Visual Arts Festival Damascus is one, but also e.g. Dox Box, an independent festival for creative documentary film-making that was launched in 2008 and others. These initiatives were of course interrupted by the outbreak of the revolution and therefore it is impossible to assess how they would have affected the cultural landscape in the future. But it is important to stress their existence and their work towards a contemporary, independent art scene in Syria.

SA: If you could choose an example each among younger artists with whom you have recently worked, what would you refer to? a work or a way of working that represented, for each of you, a new element of reflection on the relevance of your research…
DL/CB: Recently, the fact that, because of the situation (the country was closed, galleries were closed, the economic situation was catastrophic and the only way of communication was internet), the artists didn’t care anymore about obeying official rules or satisfying an art market, they just expressed themselves. This was totally new. There was suddenly a massive expression of freedom. It was possible to see in their previous work the premise of this expression but suddenly it became a deep and pure expression of their art. Artistic interventions in the street (red water in the fountains, speakers with revolutionary songs on the roof of the buildings, ping pong balls with inscriptions falling down from the highest parts of the city) as well as the launching of web pages on Facebook, anonymous groups. To present these works, I’m showing on tour an exhibition entitled the Syrian anonymous exhibition based on pictures posted on Facebook and launched past January a publication entitled Syrie: l’art en armes (La Martinière Editions, Paris).

SA: To Delphine: I’d like to know something more about AIN, the reason of its birth and its programme of artistic Events.
DL: AIN has been created in 2008 when I decided to work as a freelancer in Syria after having work for two main cultural institutions (the French Cultural Center as cultural manager then Damascus Arab Capital of Culture as manager of the exhibition programme). I knew that I need a structure, a frame to organise events and I launched this association with three others ex-colleagues. As associations were forbidden in Syria we are legally registered in France. With AIN I organised the first edition of the Visual Arts Festival in 2010 but I presented also different events such as a programme of concerts and screening in the streets during the summer 2010, a video exhibition, testimony of “icons”of the Syrian art scene presented during the Thessaloniki Biennial as well as a collective exhibition currently on tour presenting the Syrian artists artworks posted on Facebook that gets me to published a book entitled Syrie, l’art en armes.

SA: To Charlotte: so you are trained as an archaeologist... I would like to know how to live the relationship between the past and the contemporary. I am referring to the meaning of history that for all of us has its origins in the Middle East and now continues to be written there. The present and the past, contemporary practices and our roots…
CB: My background is in art history and archaeology. And my first stays in Syria (and the Middle East) was as an archaeologist. And although I am now more concerned with contemporary practice, I have kept my interest in art as an expression of human culture that dates back to the most ancient times. I think my interest in the history of art and culture does lead me to look for links through different periods and spaces, something that concerns me in most of my projects (and actually, not only in relation to the Middle East). But it is also important not to see artistic production from the Middle East as historically and culturally pre-determined, which happens quite often.

SA: I’d like to close this conversation talking about the present: the 2013 edition of the Visual Arts Festival Damascus and the recent events in Turkey.
CB/DL: Since its launch in Damascus in 2010, the aim of the Visual Arts Festival Damascus has been to create a platform for meetings and debates focusing on contemporary visual practice. When the Syrian uprising began in 2011, the format of the festival changed and became nomadic: in 2013 a program of exhibition, screenings, talks and workshops were hosted by DEPO in Istanbul. Now, only a few days before the opening of the 2013 edition of the festival, protests were taking place throughout Turkey. What started as a protest against yet another “development”project in Istanbul that would deprive the city’s inhabitants of a favorite gathering place has developed into a wider movement against gouvernmental arrogance and a statement against the repression of civic rights. Just as in the ongoing fights for freedom and civic rights in the Arab world, many artists in Turkey are engaged in this movement. And it is sure to have an important impact on the work of these artists.
About us, the festival went well even but I want to mention the fact that we changed a bit the program in order to take the events into account, so we invited local artist-activist to participate to the round table, an open discussion on art and activism. It was very interesting and we had to cancel the performance because the all area of the venue was under gaz attacked.