OUT OF BEIRUT

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of an art magazine published in New York, the conflict that erupted this summer between Lebanon and Israel is at once near and far—a geopolitical situation of enormous gravity, wrenchingly and unremittingly conveyed in the global press yet difﬁcult to plumb, perhaps by virtue of that very mediation. Artforum has, of course, neither the expertise nor the hubris to pretend to offer any corrective or comprehensive analysis. But we could not simply ignore the crisis.

As it happened, art historian and critic T. J. Demos had already begun work for us on a review of Modern Art

print October 2006

Lamia Joreige

HISTORY CONTINUALLY ESCAPES US; we have only its fragments, captured in words, images, and memories. My work of the past ten years has been an attempt to come to grips with this elusiveness and how our rearrangements and reinterpretations of these fragments border on fiction. I collect, erase, invent, capture, miss, and divert, always pointing to the gaps and possible losses in what is remembered—individually, collectively, officially.

Here and Perhaps Elsewhere, 2003, the fifty-four-minute video included in “Out of Beirut,” is a good example: a compilation of narratives offered by people I met