The Fickleness of the Film Strip
Gezairi Building, Chafica Balaa Lecture Hall 403
![](https://eventscal.lau.edu.lb/images/the-flickleness-of-the-film-lecture-thumb.jpg)
Taking into consideration the unpredictable nature of the medium most used by the artist - analog photography - Antar asks: How can one plan around the fickleness of the film strip? To push even further, how can one use it to their advantage? In this lecture, Ziad Antar will take two of his photographic series and a video, to explore through them the process of taking an idea and concretizing it into a static or moving image. Since Antar uses photography and video as an experimental field, the questions he raises during his process aren’t solely related to the subject but also to the medium itself.
Ziad Antar is a Lebanese photographer and videographer born in Saida in 1978. He deals with subjects related to socio-political critique, agriculture, geopolitics and politics of power, questions around identity within the Arab world, etc. After having earned a BA in Agricultural Engineering from the American University of Beirut, he participated in two art residencies in Paris, followed by additional schooling from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Antar’s works are focused on process and form. He works primarily with analog photography, exploring the medium to the point of defying it, sometimes using expired film, or removing the camera lens entirely. As for his video work, he is as experimental as he is with photography, imbibing his films with a hyperawareness of sounds and ambient surroundings. His videos are universal and relatable to anyone in the world, from all walks of life: they exist outside of context and time. Antar’s works have been exhibited in Tunis, London, Brussels, Paris New York, Beirut, etc. He has participated in festivals such as the Taipei Biennial, the Sharjah Biennial, etc. His works are also housed in museums such as the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Onassis Foundation, Athens, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, etc. Ziad Antar has also published many photography books around his series.