Diasporic Remix #01

Eddie Abd, Diasporic Remix #01, 2021

4 minutes 49 seconds, single-channel video, sound.
For The Only Thing Left is to Leave. Commissioned by Beirut Art Center and Firstdraft, with the support of the Keir Foundation.

 ضمن مشروع كل ما تبقى هو الرحيل

بتكليف من مركز بيروت للفن وفيرست درافت، بدعم من مؤسسة كير

Being part of the diaspora is enriching, transcendent of geographies, dichotomies, and reactionary positions. It's a space to embrace and move beyond the structures imposed on us within the boundaries of the countries we live and lived in.

في أن يكون المرء جزءًا من الشتات شيء يُثري، ويتجاوز الجغرافيات والانقسامات والمواقف الرجعية. لعلّه مكان لتخطي الهيكليات المفروضة علينا في حدود البلدان التي نعيش فيها.

about the artwork

The provocation for this project – that the only thing left is to leave – took me back 20 years ago to Jbeil, Lebanon, where I felt my heart clench and contract every time we said our endless goodbyes to our home, our neighbours, our street, our family, friends and farewelling visitors.

I realise that I haven’t made peace with the question of leaving. In saying that I also feel it's a question I’m happy to leave alone, not seeing the use to revisit all the whys that led to that event in our lives. One thing is for certain: it's a difficult question that can only be explored with my parents, as they were the ones who had reached that big decision – that the only thing left was to leave. And now isn’t the right time.

Today, Mum and Dad live about 50 minutes away from me, in a home surrounded by furniture that we shipped with us from Lebanon 20 years ago. I often think about their decision to bring everything; the vitrine-like glass cabinet, the dining table and chairs, the salon, the bedrooms, carpets, books, a rowing machine, trinkets – everything. Every time I step into their house a part of me is back in Jbeil. I realised that this project is an opportunity to think about how I experience the interweaving of my existence ‘here’ and ‘there’. My ongoing connection to the place where I was born, always present in my everyday. 

I was chatting to my friend and colleague Alissar Chidiac and shared with her what I was thinking about. She wasn't surprised. This diasporic experience, she said, is a part of something Professor Ghassan Hage calls the “Lenticular Condition”; I watched a YouTube video with bad sound that Alissar shared, where Hage explains this notion. As always, he was very articulate and made a compelling case, and I was extremely excited to recognise glimpses of what had been scrambling in my head, expressed so succinctly and with such attractive logic. I started to think that being part of the diaspora is enriching, transcendent of  geographic boundaries, dichotomies,  and reactionary positions. It's a space to embrace and move beyond the structures imposed on us within the boundaries of the countries we live and lived in. What a beautiful, empowering idea. 

I shared my lightbulb moment with my dear friend Yamane Fayed (my go-to person to critically/cynically dismantle, then embrace, ideas worth embracing – on our terms).  Could we point out moments of coexistence of the worlds we know beyond the experience of a memory? What are the triggers for these moments and why these triggers specifically? Are we truly experiencing the ‘here’ and ‘there’ collapsed into one existence? Are we fooling ourselves, and is this exciting prospect simply an attempt for self-healing as parts of us still hurt ‘here’ because we are not ‘there’? And then how do our children who were born here fit into this whole picture? Diasporic Remix #01 is my first attempt at exploring these questions.

– Eddie Abd

about The Only Thing Left is to Leave

The Only Thing Left is to Leave is an international commissioning project supported by the Keir Foundation, co-developed by Firstdraft and Beirut Art Center. The first part of this project is an online iteration, co-developed by Firstdraft and Beirut Art Center, featuring four artist commissions by Eddie Abd, Roy Dib, Morgan Hogg, and Chrystèle Khodr – individually premiering on Instagram TV. Each of these interdisciplinary artists interrogates what paths are trodden and social formations woven, what common practices are formulated and networks of sustenance formed, when we move.

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