AUDIO KULTUR AK 14 FREE
02 WORD FOR THE HERD
I
In the last few years, underground electronic music has exploded both in Beirut and in cities across the region. On any given weekend ravers have the opportunity to pick and choose between genres, top level talent and well versed promoters vying for that hard earned dollar. The scene’s rapid growth has had a ripple effect across the region, and the emergence of this magazine is a byproduct of that colossal growth. Every fly-by-night pub seems to be blasting the Beatport’s Deep House top 100. Our inboxes used to consist of Russian bands looking for press coverage, incredibly shit pitches and people with an very liberal view of English grammar attempting to ensure that Audio Kultur receives its rightful inheritance. These days, however, even the mail scams come complete with Soundcloud links and technical riders. It’s everything we ever wanted gone horribly wrong, but that’s a different letter for a different day. Today, our glass of gin and tonic is half full. You see, with the influx of popularity that electronic music is currently experiencing in the Middle East there comes a great opportunity. Electronic music comes with values. It’s music created and perfected by minorities; black, white, gay, straight, men, women, whatever. It never mattered. And when you’re completely off your face at 5am, nothing really does. The club has always been pretty simple: don’t be a cunt. Anyone rolling their eyes only needs to look at the fall out caused by Ten Wall’s recent Facebook antics.
PUBLISHER
This is a scene where homophobia, racism and gender discrimination are not fucking welcome. Unfortunately, we live in a region where all those things are commonplace. Fuck that, we live in a world where way too many people are dicks. If you’re reading this magazine, if you’re one of the thousands of ravers hitting up a club on the weekend or if you just like to get down to the sweet, sweet sounds of anything from Donna to Sven, remember that you’re part of a movement. And therefore, we hold you to a higher standard.
WRITERS
Till next time, Tres
AK Publishing SAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Tres Colacion
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ali El Sayed
CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Livia Caruso
Asil Sidahmed Larry Bou Saifi Zab Mustefa Jad Taleb Patrick Abi-Abdallah
PHOTOGRAPHY Myriam Boulos
COMIC
Louay Daoust audiokultur.com facebook.com/audiokultur twitter.com/AudioKultur instagram.com/AudioKultur issuu.com/audiokultur
TABLE OF CONTENTS 03
04. FEATURED ARTIST: TIMI HAYEK
08. FEATURE:
12. TUNEAGE:
BEHIND THE SCENE
FLUM PROJECT
06. FLASHBACKS
14. FEATURED:
& REVELATIONS
A TALE OF TWO SPACES
20. PHOTO FEATURE:
NIGHT SHIFT
18. LARRY GOES
TO THE MOVIES
24. DAS KOMIC
04 FEATURED ARTIST
QUICK ON THE DRAW
Audio Kultur talks to Lebanese fashion designer Timi Hayek about growing up, going out and getting away.
FEATURED ARTIST 05
AK: First things first. What’s your name? Where
years were in London and Paris. I love Beirut now because it allows me to do something I love and be close to the people I love.
Timi Hayek, I’m originally Lebanese with some Greek Armenian roots. I grew up in Canada (two years as a toddler in Toronto and seven years in Ottawa with a random but awesome year in Cyprus). I am a fashion designer and illustrator. My favorite color is an icy whitish pale blue with a hint of mint. I love sea food. Favorite movie this year would be Song of the Sea. Boyband? None come to mind.
AK: You’re 26. You’ve already launched your own
AK: You’re a pretty prolific sketcher and used to draw
AK: What is the most frustrating thing about the
are you from? What do you do? What’s your favourite colour, food, movie, boyband…
before you were designing clothes. That background is clearly visible in your designs. At what point did you realize that what you really wanted was to bring what you were drawing to life?
Turning my drawings into a reality has always seemed magical to me as a kid, it still does.
AK: You’ve spent periods of time between Beirut,
Ottawa, Paris and London. Which city do you think most reflects yourself in terms of your own fashion. Where do you prefer to live and why? I reflect wherever I am at any particular moment, so now it is ultimately Beirut. However, like Beirut, my work reflects a bit of everywhere. I loved growing up in Canada and Lebanon. I also love that my university
line and have recently opened your own boutique. So many young people, especially in fashion, try and fail to launch their own endeavours. What do you think you’ve done that’s different? Everyone has his or her own path to discover; it’s all about finding what you love and sticking with it. fashion industry in the Middle East?
Nothing is ever, ever done on time. I give a deadline knowing the real deadline is actually days, weeks or months ahead. Also there are no large factories providing production facilities, digital printing on natural fabrics is non-existent, and resourcing fabric is a mission on its own. There is also the language barrier; I have yet to learn to speak proper Arabic.
AK: Where do you go to get away from it all?
Favourite spots for nights out or nights in or whatever? Ironically, to get away from the chaos that is Beirut I have to hop into a car and drive for an hour to the mountains or the seaside and I hate driving here so it’s counter intuitive. However, I find peace in small
things, such as reading a book on my tiny balcony in the morning, doing yoga, brushing kiki, walking in Achrafieh on Sundays… It’s awesome because all I can hear are the birds and there are no people and no cars. The safest escape, however, is to Hogwarts.
AK: You're currently based in Beirut. Who is your
favorite local band/producer/DJ? What do you think about the Lebanese nightlife scene? The Lebanese band Postcards is chill and sweet. Etyen is a local singer/producer with lots of talent. Lebanese nightlife is great if you know where to go, but I haven’t been a part of it for a while.
AK: What are you listening to right now? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire audiobook with Stephen Fry.
AK: Tell us about the last dream you remember... The last dream I remember was two nights ago, a male friend of mine turned into a huge black woman with red lips and short curly brown hair. She was drunk and came out of a painting so her colors were shifting like a Van Gogh painting and she was laughing flirting and singing in a 1950s setting wearing a large sparkly silver dress that made her look like a giant sea lion. She was loving it.
06 FEATURE
BEHIND THE SCENE
In the face of stubborn traditions and social norms, the women of Amman continue to leave their mark. By: Zab Mustefa
FEATURE 07
The loafers-and-no-socks scene doesn’t get better for women either. Sexual harassment and unwarranted attention happens in all parts of the world, yes, but in Jordanian nightclubs and streets for that matter, it is particularly prominent.
M
ost people groan when you bring up Amman’s nightlife in conversation. A VIP culture of bad clubs full of fake Ralph Lauren Polo shirt wearing wankers who think Tiesto makes proper dance music is as good as it gets on most weekends.
One saving grace, however, is Shermine Sawalha who works to promote underground music and local bands through her production company Malahi and its live platform, the TBA Collective. “I was finding ways to create a new culture for people to feel free and express themselves,” the 31-year-old says. “People would come to the beginning at TBA and say ‘what is this, a gay venue?’ My response was, if you don’t like it, don’t come here. “It’s open for everyone to be themselves – no heels, no dress code, this stuff people had unheard of in Jordan. We throw parties in the name of people having a good time.” Moving back to her native Jordan after studying in Canada for 12 years, Sawalha has built a playground for Amman’s independent culture scene to fit in, and by doing this as a woman, she definitely stands out. “When I got here I fell upon the TBA Collective which had already been running for a while and was playing hip hop and soul. Everyone was super cool and pretty laid back and it just didn’t feel like I was back home from the image I remember it being.”
The collective was founded around five years ago by Saeed Abu Jaber, Omar Nabulsi and Abdallah Taher, with Hamed Masri, Ramsey Kattan and then Sawalha completing the crew. After attending her first TBA night, Sawalha showed interest in doing visual content for the events and it all evolved from there. Although the group is made of an all-man show behind the scenes, she is the face of the company. “In Jordan’s music industry, a good chunk of the bands, let’s say 90 percent of them, are all men,” she says. “All the independent musicians that get the chance to make albums are pretty much male. But, in saying that, there are also a lot of female artists, poets and writers, painters – there’s quite a bunch.” Travelling for two years to meet independent artists across the region, Sawalha brought many bands to Jordan with gigs holding up to 600 people in tiny venues where “no one knew Amman could have such a thing.” Sawalha was born and raised in an open-air household that was both empowered and empowering. Her upbringing tarnished the concept of being underprivileged simply for being a woman or otherwise. “You want the honest truth? I think women are treated like shit everywhere in the world and if I didn’t say that, I’d be the biggest liar,” she says. “In terms of salaries
08 FEATURE
we get paid less, even if you’re the CEO of a company you’re paid less, and that’s just one example.” It’s true that gender discrimination is widespread in Jordan. Half of working women are paid 33 percent less than men, according to a 2013 study by the International Labour Organisation. But, the issue of patriarchy and sexual harassment has deeper roots in the Middle East. “This whole region changed after September 11 and there were so many things that got exposed in the region especially in Iraq - all these assumptions about the people and this sudden mass control, destruction and war,” Sawalha claims. “The only way people could hold together and retaliate was through religion. Things became more conservative and extremists came out of nowhere.” “It takes a toll on the countries affected because suddenly a new way of thinking was infiltrated into the system and into society. Everyone started getting more conservative. We were once the majority living freely, wearing short shorts and having fun parties drinking,
and now suddenly we have to deal with all these new ideologies that entered our countries and we have become the minority.” On a positive note, Sawalha has effectively created a subculture in a city where many didn’t think it would be possible. “Individualism is more important than putting yourself in a crowd. If you can stick out and do what you want to do and fight for it, people respect you no matter what. So female, male, whatever it is, it’s about going for your dream and running after it.” Despite the fact that patriarchy still exists in Jordan, 24-year-old TBA regular raver Raya Khatib thinks that there is progress, however slow. “You learn to ignore because if you don’t, they win,” she says. There are two ways to go, you either let it affect you and change your personality, the way you dress and the way you think, or you just stop caring about what others think and do what you think is right.” “When they harass or honk their horns, I just ignore it.
Some girls get really pissed and I was one of them but then I realised that while I can’t change the world, I can change myself. I’ll be more happy this way, so I stopped caring about what people think.” The 24-year-old actor, who was featured in the Cannes-nominated Dégradé and more recently in the low-budget horror Curse of Mesopotamia, thinks Jordanian women dominate the art scene despite patriarchy in the country. “The industry here is pretty much run by women, contrary to what people may think,” Khatib adds. “Women are making an impact doing big things. I’m proud of that.” It’s true that Jordan’s film industry is full of leading female figures such as Saba Mubarak, Rula Nasser and Najwa Najjar who Khatib cites as inspirations. “They are important because they’re producers. Amman’s film scene is pretty small so these women reach far and I admire them for that.” Despite Khatib’s optimism, she was a victim of online
FEATURE 09
abuse after an article appeared of her and her Dégradé co-stars at Cannes wearing ‘Western’ dresses. “People were commenting that we should burn in hell etc. I’d rather laugh than cry about it.” Khatib has been going to TBA nights for the past three years, calling it a more safe and comfortable environment. “I love the events at TBA because you go and wear whatever you want and you don’t have heels or a suit. Most of the time, no one really harasses you there so it’s going to help change things.” Mariam Abuadas, editor-in-chief of Akhbarek, an online magazine focusing on women’s rights, tells me inequality is embedded in Jordanian culture. “Women in Amman face many obstacles,” she says. “Some of them are technical and some are social. On the social level, there is culture and tradition. Both are practiced in a way that limits women's growth and development.”
Because most media is male dominated and presents a lack of female perspectives, Akhbarek gives a voice to feminist writers on issues that affect their lives. By no means are other Middle Eastern countries angelic in this matter, however. Take Egypt, for instance, where 99.3 percent of women have been sexually harassed, according to the UN, or Yemen where nine out of ten women have experienced unwanted contact from men in some shape or form. “It is bad here, but maybe better than in Egypt for example,” Abuadas says. “That does not mean women aren’t constantly having to deal with harassment in a country where it is condoned.” But, whether it’s gender discrimination in the work place or catcalling in the streets, Jordan’s track record for equality isn’t great either. When a taxi driver threw coffee in my face because I asked him to put out his cigarette, I realised that being a woman in Amman, to put it bluntly, is shit. “When proper mobility is not available, it means that
women can't get to work, can't move to places. As long as there is no good transportation system, women will have no freedom,” Abuadas adds. “I feel that this is one of the most important obstacles that face women in Jordan in general, but in bigger cities in particular.” “A few days ago, a friend told me a guy was jacking off outside her building in broad daylight. What does it mean? Without wanting to generalise, because you can’t paint all men in Jordan with the same brush, but “there are literally wankers at every corner you turn in Amman,” she said.
10 TUNEAGE
With the release of their first album just around the corner, we’ve turned over this month’s Tuneage section to Flum. The experimental, Beirut based two-piece have selected six records that have influenced their sound and their lives and that make their feet happy.
BOARDS OF CANADA HERBIE HANCOCK
THE DOORS
THE DOORS HEAD HUNTERS THE END WATERMELON MAN Jad: I first heard this track back in Tripoli at a very young age when I started stealing my older brother’s car in which he kept a couple of compilation CDs from jazz funk to post rock and electro-pop. These blurred memories are and will always be at the core of my musical taste today. Patrik: When Jad first moved to Beirut to complete his studies in animation, we met at ALBA mostly through musical exchanges, and started jamming and covering Herbie and other funk music standards. He was the one who introduced me to this side of music, since I’d previously been more involved in blues, rock and world music. Released in the late 80s, Watermelon Man is one of the most soothing and catchy tracks in jazz music, carrying the funkiest groove that makes your ass wanna move even today, while holding a very minimal approach of composition and progression, accumulating instruments in a very smart and subtle way.
Jad: My childhood friend Firas was mad about Morrison, the front man of the band, to a point where he used to imitate his moves and perform his poetry, while I couldn’t give a flying fuck about his music nor his words. But when I grew older and after dumping Eminem, 2PAC and “melodic black heavy grunge prog metal”, I started appreciating the band and getting more and more inspired by their smart approach to music, their surreal poetry and Morrison’s dissonant vocal tones. However, I can’t really see any similarities between their music and our current album production, except for the fact that the keyboardist plays the basslines with his left hand and the harmonies with the other. As for the drums… Patrik: In terms of early influences, I can say that John Densmore (The Doors drummer) was my first proper instructor, since I used to spend my early days as a drummer on my Yamaha DD 55 (a drum chip that could fit between your legs) covering songs written by The Doors with my long gone friend Michel. Densmore taught me how to mimic a groove on the drums as much as how to play dynamically with a song, delivering the feel and energy needed at any giving time. Among other influences, I would also like to mention John Bonham of Led Zeppelin and Mitch Mitchell of the Jimmy Hendrix group, whose drumming were essential in the creation of the songs themselves. I could say that my early jams with Jad were a clash between blues, rock and funk that slowly led to creating trip hop with our band Purple Seeds back in 2010. This is pretty much how it all started out for us somehow.
IN A BEAUTIFUL PLACE OUT IN THE COUNTRY EP Jad: I’ve been living alone in Beirut for almost 6 years now, and Boards of Canada was the first band to change my perception of music ever since I arrived here. More specifically, In a Beautiful PlaceOout in the Country is “the perfect companion, from a morning coffee to a night with your girl”, as Patrik so rightly puts it. Their music is often described as having a warm, emotive quality often meant to inspire nostalgia, and it never ceases to make us trip, even 20 years after its release. As part of Flum project, I was mostly concerned with Boards’ interpretation of melodies, soundscapes and simultaneous major/minor tonalities, a main aspect behind the nostalgic feeling in our music today, confronting happiness and sadness and all kinds of emotions altogether…
TUNEAGE 11
ROBERT MILES & TRILOK GURTU
NATHAN FAKE
RADIOHEAD
Fake was our common ultimate discovery in early 2014, exposing us to a new way of thinking about music. We used to go clubbing every Saturday night during the summer and end up crashing at our place at 5am, listening to Fake’s magic in the background and his producer James Holden‘s amazing mix “At the Control”, rated as one of the best album mixes of the 21st century. Fake, the most authentic electronic music producer of our time, has a specific way of mixing melodies and drumbeats and is known for his unique sound, despite the fact that his studio is composed of only an old PC running Cubase vst 5 (a very very old system), a $10 mic, a beat up old analogue synth, plus a salt shaker and some finger clicks for percussion, which is also our case, and one of the reasons behind our excitement for each of his new releases!
The National Anthem is one of the main inspirations for the Flum project, in terms of rhythm, guitar drones, repetitive drum beats and vocal melodies. The groove in this track is just sick and never stops coming back from the very first second until the last breath of the song. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are the roots of Radiohead’s genius, delivering chaos, amazing rhythms and outstanding vocal effects in this track that will make you trip your ass off and get lost in the haze of sound!
STEAM DAYS MILES_GURTU PAEAN INDUCTIVE Patrik: As I’ve grown older and gotten exposed to new types of music such as fusion and world music, this album has become very influential for me, especially from a rhythmical design perspective, thanks to the work of virtuosi percussionist Trilok Gurtu. I can’t really say more, but I urge you to give it a listen and focus on the amazing drum lines!
KID A THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
12 FLASHBACKS & REVELATIONS
AUDIO KULTUR PRESENTS:
CHYNO (MAKING MUSIC TO FEEL
AT HOME ALBUM LAUNCH) JUNE.10 - B018 PHOTOS BY: ROLAND RAGI
FLASHBACKS & REVELATIONS 13
14 FLASHBACKS & REVELATIONS
AUDIO KULTUR PRESENTS:
SUNDAY SCENE (IN COLLABORATION WITH FETE DE LA MUSIQUE) JUNE.21 - THE GÄRTEN, BIEL PHOTOS BY: RICHARD JOHN
FLASHBACKS & REVELATIONS 15
16 FEATURE
A TALE OF TWO SPACES British-Sudanese social entrepreneur Asil Sidahmed recounts her experiences with racism on the streets of Beirut and why she’s decided to do something about it. By: Asil Sidahmed Photography from Myriam Boulos’ upcoming exhibition entitled ....
FEATURE 17
"W
e don’t have a problem with racism here, we treat maids like family, but some of them take advantage of that and steal. They go out at night and get into all sorts of trouble.” – Shopkeeper, Mar Mikhael.
My first trip to Lebanon was in the summer of 2012 when I came on a consulting assignment for a European consulting firm based in Beirut. The excitement for my first trip was only tempered by the whispers I had heard about the racism there and the poor treatment of foreign domestic workers. The first clue was on the plane ride, when the Lebanese man sitting next to me boasted about having spent time in the Congo. To put this in perspective, I’m British-Sudanese. This would be like telling an English person ‘well I’ve spent a great deal of time in Germany’ and expecting there to be common ground. The delight and intrigue in his story didn’t end there. He said that when he was a young boy at school he had a black person in his class and he had asked his mum why that boy always came to school dirty. The redeeming factor in his tale was that he realised, after several years in the Congo, that black people just have a different skin colour. He boasted about his realisation that “African culture” is so beautiful, the people are so “nice” and “sweet” and that they always have a smile on their face. I smiled and nodded encouragingly, trying to hide the irritation that he was expecting a reward for
understanding something so basic, trivial and human: That Africans are actually people too. Arriving in Beirut allowed me to understand the milieu he was growing up in and why this commonsense realisation could be forgivably viewed as an achievement. I noticed in Beirut what Elijah Anderson refers to as “black spaces” and “white spaces”. I saw black people everywhere I walked. Yet, they seemed to occupy a separate realm invisible to the Lebanese people around them. Black spaces in Lebanon include the balconies during the daytime when maids hang the laundry and talk to one another from their respective balconies. One part of the Dawra district is sometimes referred to as “Little Manila”, referring to the high number of Filipinos who live and work there. White spaces are essentially everywhere else, and when black people are seen in them they appear as abstract others or labour to be exploited. In Beirut, I found myself very much sticking out as a black body in white spaces. Particularly because I often pass as Ethiopian here and am therefore assumed to be a housemaid. To be clear, passing as an Ethiopian
18 FEATURE
woman is perhaps one of the biggest compliments one could receive. Since Ethiopian women are regarded as some of the most beautiful women in that little country known as Africa. In Beirut, the daily dose of sexual harassment that women face has a surprising bonus for black women. One taxi driver told me “Despite the fact that you’re black, you’re beautiful.” “Wow, they are really beginning to speak good Arabic,” a woman once quipped to a taxi driver after I got in and explained where I was headed. Since then, countless drivers have said to me, shocked, “wow, btahki arabi mneeh.” When they follow the question with: “Aren’t you Ethiopian?”, I’ve taken to replying: “Yes.” When they say in the same tone used by a teacher to a child at school, “But they don’t speak Arabic in Ethiopia, you must be very clever”, I respond with: “Yes, all of us are clever in Ethiopia, we learn Arabic at school, don’t they teach you Amharic?” One afternoon, I went for a walk after work and was still wearing my suit-jacket. Despite that, a man on a motorbike started to hail me down. I asked him what he wanted and he replied “How much do you work for?” I said, “What?” And he said that he was looking for maids to work at his new spa. I lost it at this man. I yelled at him that I have a degree
from Oxford and that he would be lucky to work for me. He said, “Oh sorry, please take a business card and come and visit the spa when we’re open. We do massage, sauna, Jacuzzi and have a hair salon.” When I finally found myself moving to Beirut the following summer, I refused to leave the house. My parents had moved here by then so I found comfort on their balcony and had food delivered to the house. When my mum asked me why I had become a shut-in I recounted to her the spa story and the many others I had been subjected to. My mother has faced much worse than I have. She’s spent her entire married life abroad, in England, Czechoslovakia, Canada and now Lebanon. She faced particular challenges when she did a year abroad studying Russian. All she had to say to me was “You are too young to be bitter, don’t let anyone bring you low enough that you would hate them.” Her words stayed with me. I left the house and started to focus more on the countless positive aspects of living here. I reminded myself that I had the option to leave at anytime, a luxury not afforded to many of the other black people and domestic workers from South Asia whose passports are confiscated upon arrival. This, and the fact that focussing on the positive leads to a narrower existence, inspired an idea to start a project
addressing racism in Lebanon. In April this year, my friend Collette Hogg entered the Disrupt! Design! Competition hosted by the MENA design research centre and invited me to join her as her partner. We underwent an intensive three day workshop that encouraged us to think about the problem we were addressing and how we planned to overcome it. One of the experiences I had stood out. In a service ride one morning, the taxi driver politely apologised for taking the long way round before reaching my stop. By long way round I mean that he went from Mar Mikhael all the way through Bourj Hammoud and Ashrafieh just to get to downtown where I was headed. The madame sat next to me told him in Arabic “Oh don’t worry about her, these ‘abeed [slaves], they don’t mind”. My jaw dropped. The taxi driver then began to lecture her on why this was a terrible word. He explained to her that he’d made a Sudanese friend and through their interaction and eventual friendship he realised that he couldn’t refer to people as slaves. The interaction between that driver and his Sudanese friend represented a moment when two individuals were able to bridge the separated “white” and “black” spaces in Lebanon. Their interaction with one another
FEATURE 19
and, more importantly, the connection they formed was a transformative experience. Through interactive experiences that bring people from different racial backgrounds together, our project hopes to provide similar opportunities for interconnection. These moments of connection will then form part of an online and offline conversation that seeks to challenge our basic assumptions about race in Lebanon and take a step towards dissolving the many artificial categories us humans are placed into. Since receiving the Disrupt! Design! Award, the project team has expanded to include Ribal Rayess, multimedia creative designer who is partnering with us on the project. We will be doing a series of activations including a photoshoot which builds up to an interactive theatre experience. If you would like to learn more or participate in any way in the project, please send an email to bridgingracialdivides@gmail.com.
20 LARRY GOES TO THE MOVIES
LARRY GOES TO THE MOVIES JURASSIC WORLD
D
at guy Larry is the prime example that a well crafted Facebook status is worth more than your wanky six page writing sample. Larry is a lot of things, but above all he is a critic. He holds no punches and says it as it is. We like that. We like that so much we’re giving him his own column. Each month, Larry goes to the movies and gives you the full report. He was also choked while being mugged on the subway in New York. The mugger was never seen again. Larry is raw.
‘Jurassic World’ is one of summer 2015’s many blockbusters. It’s also the second Steven Spielberg remake of the season; needless to remind you about my feelings towards Steven. Just like most blockbusters, this movie tries to set itself apart from the rest of the pack by dealing with themes that are not usually ‘blockbuster-friendly’ per se; dysfunctional family, couple crisis, greed, brotherhood, how to talk to chicks, but you all know why we’re here anyway: DINOSAURS. So you have Claire, played by Bryce Dallas Howard (or was it Jessica Chastain? Yeah, you’ll never know), the park’s operations manager, styled to look like some dominatrix, her nephews (suffering from the age gap), and Owen, dinosaur trainer, played by hot man du jour Chris Pratt. Together, they must save the park from Indominus, a genetically-modified concoction gone rogue who’s off on a killing spree. Sure, the visuals are magnificent, the dinosaurs look so real you have some clins d’oeil from Jurassic Park, the performances are decent and, well, Chris Pratt. But where the movie stumbles is in the writing department. The script knows where it’s going; it’s just not sure how to get there. A few jokes, some sexual tension, some emotional moments and lots of thrills, but the characters are too one-note and not deep enough to keep you interested the whole run. You want an edgy movie about a genetically-modified creature cooked up in a lab that goes postal? Try Vincenzo Natali’s ‘Splice’.
LARRY GOES TO THE MOVIES 21 Remember when James Wan’s ‘Insidious’ came out in 2010 and was the most terrifying and most brilliantly crafted horror movie we had ever seen? Remember when its sequel came out in 2013, was a bit disappointing but was still as terrifying and worked with the same elements? Well, Chapter 3, a prequel, takes a good premise, tries to give it a new blood, and despite the fact that it’s one of the scariest of the trilogy, it craps on it so that hard you’d forget how brilliant the 2 previous movies were. Exit the freaky art direction and old Victorian ladies, director James Wan’s trademark; cue in some sob story about a family trying to deal with grief, which sounds good until they hit you with all the horror clichés, following a possessed, social-media-obsessed teenage girl being one. When I read that this installment was about Elise’s past and how she met Specs and Tucker and the tragedy that made them start a ‘business’ together, I didn’t know I was in for some D-List horror movie that wouldn’t even make it to Syfy.
INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3
SPY ENTOURAGE
Here is what I call the ‘Sex and the City’ syndrome. Take a great TV show, wait a few years after it bowed, keep your fans excited for a reunion and then hit them with something you made with some leftover plots. This is exactly what ‘Entourage’ is: a long-ass episode filled with cameos. It also borrows some SATC sub-stories, including a big fat gay wedding ceremony hosted by a celebrity. Vince and the gang are back in order to support Vince’s chaotic directorial debut, but they’re not as charming as they were back in the show; the sexual tension and the bromances are no longer interesting, and the whole cast looks like they shop at H&M or Zara. Moreover, the vapid plot, as much as it reflects Hollywood’s shallow nature, doesn’t allow them to go through some hero’s journey and instead, works like some TMZ or True Hollywood Story; it’s like you’re binge-watching a whole season of the Kardashians. You want another reason why the Friends movie reunion should not happen? Here it is. Maybe some stories are better told on TV.
Here’s a fun scene in a movie; let’s ask Melissa McCarthy to chase someone, jump on a car and fall on her face. Funny, right? Here’s another one. Let’s tell her to ride a bike and watch her fall. Hilarious, I know! ‘Spy’ is full of scenes like these, which would’ve been funny had Melissa McCarthy not been overwhelmingly present in such movies for a few years now. Which raises the following question: does an actress have to be either a caricature (I’m looking at you, Sandra Bullock) or a sexpot (hello, Homeland’s Claire Danes) in order to make a convincing police officer or agent or detective in Hollywood? I am well aware that the movie’s a spoof, but its problem goes beyond the fact that it capitalizes on McCarthy’s comedic tricks. Sure, it has some funny moments, good references and nice jokes, but its interesting story is over flooded by too many expletives, too many egos, fair ensemble acting and, I never imagined I’d say this, Rose Byrne’s robotic acting. It is a funny movie at the end of the day, but next time, let’s try and cast Melissa McCarthy in something where she doesn’t have to make fun of herself in order to keep you interested.
22 PHOTO FEATURE
NIGHT SHIFT
Award winning photographer Myriam Boulos talks to AK about why she’s never bored in Beirut, new social codes and why she’s not on Tinder.
PHOTO FEATURE 23
AK: Tell us a bit about yourself. What side of the bed do you sleep on?
I sleep on every sleepable bit of my bed possible and I like looking for the cold spots between the sheets.
AK: What was the last dream you remember having? Hmm… I was walking in the streets on a random night when I saw a washed-out blue car. An old woman with grey hair was crying inside the car. I came closer and realized that, on the seat next to her, her husband was liquefying. There were huge puddles of blood. This image was aesthetically beautiful: The lights were mostly yellow-orange-ish, a perfect combination with the red blood, both of which came in contrast with the faded colors of the old people as well as the pale blue car. Actually, it reminded me of a Wild at Heart scene, the one in which Sailor and Lula are on a road and there’s an accident with extremely pretty music and everything is a little absurd. In my dream, I faced the old lady for a while, until a friend held my hand and told me to run away with him, as though he was telling me that we should just accept weird things and go on.
AK: Are you on Tinder? What are your minimum requirements for a right swipe?
I’m not on Tinder. I think you can find sexual tensions everywhere and so don’t need Tinder to sleep with people. Right?
AK: NIGHT SHIFT is a collection of photos from
Beirut’s more ‘underground’ nightlife scene. What do you think about the scene in general? Are you a fan of the music? Where do you like to go out? Honestly, my knowledge of this music is very limited. All I know is that it makes people dance and it gets our ears and head busy. This kind of music is a good reflection of our time: we move a lot and act more than we think. After all, that’s why we go to these kinds of events: to enjoy the present, forget the rest and let go. What I like about Lebanon is that there are so many other things to do apart from these events. On a cultural level, I mean. I really don’t understand people that still complain about being bored in Lebanon! Most of your photos are taken in repurposed venues.
Old factories, train stations and warehouses are being transformed into both pop-up and permanent venues. How much do you think the locations add to a rave aesthetic? What attracted you to the venues that you chose? At night, when the social map of Lebanon (or rather Beirut) takes form, these places are the ones that attract me. Mostly because the esthetic dimension of these locations comes within a logic that is closest to my way of thinking. It is a way of going back to everything in its raw and unsophisticated state. A kind of way to say no to the bling bling of other Lebanese parties which have this (bad) habit of putting money forward and judging based on material possessions: “I have the biggest car, the biggest bottle, the biggest clothing brands, etc…” In the venues I have chosen, people are creating new social codes and norms which are opposed to this logic. I truly hope that this is not just a fashion or a trend and that this movement will be exploited to further develop in a positive way.
AK: You’ve spoken about your subjects having an
“individual façade” and that they use their appearance to “plunge into anonymity”. Beirut is a small place and the scene can be almost insular at times. On the topic of anonymity, people change when the camera is out. What’s your technique for capturing real moments as opposed to the kind of rave photos that you’re normally used to seeing? In reinventing social codes (in terms of clothes for instance) and in applying them, people who attend these parties identify themselves and are accepted by the regulars. So in a way, they blend in, become a number (and this is the basis of a factory: produce in mass and in identical form). On another hand, everyone needs to stand out individually. This way, people hide behind games, and the mask they choose reveals everything. This theatricality is certainly magnified in the presence of a camera. I took a huge number of pictures per evening (and received many “please fikeh tsawrina” [please can you photograph us] accompanied by “duck faces” and peace signs), but I only kept the ones that correspond to my way of seeing things. So on one hand, I take what people are willing to give
me, and on the other, I use these people to print my own vision on them.
AK: Does one image from the project stand out
amongst the rest? Do you ever feel a connection to your subjects even though you might not know them outside of your work? My favorite photograph is the one of Carla in the bathroom (the blond girl with a hidden eye, with the people in the mirror behind her). We had just had a long conversation, and while we were taking the pictures, she wasn’t the only subject of the camera; she was posing for me, but her head was elsewhere. And it was the mixture of my focus on her + “the elsewhere” in which she was + the context and the people surrounding us which all made the picture. The photograph in itself is a bit of a lot of different things that I want to say through my project, and it represents well my view on the evolving role of the girl, woman, young woman in this society. What would you be doing if you weren’t taking photos? Oh wow! I wouldn’t be the same person! I would be a completely different person. I would’ve remained shy for sure. I probably would be doing illustration and playing on some flute if I hadn’t found photography.
AK: What’s next for you? What are you currently working on?
I am actually working on my master project: “Lorsqu’elles ne sont plus femmes de ménage mais femmes tout court”, which has opened up my eyes to so many issues. I am also preparing an exhibition with le Collectif Gémeaux (composed of an illustrator, Michèle Standjofski, who also happens to be my mom, a psychologist/neuroscientific, Laura-Joy Boulos, who happens to be my sister and a photographer, myself). Our project is called “Disorder(s) in Beirut”. Basically, I take photos of different districts in Beirut, my mother draws characters on the drawings and my sister gives them a diagnostic.
24 PHOTO FEATURE
PHOTO FEATURE 25
26 DAS KOMIC
DAS KOMIC 27