The Middle East Institute (MEI), together with National Building Museum and the British Council, is pleased to host artist Tania El Khoury for a discussion about her works, the use of interactive mediums, and the importance of utilizing art to tackle sensitive issues.
Tania El Khoury will discuss her interactive and immersive works which engage audience members as active participants. Her art documents everyday life and provokes discussion about current issues, personal histories, and the politics of public and personal space. El Khoury is co-founder of Dictaphone Group, a Beirut-based research and live art collective aiming at reclaiming public space. El Khoury will show excerpts from her current and previous work.
The conversation will be moderated by Honey Al-Sayed, an award-winning Syrian journalist with a wide range of expertise in media, arts and culture. She is currently an adjunct professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she teaches a course titled Media, Arts, and Culture: Fueling War or Creating Peace?
A reception will follow after the discussion.
Speaker Biographies:
Tania El Khoury
Beirut-Based Live Artist
Tania El Khoury is a Beirut-based live artist is currently touring her work internationally. Her work focuses on creating immersive and challenging performances and engages the audience in active collaboration. El Khoury has performed in real sites, ranging from the great hall at the British Museum to an old church in Beirut that once was used as a military base during the Lebanese civil war. She is also the co-founder of Dictaphone Group, a collective using research-based live art with the aim of reclaiming public space and opening up wider political discussions in and around the city. She has won the Total Theatre Award for Innovation, the Arches Brick Award, and Artsadmin Bursary on her work as a solo artist. El Khoury has collaborated with performer and producer Petra Serhal on creating site specific performances informed by on-the-ground research. These projects have focused on questioning the relationship between citizens to the city, with a focus on public space and its redefinition.
Honey Al-Sayed (Moderator)
Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University
Honey Al-Sayed is an accomplished bilingual communications professional and award-winning journalist. She has a wide range of expertise in media, arts, and culture, as well as public speaking, coaching, and media training. After the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, Al-Sayed relocated to the United States and co-founded SouriaLi– an independent nonprofit online radio network where she worked as a producer, host, and media consultant. She was a Creative Consultant on Red Lines (Spark Media, 2014), a new independent documentary which has garnered numerous accolades, including Best Documentary Feature, Peer Gold, Accolade, and Human Rights awards. She is regularly invited by prominent think tanks, organizations, and universities to discuss women’s empowerment and the role of media and the arts in catalyzing social change and peacebuilding. She is currently an adjunct professor at the School of Foreign Service in the Culture and Politics department at Georgetown University.
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