عريب طوقان oraib toukan
Good morning Beirut, 2006
Interactive installation; Ink transfer on recycled paper.
Good Morning Beirut was first installed in New York at Art OMI during the Israeli war on Lebanon. It was a site-specific installation that consecutively laid ink transfers of all received emails from friends and family in Beirut during the first few weeks of the war. The piece is interactive, such that the public audience could roll out more paper for additional correspondences. Naji Al Ali’s 1982 cartoon ‘Good Morning Beirut’ and its intact redistribution in 2006, with fatal relevance, formed a key point of departure for this work. In reinstalling the piece nine-months later, the roll of paper was monumentalized in size and form making a solid affirmation on finally making sense, -no-sense-, of that period.
