To mark its twentieth anniversary, Culture Resource organized Living Fabric: Cultural Ecosystem Forum at Metropolis Cinema on 24 and 25 October in Beirut, Lebanon. The forum brought together more than 200 arts and culture practitioners from Lebanon and the Arab region to strengthen the threads that weave this network; threads that are perpetually vulnerable or at risk due to the region’s ever increasingly perilous political and economic conditions.
With approximately 80 contributors, the forum addressed key topics including cultural work over the last 20 years and the possibilities that lie ahead; working in the current political climate; commoning and collective work as essential practices today; digital and AI transformations in artistic and cultural production; questions of funding, censorship, and alternatives; mental health among arts and culture practitioners; limits of language in cultural and artistic work; and thinking ecosystems and sharing resources.
The forum also featured the screening of Culture Resource’s 20th anniversary film “Twenty Springs & Twenty Survivals”, which will be published soon across its platforms, and a radio program organized by writer, editor, and curator Rayya Badran, broadcasted live on Radio Alhara, as well as VR installations organized by Medrar for Contemporary Art. The first day concluded with music performances curated by the Beirut Synthesizer Center at Metropolis Cinema. The closing event at Metro Al Madina featured performances by Milaha (Dina El Wedidi, Maya Al Khaldi & Youmna Saba), SILK (Khaled Omran & Romy Melhem), and Wael Elkak.
The forum shed light on the shared challenges facing arts and culture practitioners across the Arab region, while recognizing each country’s unique contexts. It reaffirmed the importance of coming together as well as maintaining and sustaining cultural work amid current regional circumstances, while emphasizing the need for ongoing engagement with pressing regional issues, particularly those related to Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen.
In the coming months, materials generated from the forum will be compiled, including reports and reflections by its curators, Roy Dib and Reem Shadid, alongside contributions from several participants. The materials will also feature a retrospective text by Think Tanger and illustrations created during the forum by artists Khalid Al Baih and Lena Merhej.
