Project Summary

During March Meeting 2012 Mazen Kerbaj and Sharif Sehnaoui took to the stage to perform Wormholes, a live and improvised audio-visual project that mixes Kerbaj’s process of drawing with Sehnaoui’s music production.

Presentation Proposal

Wormholes is an ongoing audio-visual project by Mazen Kerbaj (using inks and solvents) and Sharif Sehnaoui (on acoustic guitar). It is performed live and completely improvised. The question of how to frame a music/drawing duo has been persistent since the early stages of Kerbaj and Sehanoui’s artistic collaboration—they have improvised together musically since the late ’90s. In 2008 Kerbaj developed a new system that allows him to perform in a live setting. It consists of drawing on a glass table, using a wide array of ink, water, solvents, brushes and various unidentified objects. Within this setting, both sound and visual elements are improvised and exist only during the timeframe of the performance.

Nothing is permanent or even fixed, the lines have their own life, they are constantly modifying. Just as Sehnaoui can stop the sound of his guitar by muting the strings with his hand, Kerbaj can erase his entire drawing with one move. The possibilities for interaction have increased considerably.

Wormholes is an attempt to alter a specific segment within time and space, hoping to open a corridor between two artistic disciplines, allowing them to give each other meaning. It is in many ways the outcome of over 12 years of artistic collaboration and understanding.”

Performers

Sharif Sehnaoui is a free improvising guitarist. He has performed his music worldwide including at festivals such as Soundfield (Chicago), Moers, Mulhouse Music Festival, Club Transmediale (Berlin), Skanu Mesz (Riga) and Musikprotokoll (Graz). Along with Mazen Kerbaj he created the Irtijal festival in 2001, contributing to the emergence of an unprecedented experimental music scene in Lebanon. He also runs several labels: Al Maslakh, devoted to ‘publishing the un-publishable’ on the Lebanese musical scene, Johnny Kafta’s Kids Menu, an Al Maslakh sub-label dedicated to rock oriented experimentations, and finally Annihaya, a label with a focus on sampling, recycling and revisiting various aspects of popular culture.

Mazen Kerbaj’s main activities are comics, paintings and music. He has published more than a dozen books and many short stories and drawings in anthologies, newspapers and magazines such as L’Association, Dar el Adab, Internazionale and Le Monde Diplomatique. His work has been exhibited both in solo and group exhibitions, including in Lebanon, France, England, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and the USA. He is one of the founders of the Lebanese free improvisation scene, both as a trumpet player and as an active member in the MILL association that has organised the annual Irtijal festival in Beirut since 2001. In 2005 he launched Al Maslakh, the first label for this music in the region. For the past 10 years Kerbaj has played and toured solo and with various groups in the Middle East, all around Europe and in the USA.

December 2011

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