Nothing to Declare started as a research-based lecture performance exploring borders within Lebanon, those between Lebanon and its neighbors, and across the Arab world.
On the floor lies an old map of the Arab world that shows border-crossing train tracks spanning the region. The old Hijaz Railway, which connected Damascus to Medina, once transported Muslim pilgrims through what is today Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia without the need for visas. Today, the non-operational Lebanese Railway appears as a rupture.
The members of Dictaphone Group decided to take a journey along the abandoned train tracks of Lebanon. Their starting point was a derelict station in Beirut, and they continued as each one of them set off on a different trip following one of the three train tracks. Their travels revealed past and present uses of these tracks and the stations that dotted them. Some were abandoned. Others were turned into makeshift housing. Some had the markings of being converted into military bases and torture chambers. As an ongoing research project, it has gone through various stages of development since it began in 2013. Before this project, the group used to work with interactive site-specific performance. The sites of Nothing to Declare, however, were many, unpredictable and in some cases dangerous, making it impossible for an audience to be present on location. The group therefore followed a different strategy: each of the artists, alone, set off on a different journey in order to experience these different places physically and to record those experiences in every possible way. The group then began to experiment with different ways of sharing these experiences with the public, organising and taking part in many meetings, events, presentations and performances. Through this process they kept learning, observing and discovering. They recorded some of their conclusions in a research booklet and, to keep their engagement with the subject alive, recently updated the performance texts and recorded them as the soundscape of the video created from their journeys. In its current form, Nothing to Declare offers all this material to the audience as documentation of the project’s whole adventure, as an invitation to further interaction, and as an installation that takes us back to inaccessible landscapes and journeys that are no longer possible.
Credits
Researched, Written and Performed by: Tania El Khoury, Petra Serhal, Abir Saksouk
Video Editing: Ali Beidoun
Camera: Karam Ghoussein, Dahna Abourahme
Music Composition: Ahmad Khouja, Khairy Eibesh
Video Installation: Sound in collaboration with Ahmad Khouja and Khairy Eibesh
Developed in part at the Watermill Center (a laboratory for performance) in collaboration with ArtEast, New York.
Production grants: Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (lecture performance), British Council (video and publication)
Executive production: Vicky Strataki
