RE-DIRECTING: EAST Conversations # 11:
Ola El-Khalidi, Jordan

September 25, 2013 at 6 p.m., Laboratory Building CCA
The presentations are held in English.

Through the lens and experience of Makan, an art space and a nomadic collective which started in Amman, Jordan in 2003 and is now in between places, the narrator will conduct a public disclosure session of the deep insecurities, ego struggles, professional dilemmas, and social and political pressures in the case of the transformation process of working individually in a specific location to working within a group and being situated in different geographies. This will be an improvised analysis of a ten year voyage in the arts and its different practices and changing condition, highlighting issues such as place, age, friendship, boredom and responsibility.

 
Ola El-Khalidi has been involved in structuring art spaces since she had been the artistic director of the Makan Art Space from 2003 until 2010, after which she decided to continue her studies in Curatorial Practice at the two-year California College of the Arts in San Francisco. One important reason to do that was to give herself some distance from the art space and her local context, and expose herself to different practices, and also allow the space to develop through the involvement of different curators and art professionals. Makan has now developed into a collective of three artists: Diala Khasawnih, Samah Hijawi, and herself, and runs projects between Amman and San Francisco and anywhere in between. The Makan Art Space was created in 2003 in Amman, Jordan, to encourage experimentation in different forms of artistic expression. Over the years, Makan has developed into a collective of friends and friends of friends working, exchanging and actively creating different spaces for their productions and building a network of artists, cultural practitioners and social activists who are interested in taking art a step further.