Etel Adnan: At a Certain Hour of the Night

Описание: Join us to celebrate the life and work of Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist Etel Adnan. Afternoon screenings will be followed by a reading of one of her plays, At a Certain Hour of the Night, directed by Zishan Ugurlu (Turkey), Associate Professor of Theatre at Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York; and a discussion with Klaudia Ruschkowski and Bonnie Marranca. Presented as part of the exchange between the CUNY Graduate Center and the American University of Beirut.

Additional support by PAJ Publications/PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Bonnie Marranca, editor.

Etel Adnan is a poet, philosopher, and painter. The author of numerous essays and of plays, she writes across languages, cultures, and continents. Born in Beirut in 1925, she describes herself as an “alchemical product.” Her father was a Muslim from Syria born in Damascus and an officer of the Ottoman Empire. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, Turkey. At home, she lived with two religions, two languages, and two civilizations: the Islamic and the Greek. Her school in Beirut was French, with no reference to the Arab world outside. “Already as a child,” she says, “I had to construct my personality, to build myself up, in order to be something.” Her parents were living in a country not their own and Adnan discovered quickly that their life, as well as hers, was somehow “in between.” Her play At a Certain Hour of the Night was recently published in PAJ 117, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press). Etel was in a recent document at Kassel and shows at Serpentine Gallery, London and in Qatar. She also worked with Bob Wilson on the Paris Civil Wars section.