Takashima Megumi | KYOTO EXPERIMENT Kyoto International Festival of Performing Arts 2025 ③ Tania El Khoury & Ziad Antoun 'Tracing Power' [Performance] (Part 2)
This participatory lecture-performance explores Lebanon's power structures and electricity crisis by having the audience open archival materials, questioning historical fiction and archival incompleteness.Summary
This review covers the second part of the lecture-performance 'Tracing Power' by Tania El Khoury & Ziad Antoun at the KYOTO EXPERIMENT festival. The work is structured as a participatory lecture where the audience physically opens documents from an archive box, simulating the uncovering of hidden history layered by civil war, Cold War dynamics, and colonialism. The performance emphasizes the material texture of history while simultaneously questioning its fictionality, drawing parallels with works that explore manufactured archives. The presentation features diverse materials—some in languages the audience cannot read—and employs props like white gloves and magnifying glasses, blurring the line between authentic archival practice and theatrical staging. The piece uses the specific issue of Lebanon's electricity crisis to pose meta-questions about archives themselves, suggesting that no single archive is complete and highlighting the necessity of networked cooperation. Finally, the seemingly festive setting, where the audience is treated to wine and snacks, is interpreted as a potential critique of how serious issues might be consumed superficially by distant viewers, leading to a final moment emphasizing solidarity through shared experience in darkness.
(Source：artscape)