LINA SANEH

Lebanon

Lina Saneh is a theater maker. She studied at the Lebanese University in Beirut and the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. She has written, directed, and acted in numerous plays, including 'Les Chaises', in 1996; 'Ovrira', in 1997; 'Extrait d'état civil', in 2000; 'Biokhraphia', in 2002 which participated in numerous international festivals.
In her earlier works, Saneh focused on the physical theater in an attempt to produce a Body imprinted by the war. She questioned the socio-political conflicts and contradictions in the middle-east region and the traces that they marked on our bodies.
Today, she spotlights the nature and role of acts on stage, asking about the role which might be carried out by body language in a virtual world marked by the idealization of the physical body. Hence, she re-questions the definition of 'Theater' itself. She is particularly interested in multi-media, performing arts and video work that interrogate our citizenship status and our position in public spaces, and how that might create a new political parole.
Lina Saneh is currently an assistant professor at the Institut d'Études Scéniques et Audio-Visuelles at Université Saint Joseph in Beirut.



LINA SANEH
I Had a Dream, Mom…

45 min, 2006, video still
Courtesy of the artist

Robert Abirached has often told me that it is in the effervescence of the irrational, caught at the most intimate point of individual experience, that one must perhaps seek an alternative humanism, that is, a possible basis for a different order.

One day, one night rather, I have a dream. I tell it to my mother. She understands. She throws the ball back into my court. I fail to catch it.