Siska

Siska (spelled in Arabic سيسكا) was born as Elie Habib إيلي ألكسندرحبيب in Beirut, Lebanon in 1984 and resides primarily in Berlin, Germany since 2009. He holds a Master's degree in Film and Audiovisual Arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA). A key figure in the early Beiruti graffiti scene, Siska has also produced and performed music as part of the Lebanese Hip Hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بیروت. A large part of his practice involves archiveology, examining sociopolitical narratives in relation to personal and collective memories. It is common for his work to take the form of extended cinema where he applies cinematic codes as well as film language in order to explore various visual narrative techniques.

At the Haus der Statistics in Berlin in August-2021, he curated a series of conversations, films, readings, and live performances as the artistic director of redeem ردیم, a platform for ongoing conversations between voices from Beirut in Berlin. In 2024 he became the artistic director and curator of ADfD - Alternative Monument for Germany, an Augmented Reality Memorial in Berlin commemorating migration by weaving migration experiences into public memory culture, complemented by workshops and public talks at the Spore Initiative. Created in response to the current toxic discourse on migration in Germany, the project aims to build a positive narrative, actively countering xenophobic movements and offering an alternative stance to right-wing populism.

Additionally, Siska has collaborated on numerous performance and music productions, taking a midpoint between his career as a visual artist and performance artist. In 2022, he completed his residency and fellowship at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.

Siska's work has been internationally shown, including Martin Gropius Bau (Berlin), Halle 14 (Leipzig), Paris 104 (Paris), Beirut Exhibition Center (Beirut), Mosaic Rooms (London), Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival) and Silent Green Kulturquartier among others...

Recent Projects:

PORT FICTION an interdisciplinary artistic research project on the relationship between the port cities of Beirut and Hamburg, 2023. In August 2020, a massive explosion destroyed the port of Beirut and devastated large parts of the city. Nearly 300 people were killed, almost 300.000 left homeless. After the catastrophe, the Lebanese government blatantly failed to support its people. Instead, living conditions continued to deteriorate as the country was affected by accelerating hyperinflation and the pandemic. Until today, nobody has been held responsible for the event. After the explosion, a group of artists from Beirut and Hamburg began to reinvestigate their personal relationships to the port. Based on an under-standing that the two cities cannot be compared, they never-theless asked: How are they linked to one another, where do they touch? Weaving together a multitude of voices and artistic practices. PORT FICTION is a testament to the lived experience and endurance of people in Beirut and an invocation of ports as portals of empathy and possibility.

B7BK performance 2022. On August 4, 2020, three thousand tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port of Beirut. This explosion was accompanied by an unprecedented inflation that resulted in the loss of jobs, savings, and livelihoods for a large part of Lebanese society. A place dissolves, and all who can are leaving. For the residents of Beirut, departure via the airport is currently the only realistic way to leave the country, provided they possess the necessary documentation. In the immediate vicinity of the airport, along an access road, there is a well-known city wall on which the people of Beirut leave messages. In their lecture performance "B7bk," Franziska Pierwoss and Siska read the city like a book, encountering a vocabulary of love and despair...

External links

• https://siska.info

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