Gestalten durch Verbergen

This volume is the first comprehensive, across-media study of the work of the Lebanese film auteur Ghassan Salhab. His oeuvre emerges in a conceptual environment shaped by a crisis of representation. It is examined not only in its confrontation with the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) but also, and above all, in its aesthetic dimension. In doing so, the predominance of oral, poetic narration in the Arab-Islamic tradition as well as notions of melancholic expression and moods are considered as they emerge in periods of disorder provoked by war and subsequent reorientation.
Salhab, born in 1958, is one of Lebanon's most significant contemporary filmmakers. His works are shown not only at local and international film festivals but also in art museums. In 2014, Salhab was received the Best Director from the Arab World award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
The civil war led to certain shifts in focus in literature and film in Lebanon, for example the marked concentration on the city of Beirut, which is central in Salhab's work and which in this study is not only examined against a backdrop of, and in a break with, the heavily idealised and ideologically charged artistic practice of the 1960s and 1970s but also in comparison with the works of other artists from the post-war period. Questions about the ability to depict war as well as criticism of hegemonic depictions of history in the tension-filled area of power and media representation are hallmarks of a critical attitude that characterises Lebanese art from the 1990s. This art distances itself from political utopias, which were compromised during the years of civil war. Other artistic concepts discuss the 'withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster' (Jalal Toufic), the 'latency' of the undead war, which can break out again at any time (Joana Hajdithomas and Khalil Joreige), or the 'time and space of catastrophe' (Tony Chakar). An awareness of the crisis is articulated in these formulations. In Salhab's work, the reaction to the crisis is expressed less in his conceptual approach and more in his aesthetic process, which this study summarises as 'revealing by concealing'.
In order to illustrate the particular melancholic tone in Salhab's films, references are made to epochs in which an underlying melancholic mood generated special forms of expression in literature, such as the Baroque (labyrinth and ruins) and especially Arabic Late Antiquity when poetry was shaped by the atlal motif, the poet's lament at the ruins. It will be shown how the melancholic mood appears in poetic forms of expression. The study also focuses on lyric texts (by Celan, Rilke or Rumi), which play a central role in Salhab's work. It presents his work within the theme of an 'acoustic turn', taking into account not only perspectives from the fields of philology, comparative art and media theory but also recent developments in transmedia and sound studies.