{"id":19458,"date":"2026-06-09T12:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/m-a-i.qc.ca\/?post_type=event&#038;p=19458"},"modified":"2026-06-16T15:51:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T19:51:52","slug":"image-before-last","status":"publish","type":"event","link":"https:\/\/m-a-i.qc.ca\/en\/event\/image-before-last\/","title":{"rendered":"an image before last"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This series of screenings unfolds over two evenings, as well as a keynote by scholar Tammer El-Sheikh on June 19, 2026 at 6pm. A Q&amp;A between the curator and\u00a0 the public will take place after each screening.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>June 17th &#8211; 7pm<\/p>\n<p>June 19th &#8211; 6:30pm<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What can an image still do when the world collapses? What power remains in the visual when states erase, archives lie, and silence in the face of genocide becomes policy? An Image Before Last gathers a constellation of film and video essays that reclaim the image\u2014not only as document or evidence, but as resistance. Refusing the flattening logics of history and spectacle, these works attempt to repurpose erasure itself, forging a language of refusal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Set between Lebanon and Palestine, the essays are not selected for being bound by geography, but by a shared condition: the impossibility of representing catastrophe without reinforcing it. Across these works, we encounter not only what is shown, but also what is withheld\u2014what resurfaces despite destruction. Here, artists are no longer in search of truth through representation, for representation itself has become impossible. The frame becomes a site of sabotage, where presence, existence, and agency are often asserted through withdrawal\u2014through the broken image, through its capacity to mourn, to disrupt, to bear witness when both language and law fail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Lebanese thinker and artist Jalal Toufic, in the wake of what he calls a \u201csurpassing disaster\u201d\u00a0 [1], artists must move beyond mourning or documentation. They must act as mediums, recovering what has withdrawn into latency, and reopening the conditions for tradition, memory, and meaning to re-emerge in unforeseen forms. For artist and writer Walid Sadek, to \u201csee with blindness\u201d is to recognize that some things cannot\u2014or should not\u2014be brought fully into light. It is an ethics and aesthetics of restraint, working against the grain of spectacle, evidence, and transparency. Looking with blind eyes suggests that, after such violence, the visible is no longer trustworthy\u2014that to \u201csee\u201d is often to misread, overclaim, or participate in denial. Sadek\u2019s concept invites us to rethink the image not as revelation, but as a space where violence is neither fully seen nor resolved, but held in suspension.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drawing on Toufic\u2019s and Sadek\u2019s propositions, the screening program presents works where the image is not what is seen, but what is activated through the refusal of closure, the refusal of testimony. These are works that tirelessly explore what else the image might do\u2014fragmented, persistent, and working, even in vain, to reconstitute language itself. A different grammar of resistance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">1] Jalal Toufic, The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (Forthcoming Books, 2009).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Schedule:<\/p>\n<p><b>June 17th, 2026 \u2192<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Caf\u00e9-bar opens: 6:30pm<\/p>\n<p>Start: 7pm<\/p>\n<p>Yazan Khalili\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<i>On love and other landscapes (<\/i>7 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Noor Abed \u2013\u00a0<i>Our songs were ready for all wars to come (<\/i>20 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Batoul Faour \u2013\u00a0<i>The bunker, the barracks, and the base\u00a0 (<\/i>17 mins)<\/p>\n<p>break<\/p>\n<p>Kamal Aljafari \u2013\u00a0\u00a0<i>A Fidai film <\/i>\u00a0(78 mins)<\/p>\n<p><b>June 19th, 2026 \u2192<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Caf-bar opens: 6pm<\/p>\n<p>Start: 6:30pm<\/p>\n<p>Opening speech + keynote by\u00a0 Tammer El Sheikh\u00a0(20 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Q&amp;A (15 mins)<\/p>\n<p>break<b>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Ghinwa Yassine \u2013\u00a0<i>A Dream Pointing to Aadchit (<\/i>17 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Maissa Maatouk \u2013\u00a0<i>Floating lights I: Fall of the state<\/i> \u00a0(4 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Maissa Maatouk \u2013\u00a0<i>Floating lights II: Rise of corporations (<\/i>11 mins)<\/p>\n<p>break<\/p>\n<p>Ghassan Salhab \u2013\u00a0<i>No Title (<\/i>40 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Walid Raad \u2013\u00a0\u00a0<i>I only wish that I could weep (<\/i>7 mins)<\/p>\n<p>Q&amp;A (15 mins)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19460,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19458","event","type-event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","season-25-26-en","event-category-screening"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.13 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An Image Before Last &mdash; MAI | Montr\u00e9al, arts interculturels<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/m-a-i.qc.ca\/en\/event\/image-before-last\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Image Before Last &mdash; MAI | Montr\u00e9al, arts interculturels\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This series of screenings unfolds over two evenings, as well as a keynote by scholar Tammer El-Sheikh on June 19, 2026 at 6pm. 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