Nouvelle Nahda

“nouvelle nahda” started a year and a half ago as an international collaboration and journey of several artists from beirut and theater neumarkt. nahda is arabic for “rebirth,” “awakening,” “rising,” and “nouvelle nahda” can be understood as a collaborative, transnational, thought-provoking process that aims to explore new ways to reawaken the idea of nahda; with the goal of initiating a social and political movement and change from within the realm of art and culture. during the collective creative process, both in beirut and in zurich, various events caused the project to change and it continuously transformed. “nouvelle nahda” thus became an attempt to keep up with what was happening.
in the fall of 2019, the uprisings began in lebanon, a revolution was born, and the impact on change felt very real.
in the spring of 2020, corona and the global lockdown led this collaborative work to change again, and it eventually took the form of an online publication, now called “nouvelle nahda” — episode 1. 
in the summer of 2020, a mega explosion rocked beirut and its people, and the idea of nahda as renaissance, as rebirth, as rising, had to evolve to reflect on the nature of pain, collective trauma, and healing, and to face difficult questions such as how to move on after tragedy, how to transform pain, how to be reborn stronger but softer at the same time. 
in the winter of 2021, “nouvelle nahda” launched the next attempt to bring this work to a conclusion. another shutdown situation changed the course of the project yet again: 
episode 2 of “nouvelle nahda” is presented in the urban space and at selected locations through a photo-sound-text installation, online through a documentary film essay (on demand in the media library) and in print form with the publication of a text by ibrahim nehme, which describes the healing process of a wound after an explosion.

“nouvelle nahda” is an international co-production with station beirut.