An interdisciplinary research project conducted at the Hangar Centre for Artistic Investigation, Lisbon, by Nithya Iyer (AUS) with the supervision and curatorial support of Cristiana Tejo.

An Indefinite Series of Discontinuous Acts was an experiential research project exploring how arts-based research methods can deepen inquiry into critical theory, with a specific focus on emergent themes in culture studies. Engaging the MIECAT Form of Inquiry – a phenomenological research method developed by the Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Art Therapy (MIECAT) – in relation to the theses of PhD researchers at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa (Zohar Iancu and Jad Khairallah), the project aims to uncover and present the potentialities of arts-based approaches to academic practice in creating and disseminating inclusive and multi-sensorial forms of knowledge.

Traversing themes of ambiguity as practice, inside/outside, thresholds and liminality, and the shifting markers of contemporary cultural citizenship, this exhibition features audio-visual installations, visual and text-based works that represent key outcomes from the research.

This project was supported by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust, Australia.

DE-STRUCTURE: A BEIRUT UNDER SHOCK by Jad Khairallah (PhD, Universidade Católica Portuguesa)

By combining academic research and on-ground observations, the works dwell on establishing a metaphorical architecture raised in the city of Beirut, Lebanon that communicates in relation to minorities and queer shock tactics. The installation pieces explore the dichotomic social play of above/under and present notions of visible and invisible tracings. While the research implies definite intersectional crossings, the event of the Beirut port explosion of August 4 distorts the structure creating a framework of ‘shock as explosion and explosion as shock’.