An Opening Breath for an Upcoming Festival
& Celebration of Ten Years of TAP
Dates: 22-25 May
We Breathe, and in Breathing Together, We Resist
Join the Art Explora Festival and TAP on Saturday for a great line-up of live music, video art and dancing! TAP’s celebrates its ten rounds around the sun, let’s get breathless on the dance floor !
This is a free event, check the program in other cultural venues across the city.
Breath is Tide is a four-day program serving as the opening breath to the Art Explora Festival and celebrating TAP (Temporary Art Platform)’s 10-year anniversary. Although the Lebanese stopover of the Art Explora Festival’s museum-boat was postponed to 2027 due to the recent war, this special four-day program will still unfold in Beirut as a gesture of solidarity with the local art scene.
The festival brings together artists, thinkers, and the public in moments of exhalation and resistance, expanding TAP and Art Explora’s shared commitment to public art, social engagement, and radical hospitality.
METRO AL MADINA Program
Standing event
8:30–9:15 PM | Rehearsing with Shahrazad by Ahmad Ghossein
Through a workshop with amateur dancers in Rio de Janeiro’s Complexo da Maré, this video explores belly dance as a symbol of cultural transmission, gendered performance, and the shifting dynamics of guest and host within the Arab diaspora in Brazil.Commissioned by TAP as part of the research and exhibition A Casa é Sua (2022).
9:30–10:30 PM | Chamoun/Sahyoun/Atoui: GHADR
This Beirut-based trio blends experimental electronics, distorted guitar, and vocals rooted in classical Arabic music. Through group improvisation, they explore the tension between structure and chaos, using tradition as a foundation for new sonic directions. Their debut album Ghadr (“Treachery”) was initiated during a residency in Switzerland and completed in Beirut.
10:30–11:30 PM | PRAED: Kaf Afrit
The duo—Raed Yassin on keyboards, electronics, and vocals, and Paed Conca on clarinet, electric bass, and electronics—crafts a hypnotic mix of Arabic popular music, free jazz, and experimental electronics. Known for their explosive live energy, PRAED will perform from their latest album Kaf Afrit.
11:30 PM–Late | TAPx10 Party
DJ Set
Check out TAP website or Instagram for the full four-day program taking place from Thursday, May 22 – Sunday, May 25, 2025.
Breath is Tide takes place in arts and culture venues and in public spaces. New commissions will be presented alongside youth workshops, public talks, panels, dance, and music performances in locations such as Karantina Public Park, Metropolis, Beirut Art Center, Sursock Museum, Lebanese National Library, and the Beirut Riverless Forest.
Organizers
About Art Explora Festival
The Art Explora Festival is a traveling initiative offering free artistic and cultural experiences aboard the world’s first museum-boat. From spring 2024 to autumn 2027, the museum boat will visit 15 countries across the Mediterranean, connecting artists, curators, cultural and educational organisations, and fostering a new vision of the Mediterranean.
In Lebanon, Temporary Art Platform (TAP) was selected as the Festival’s local partner. TAP curated Undertow (co-curated between Amanda Abi Khalil and Danielle Makhoul) an exhibition pavilion showcasing contemporary artists and photographers working with moving image around themes of exile, migration, and the unseen forces shaping the Mediterranean. The exhibition launched in Marseille (June 2024) and has since traveled to Rabat (Morocco) and partially to Durrës (Albania).
Although the Lebanese stopover of the Art Explora Festival’s museum-boat was postponed to 2027 due to the recent war, this special four-day program will still unfold in Beirut as a gesture of solidarity with the local art scene, while also marking TAP’s tenth anniversary.
www.artexplora.org/festival
Instagram: @artexplorafestival
About TAP (Temporary Art Platform)
TAP is a nonprofit organization committed to making another world possible, by affecting social change through contemporary art.
Founded in a region of unrelenting volatility and absent cultural policies, TAP curates the conditions for communities, private bodies and governmental institutions to recognize that contemporary artists can be allies in driving enduring social change amidst precarious contexts. In the process, TAP creates accessible tools and production opportunities for contemporary artists, whilst rendering their practice porous and participatory, within and beyond the field of art.
TAP was founded by curator and artistic director Amanda Abi Khalil and registered as a nonprofit organization in Lebanon in 2014 and in France in 2020. It is based in Beirut and Paris, and its interventions take place internationally.
www.temporaryartplatform.com
Instagram: @temporaryartplatform
About Art Explora Foundation
Art Explora is an international foundation, recognized as being of public utility, that inspires new encounters between the arts and audiences—locally, nationally, and internationally. Its imaginative and contemporary approach encourages new forms of access, participation, and engagement through digital technology and mobile initiatives.
Working with artists, cultural organisations, and communities, Art Explora explores all art forms and creates transformative cultural experiences for all. Founded by Frédéric Jousset in 2019, Art Explora is a non-profit organisation based in France and the UK, bringing together many partners and volunteers.
www.artexplora.org
Contact & Media Inquiries
Temporary Art Platform
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