Beyond Orientalism(s) – Towards New Infrastructures

Beyond Orientalism(s) – Towards New Infrastructures was a collaborative project between the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB) and the American University of Beirut (AUB), developed between 2022 and 2025 amid rapidly shifting geopolitical conditions. What began as an academic-artistic exchange on representation, migration discourses, and the debates surrounding documenta fifteen was fundamentally transformed by the ruptures following October 7, 2023: the Hamas attack in southern Israel, Israel's cross-border attacks and bombardments in Lebanon, and the genocidal warfare in Gaza carried out with the tacit approval of Western governments. These developments profoundly altered the foundations of this transcultural exchange, its scholarly–curatorial intentions, and the formats initially conceived.

The project brings together students, scholars, artists, and faculty through round tables, workshops, exhibitions, lectures, and co-curated encounters. It experiments with modes of working-together that seek to rebuild trust, negotiate positionality, and probe the limits of dialogue when inherited vocabularies falter. A web publication documents these processes, reflections, and the emerging infrastructures shaped through this cooperation.