Explore the 2025 Season

Fisher Center LAB and Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) present

The Search for Power

Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish

February 1–9

Add to Calendar2025-02-01 6:00 pm2025-02-01 6:00 pmESTThe Search for Power

Open Installation

On View February 1–23
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Performances (SOLD OUT)

CCS Bard / Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, United States
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All live performances of The Search for Power (February 1–3 and 7–9 at 6 pm) are sold out. To join the waitlist, please arrive in-person in the lobby of the Hessel Museum one hour prior to the performance (5 pm).

Experience The Search for Power as an open installation, on view from February 1–23. No ticket or reservation is required.

On a night with a sudden electricity outage in their Beirut neighborhood, the artist and her historian husband discussed the history of power cuts in Lebanon. Born during the Lebanese Civil War, the artist had grown up with the understanding that the problem with electricity in Lebanon began during the war. The historian, however, recalled finding a government document dated 1952 that announced scheduled electricity outages across Beirut. The two decided to research the history of power outages in Lebanon, delving into the intersection between public utilities infrastructure, people’s relationship to the state, and various popular mobilizations to shape both.

In time, they reach as far back as the introduction of electricity in Beirut before it was even possible to imagine a Lebanese state. In space, they collect documents across Lebanon and beyond its borders, visiting the archives of colonial powers: Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What they find is a transnational story that locates electricity at the intersection of colonial legacies, the machinations of political and economic elites, and everyday acts of resistance, survival, and sabotage.

The Search for Power is an interactive installation and a lecture performance featuring the artist, the historian, and the audience.

Photo by Elina Giounanli/Onassis Stegi

Experience

The Search for Power can be experienced as a ticketed live performance or as an open installation without a ticket or reservation.

FOOD ALLERGY NOTICE

Please be aware that the table featured at the center of the performance will be set with—among other items—candles, tree nuts, grapes, dried apricots, and wine.

TICKETED LIVE PERFORMANCE

All live performances of The Search for Power are sold out.

• Saturday, February 1 at 6 pm (SOLD OUT)
• Sunday, February 2 at 6 pm (SOLD OUT)
• Monday, February 3 at 6 pm (SOLD OUT)
• Friday, February 7 at 6 pm (SOLD OUT)
• Saturday, February 8 at 6 pm (SOLD OUT)
• Sunday, February 9 at 6 pm (SOLD OUT)

The live performances of The Search for Power are suitable for audiences aged 12 and above. Children under 12 will not be admitted.

LATE SEATING & WAITLIST

Please note that there is no late seating for this performance. Any tickets unclaimed after 6 pm will be subject to release to a waitlist. Guests may add their names to a waitlist beginning one hour prior to a sold-out performance, in-person only in the lobby of the Hessel Museum.

NON-TICKETED OPEN INSTALLATION

In the open installation, the audience is invited to listen through headphones to a pre-recorded text and explore the archive box in their own time.

The open installation experience is approximately 45 minutes.

The open installation is open to all ages.

The Search for Power will be on view at CCS Bard / Hessel Museum of Art from February 1–23.

On performance days (above), exhibit hours are 11 am – 4 pm. On days when there are no performances, exhibit hours are Monday through Sunday 11 am – 5 pm.

The last admission for the open installation will be one hour before the museum’s closing.

Trailer

Bios

Photo by Julie Folly/Belluard Bollwerk

Tania El Khoury is a live artist whose work focuses on audience interactivity and its political potential. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is a witness and an active collaborator. Tania’s work has been translated into multiple languages and shown in 32 countries across 6 continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Soros Art Fellowship, the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award. Tania is a Distinguished Artist in Residence of Theater & Performance and the Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College in New York. She holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. She is associated with the Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK and is a co-founder of the urban research and live art collective, Dictaphone Group in Lebanon.

Photo by Elina Giounanli/Onassis Stegi

Ziad Abu-Rish is a scholar of the modern Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. His research centers around state formation, economic development, and popular mobilizations, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan. He earned his PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and his MA in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Abu-Rish is co-editor of The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (2012), among other edited volumes. He is the author of several articles and chapters, including “Garbage Politics in Lebanon,” “Municipal Elections in Lebanon,” and “Lebanon Beyond Exceptionalism.” He serves as co-editor of the Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya e-zine, and co-director of the Lebanese Dissertation Summer Institute. Abu-Rish is an Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle East Studies at Bard College, where he also directs the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts.

Creative Team

Creation Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish
Production Design Petra Abousleiman
Research Ziad Abu-Rish with support from Owain Lawson and Joelle Boutros
Graphic Design Jana Traboulsi & Haitham Haddad
Sound Design Ali Beidoun & Fadi Tabbal
Dramaturgy Deborah Pearson
Production RR Sigel
Technical Supervision Maciej Lewandowski

Funding

The Search for Power was commissioned by Anti Festival Live Art Prize. The research was supported by Arts Council England, Shubbak Festival, and brut Wien. The installation was commissioned by Sharjah Biennial 15 (SB15).

Fisher Center LAB is the residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center at Bard. Tania El Khoury is a 2024–26 Fisher Center LAB artist in residence supported by the Mellon Foundation.

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